Eve Green

This is a beautiful story and beautifully written. I read this book years ago and somehow my copy disappeared so I bought a new one. I reread the book and enjoyed it as much as I did the first time. Children see things differently than adults, and the world seen by Eve is clear and without adult excuses. She is genuine and you feel like you are living in her rural town with its rolling hills and stone walls and old homes - and it's gray winds and it's secrets. This is a story where a child struggles with her conscience in the very adult world of buried and conveniently forgotton pasts. If you love getting lost in a vivid telling of another time and place where the world appears simple with characters that are anything but - you will love this book. Through Ms.Fletcher's writing you are instantly transported into the mind of Eve and the world she sees, in words and descriptions almost poetically written. The story flows effortlessly - read it. PS. I have never reviewed anything before and am not a writer but I absolutely love love love this book. enjoy.

Very well written quiet novel about life on a farm in Wales. It was a bit unbelievable in that the protagonist fell in love with her true love at the age of 8 or 9 and he was a young man then but I was willing to go along with it because it was a lovely story.

OK but I read this after I had read Corrag, which i have read about 4 times. Wish she would write more about the highlands. Corrag was not [possible to put down.

Did not want this book to end. Could there be a sequel? Just started her second book Corrag. Only a couple of pages in and already hooked.

"Eve Green" is a debut novel by the British author Susan Fletcher. This book has won the Whitbread prize, and I think the prize was well deserved.Eve Green is 29 years old, expecting her first child, and living on a remote farm in Wales. She decides that the last moment before turning thirty is a good time for putting order in her memories - and so the readers get to know her unusual life story, beginning with the death of her mother when Eve was seven years old. Since Eve has never known her father, she has to move to her grandparents, and change a familiar neighborhood in Birmingham for quiet Welsh farm.There are many secrets in Eve's life, and they are revealed slowly and gradually - somehow retracing the painful process of reconstruction of the past in the mind of a child. Eve seems to attract mystery, looking for friendship with loners and trying to dig out long forgotten or traumatic episodes. During her childhood on the farm, enough tragic and sad things happen to plant more questions in her head - Rosie, a happy, even cocky, 12-year-old, suddenly disappears... Conversations with neighbors are helpful, but the greatest help is provided by her mother's old notes found by Eve in the shoebox under the bed.I cannot decide if I like Eve, or if I do not - she is certainly a character and has the mind of her own. I definitely liked her grandparents, who are full-blooded characters, as well ad Billy and Eve's mother. I am not sure what to think about Daniel... He is too ideal for me.The novel's pace is slow, the atmosphere a little eerie, the setting of the plot in Wales is the book's great asset. I think some of the threads could have been better with little shifts in dynamics and emphasis, but all in all, it is a very good novel, and definitely a great first novel, only encouraging the reader to get deeper into Fletcher's prose.

Eve is a young woman, approaching the birth of her first child and is reflecting back on her own childhood and her family. Her mother died when she was young, leaving her to be returned to live with grandparents in Wales that she barely knew. She knows of her father only through the mementos and notes that her mother kept. Her life in rural Wales was a big change, and as a child she also had to deal with the prejudices against her mother. There was also a terrible tragedy in town in the disappearance of another young girl and the investigation surrounding it. Eve has kept a secret from that time after making a terrible mistake. The story slowly unfolds her current story and the secrets from the past.

This novel is about so many things. It’s about mystery, secrecy, friendship, love, the loss of love, grief… the themes are a strong undercurrent forming what is a powerful and addictive story.As the title suggests, the story is based on the life of Eve Green, who after the death of her mother, is sent to live with her estranged grandmother in rural Wales.When she finds a journal written by her mother when she was a teenager, she realises that she has been lied to, and that her life is not what it seems.Each chapter has been given a title relating to the discoveries in her mother’s journal, and the goings on in her own life, and we are linked back to the past in this way. Though sometimes it can seem that some chapters seem a little subtle, everything makes sense in the end.This book is essential reading. It’s one of the best debut novels that I have ever read.

A brilliant book. Poetic writing style but restrained and not at all overblown.

Loved the sense of place in this book, reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's descriptions of Dorset.Eve Green left me longing to visit the the area in Wales...

Fletcher knows how to set up hooks for the reader and keep our interest aroused. The child's (Eve's) voice is very convincing, short, snappy phrases and on the spot comments depicting her mentality and free nature so very well. We are able to see the countryside of Wales clearly (she seems to know all the plants, shrubs, flowers and trees there are) and the imagery she uses is original and abundant. At the beginning I was a bit confused with all the changes of the narrator - Eve at different ages, and the characters seemed to pop in and out of the scene without leaving the reader space to get to know them better but as the story evolved, everything got (gradually) more lucid.

A compelling story, well written!

i felt i hadn't quite 'got' something about Eve Green, so i read it again...i feel there is a promising writing style and a way of relaying intimacy and emapthy through simple, daily things...i liked eve, but still didn;t feel like i'd 'got' it... 3 stars fom me.

A wonderful read. It's a shame others downrated this book because of the lack of a plot. You don't always have to have an exciting storyline. It's the beauty of the prose and the picture of Welsh rural life which is so delicious and makes a book you just want to read and read over again.

A beautifully written book- and it was her first. Oystercatchers, her second , is perhaps even more poetically written. A writer to watch.

Excellent book beautifully written. The descriptive prose triggered memories I had forgotten, or did know I had.

great book. Love Susan Fletcher's books although I think the Silver Dark Sea is probably my favourite.

Another good title from Susan Fletcher, though I have liked others a little better.

Very good read!

a book club read

Susan Fletcher transports the reader to a small Welsh community in the 1970s. The narrative voice shifts effortlessly between 29 year old Eve and the 7 and 8 year old child of her past, creating an atmospheric novel, whose characters and places lodge in the reader's mind.Themes of memory, innocence, and growing up are shown to be subjective; Eve's memories of events, and of things hidden from her, are more important and more vital than a futile quest for the truth.A captivating and thought-provoking read from a first novelist.

This is the second of Susan Flethcher's books I've read (Witchlight) and it doesn't disappoint. Flicks back and forth through time, captivating and so well written, thoroughly recommend.