Cheap Eden (Book) (Olympia Vernon) Price

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Customer Reviews of Eden

Eden: A New Gift to the African-American Canon
Olympia Vernon has certainly marked her space on the map with Eden. The entire book sings like music. Every line, every chapter is indelible--like an ongoing paean that praises and celebrates life, love, loss, forgiveness, death, God, pain, nature, disease and the awe of body--the physical journeys it takes. I found the language as bare-boned as Hemingway. Quick, clean, sharp and vivid. Even cancer resonates as a "character" in the novel. I was enamored with the simplest "sharing" in the book and that was Maddy. Though a rift eases in between two sisters, Faye and Aunt Pip, the child is still allowed to go to her aunt. Could that in some manner be a gesture of forgiveness? The one and only frail part about the novel is plot. However, the characters, structure, language, magical-realism and overall theme of the work deems it all the more rich. I hope this young author continues to contribute good, qualified, "seriously imaginative" literature to the African-American canon. I think she will keep the map strong. Highly recommended!!

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New Author Debuts in True Morrisonsque Fashion
Intricate, excessive metaphors with convoluted symbolism that consumes the reader. Re-reading sentences and paragraphs to comprehend the context, questioning what was read, surreal imagery. No, this is not a Toni Morrison novel but Olympia Vernon in her debut offering, Eden, will no doubt be compared to the Queen Mother of literature. This novel will more than likely be embraced by the literary community making this a crossover fiction read to please many palates.

Maddy Dangerfield is a fourteen year-old black girl living on the borderline of rural Mississippi/Louisiana. Though no dates are given, the time period seems to be the late 1960s or 70s. Maddy is engulfed in despair, a fragile link in a down- trodden family that appears to be without hope or future. A degrading, embittered, alcoholic father, Chevrolet, who is also maimed, is incapable of providing for his family though he is employed because his paycheck is already owed to Jesus' the man who runs gambling in town and to the liquor his body craves. His wife, Faye totally lacking self-esteem, is a classic enabler, working herself to the bone to pay her husband's debts. They are the town's object of gossip and pity. There is no laughter; Maddy does not socialize with other children or hitch rides into town with friends for ice cream. She is immersed in an adult world and these adults are no prizes. Then Maddy adds fuel to the flames when she draws a picture of a naked lady in red lipstick over the first page of the Book of Genesis in Sunday School. As a punishment, she is banished to spend weekends nursing her aunt Pip, who is wasting away with breast cancer and herself banished in shame from the town and the family for committing an unforgivable sin. Maddy is drawn into the squandered life of Pip while pondering the issues of life, death, love and redemption.

Racism is rampant and this novel does not escape the stereotypical elements of a gothic southern novel: an uncle in prison and his friend hung for an 'alleged' rape of a white woman, the desolate alcoholic stripped of his manhood who kowtows to whites, the white storeowners who cheat blacks out of their money, the strong black mother replete with a Mammy persona who is long-suffering, forever in church praising the Lord. A cast of secondary characters including an outcast neighbor, a young casket maker from New Orleans who has his eye on Maddy and a slow-witted man who meets a mysterious death all contribute to making this a well-rounded, unique storyline.

The literature of the last few years have highlighted the affluence and assimilation of African Americans touting their acquired status, this story gives us the ugliness up front and personal---, this is not reading for the faint at heart. Maddy's obsession with vaginas is a prominent part of this novel as is blood, breasts, lizards, and superstitions steeped in ignorance and tradition. Sometimes this novel was out there, thus the Morrison reference. Well written with illuminating imagery, the author places you there--but I had to ask myself if I really wanted to be. Nevertheless, it was refreshing to read yet another new, unique voice. 2003 promises to be a stellar year with writers such as Vernon and Danyel Smith (More Like Wrestling) who are taking bold risks in what is sometimes a saturated market of uniformity. I look forward to this author's next offering.

Dera Williams
APOOO BookClub

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A wildy beautiful tale
Eden is far more than a coming of age novel.
The story is told through the voice of Maddy Dangerfield, a fourteen year old girl living in the deep South.
Maddy may be green around the edges but she observes the world through old eyes. The town is in shock when Maddy draws a naked woman on the pages of Genesis, in fire engine red lipstick during Sunday school.
Maddy feels deeply for her Mother. For her hard worked hands and tired feet from cleaning the white folks house all day.Her Father, an alcholic who gambles away every cent he earns plus what her mother makes.
Her Aunt Pip, a beautiful, carefree woman known to sleep with married men (even Maddy's father). When Aunt Pip starts dying from Breast Cancer, Maddy is forced to spend the weekends taking care of her. Maddy is crushed to see her aunt crumble and weaken right before her eyes. Fat, her aunt's friend is crazy they say. She writes letters to a dead man. A dead man they found hanging from the tree in the front yard. He was hanged and uncle Sugar became a number- for raping a white woman.

This novel is raw, sensual and bursting from the seams with old Southern ritual and spirituality. A wildy beautiful tale of passion, anger, love and Death.
Vernon's prose will knock your socks off! Her creativity is so out of the box one might need to take a slow breath to take it all in. Highly unusual, passionately poetic. To write with such profound power and mystic is pure brilliance.
Eden is top shelf with the likes of Toni Morrison.
Vernon is a Diamond in the rough of literature today..

reviewed by:
Dawn
MBCN.Y./2004