Eden means delight. Humans live in the garden of life, which means some days will be paradise and others less than perfect. The goal is to delight in both triumphs and failure. So here you will find praise and celebration alongside lament and frustration.
Jacqueline Carey is one of the few author's who not only can entertain but inspires me to be a better writer. The skill with which she weilds words is rare. In the world of Fantasy books even moreso. For those that found the previous books too hard to read or hold inside, they will find this much lighter-hearted tale wholly to their liking.
Having waded through all through all of Kushiel's Legacy thus far, tracing the lives of Phedre and Imriel, I was expecting more of the same. When I first opened the book, I feared that she, as many others had done before, had managed to mire herself in the tales of the druid Morgain and Arthurian legends - not that I mind those, but I loved Careys book for their wholly unique take on God, gods, goddesses and magic. However, after reading for one full chapter, I was thrilled to see that Ms. Carey had again managed to spin a tale uniquely hers and of characters wholly her own, untainted my legends written over and over again by so many others. It was not another authors attempt at the arthurian legend again. Thank Elua.
Where the world of Phedre and Imriel was dense, teeming with darknesses of both horror and pleasure, the tale of Moirin is the opposite. There is ancient history, intrigue and dire circumstances, but there is a lightness to this book that the other did not have. While I hoped to revel in the violent grips of desire as I had in her earlier books, I find myself not necessarily disappointed that this one is bright and sunlit and joyous throughout. In the past, I felt the almost trapped as the characters were in their circumstances, dug in beyond rescue and exquisitly so; however this book brought an energy of untainted love, fleeting ephemeral beauty and magic all lit in the bright jade eyes of a half-breed young woman in search of her destiny and followed by the light hand of gods that gave with equanamity.
While a cute read, easy to finish in a sitting and uncomplicated - this is not one of my favorite books. Its apparent that the writer's traditional genre is short stories. The concept of the book - finding love even at an old age is a good one. However the writing is mediocre. The wry wit does not make up for the lack of character development. The storyline felt like a short story that had outgrown its bounds and at one point there is a desperate attempt to create conflict by adding an additional character, which only served to water the plot down further.
I actually read this for a book club formed by Wentworth Miller fans. He had mentioned the book in an interview. I don't remember the exact wording, but the gist was that it would make a good movie. I do not disagree, the concept is there and the basic characters all exist in such a way that someone could option this book and make a fantastic heartwarming romance of it. It would make a better movie than book. I wonder how someone goes about optioning it...?
Anyway......
Some of my friends really enjoyed the book for the pure pleasure of reading. It is not that I did not enjoy it at all. Its is that I could never get past the 70 year old heroine seemingly having the emotional maturity of a 14 year old.
Broken. Ruined from adolescence. The shame having raw emotions poured out for public consumption through a sieve of ridicule. Tears. Internal ruts from the many rivulets. Words writ with quiet patience and hope burning to ashes in the fires of public humiliation. That’s what its like to have your the diary that holds the secrets of your 14 year old heart read in front of the family as a lesson. To have the very idea of your dreams reduced to puppy love. A concept that does not entail the carefree happiness the rest of the world understands it to be, but instead an indication of how pathetic the possibility is. Tender shoots straining for light under a shroud of legalism are crushed for reasons that are still inexplicable 20 years later, and you wonder why I’m single.
I was taught from my first crush on Joseph at 10 yrs old that with enough effort, I could suppress those urges. Urges - a word of said with the sneer of derision. A word that should imply desire and the possibility of euphoria within the scope of our lowly human bodies, .instead gives me an internal shudder. Much like the words puppy love make me immediately and irrationally angry, still, 20 years later.
When the average adolescent was learning to traverse the high and lows, joys and heartbreaks of interacting with their object of affection, I was learning to bury those feelings deep deep inside. Now that cavern is so deep I couldn’t find them even with trying at the very bottom. Its just too deep. The lessons you learn of flirting and talking and communicating with the opposite sex were lost to me, unrecoverable in the past where they were supposed to be learned. And you wonder Why I’m single.
The men willing to know me are patient because they understand the concept of internal struggle. It’s no wonder they have all been homosexuals. Thus, the men I fall in love with have been just that. When finally I risk all my hopes on someone that you might call less than perfect, what happens? He turns out to be gay. Ten years later, when I was able to dredge up all those buried treasures of my personality and psyche it was a on someone who made it safe to do so, then fell in love with someone else. So what does this teach. that there is no point in taking the risk. The risk of humiliation. The risk of pain again. The sacrifice is only going to be thrown back in my face, a punishment for succumbing to my primal and romantic instinct instead of ruling it as I’d been taught to do as a teenager.
Another ten years, a career later, a hundred pounds more, a lifetime past the happiness of my peers, its all gone. The hope of possibility. To make matters worse, I can feel the pity from friends, acquaintances, and family. Poor thing should have gotten married before she got fat. Now she’ll never get a man. My mom’s obvious attempts to teach me now what she failed to at 15. “You have to seize whats available to you,” she says with condescension simmering in her voice. “Bake the UPS man brownies or talk to the mailman when he comes by.” Gee, mom, thanks for the idea. I hadn’t realized I was quite that pathetic, but thanks for the reminder of perspective.
So again, tears trickle from an adult broken in adolescence. An adolescent buried under the humiliations of a pathetic woman. Humiliation in the sideways glances from those that pity you in the grocery store, at church and on the sidewalk. The slow death of seemingly undying hope every time a box needs checked on a survey - single, never married. The quiet crush of a wounded soul trying again to rise from the grave of social banishment as people stop inviting you because you cannot find a date. It would be easier if I were the feared lesbian. At least then I could use society or religion as a reason for my dreaded singleness. Instead I bear the contagion that is pure and unrelenting loneliness wrought from a heart that cannot be broken because it may not ever have grown up whole.
Naamah's Kiss by Jacqueline Carey
