Finished: 11/10/2024
This Other Eden starts with the history of the Honey family and them finding their way to Apple Island. In the late 1700s, a black man named Benjamin Honey escaped slavery and fled north, he met and fell in love with an white Irish immigrant named Patience. After saving up money for several years, Benjamin and Patience moved to an uninhabited island in the far north east of America and Benjamin planted several types of apple trees there (I think the island was off of Maine but I'm not sure if the book ever says). They start their mixed race family there and throughout the years, a handful of people, lots of them being people of color and Penobscot Native Americans, come to join their little island. Once Patience and Benjamin are grandparents, a giant storm and flood almost destroy the entire island. All the inhabitants climb the biggest tree on the island and the majority of them survive the giant wave that encompasses the tree. The only thing that remains above water at the height of the flood is Patience Honey's hand holding the Apple Island flag that she made by joining a bunch of different aspects and colors of other flags together.
Although the origins of the Honey family seem like something that would be interesting to read about, that's basically all we get about them. The main story takes place in the early 1900s, still on Apple Island where the last of the Honey family live along with the Larks, the McDermont sisters and their adopted Sockalexis children, an elderly woman who doesn't interact much with anyone named Annie Parker, and a black civil war veteran named Zachary Hand to God Proverbs. There's also an old, retired school teacher that visits the island every summer to teach the children of Apple Island; his name is Matthew Diamond and he's the only one of these characters that is "plain white," meaning not a POC or mixed. The most important characters are the Honey's, with the Grandma being Esther, her son being Eha, and Eha's three children Ethan, Tabitha and Charlotte.
It's emphasized from the beginning that all these characters are mixed. They are all various shades of brown with Ethan, a 15 year old aspiring painter, being one of the lightest (which is important later). It's also very clear how many of them were born out of incest. The theme of incest is a really interesting one that I'm not quite sure how to make sense of, I thought of this a lot while reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, and I'll explore this more later in the report.
Not much happens early on in the story, this book is a very slow one. There's a lot of descriptions about scenery and feelings, both of them being presented in a very poetic way. Eventually, the main conflict come up where the Maine(?) government decides to evict the Apple Islanders because, among other things, they've never paid taxes. Apple Island is sort of this lawless haven where sometimes the islanders will do odd jobs for people on the mainland to get money and buy food, but they'll mostly scavenge and keep to themselves. Doctors comes to Apple Island along with some government officials and measures the islander's skulls. This was back when phrenology was all the rage. The doctor comes to the conclusion that most of the Apple Islanders should be in a school for the feeble minded, which, from what I know, isn't too different from an insane asylum. However, the doctor is somewhat right. Some of the Apple Island children are very smart and talented because of Matthew Diamond's teaching, but other than that, so many of them are born out of incest and obviously have an intellectual, mental and physical deficiencies. -But I'll get into that later.
Matthew Diamond, knowing that Apple Island is soon coming to an end, urges Eha to send his son, Ethan, away to a place called "Enon." Here Ethan can hone his painting skills and live with one of Matthew Diamond's old friends, Thomas Hale, in his estate. Eha agrees and the next big chunk of the story follows Ethan.
Etan gets to the Hale estate which is just outside of Boston during the summer of 1914. While he's there, all he does is paint. He falls for Thomas Hale's maid, Bridget Carney, an Irish immigrant about Ethan's age. I don't know if it's ever said why Bridget immigrated to America while the rest of her family didn't. This part of the story is filled with extensive poetic descriptions about the environment, so that we as the reader see the world as Ethan sees it: as a painter sees it. Eventually, Bridget and Ethan begin sleeping together in Ethan's little room that's connected to the barn. Bridget sneaks out every morning to go back to the house and starts her early morning prep work for Thomas Hale. One morning, Thomas Hale is up early and notices Bridget sneaking out of Ethan's room. Thomas then sends Ethan away; away to where? it's not really clear because he doesn't make his way back to Apple Island, but a pregnant Bridget does.
On Apple Island, the eviction is in full swing. While government officials are trying to force Annie Parker and the Lark family on to a boat to bring them to a school for the feeble minded on the mainland, a fight breaks out and one of the Lark children get accidentally struck in the head so hard she dies. That night, Eha Honey takes apart the house he made for his family and puts it all on a boat. The Honey family, along with Bridget, goes to the mainland to rebuild their house in the woods. The only one left on Apple Island is Zachary, who sets his home on fire as contractors get to the island and start exhuming graves in preparation to build something on the island. Most of the grave diggers quit by the end of the night, but the last ones watch as Zachary crosses the channel to the mainland at low tide, holding Patience Honey's flag above his head.
In this last part of the book, there's introjections of what's seemingly descriptions for an art show 100 years in the future. It's Ethan's artwork, or what remains of it, along with short synopses of Apple Island's history. The last paintings found by Ethan Honey are set on a French battle field in September of 1914. I think it's easy to assume from that that Ethan was sent away to enlist and died in WWI.
A big issue I had with This Other Eden is that the symbolism wasn't subtle. There's a lot of one to one comparison to books in the Bible; so not a lot of room for speculation or ruminating on the literature. The three big biblical stories This Other Eden retells are the story of Adam and Eve in Eden, Noah's ark, and then the birth of Jesus. In the first example, Benjamin Honey and Patience as well as Ethan and Bridget represent Adam and Eve. They all find this place away from everybody else where their love is allowed to flourish. But their exile from Eden happened in different ways. Benjamin and Patience's was just the realization that their relationship could not be possible while living among other communities. Their eating from the tree of knowledge was the racism of others. They moved to Apple Island for something better, only to have all their hard work destroyed in the end. Ethan and Bridget's was a little more fleshed out. Thomas Hale is described as being very old and "all-knowing," he also has a lot of trouble sleeping, similar to God at the beginning of the Bible. (-While creating the earth, God only slept on the 7th day.) When Thomas found out that Ethan and Bridget were sleeping together, he kicked out Ethan for, what I think he thought of as, ruining Bridget's innocence. The next day, Bridget fled on her own.
The next example of this is Noah's ark. The story of Noah's ark is very similar to the Adam and Eve story because, in the Bible, all humanity can be traced back to these two families. They were the start and then the restart. Noah is also seven generations removed from Adam, just like how Ethan is seven generations removed from Benjamin. This Other Eden starts with a flood and alludes to a flood at the very end. On Noah's ark, he had his wife, his three sons, and their wives. His sons, Ham, Shem and Japheth, were described as one being pale, another brown and another black. Even though they were all full sons of Noah and his wife, they all turned out to have different color skin tones. -And like Matthew Diamond says in the book while giving a sermon, he believes that all of their wives were different skin tones too. Like with Noah's family, the inhabitants of Apple Island started mixed and just continue to mix throughout the generations. I think the part of Noah's story about his three sons isn't talked about enough. I didn't learn about this until I was an adult despite going to church for almost all of my childhood. It's an old testament story that's still relevant today, which there's not a lot of.
The last, and shortest one, is the birth of Jesus. This one is pretty simple. Bridget had nowhere to go as a young, pregnant teenager, but the Honey's took her in. All of Bridget's family was still back in Ireland and she probably didn't have enough money to ride a boat to get back over there. Even though the Honey's didn't have much, and were in the middle of a very big life change, they still took in Bridget without question. This is like everyone refusing to take in Mary when she's about to give birth, besides the innkeeper who tells her to give birth in his barn. -Which, by the way, this is a little sidenote here: it wasn't until I was older that I realized how messed up that was. In one of my German classes, I learned that when the Romans were trying to convert the Germanic tribes to Christianity, they changed, or just entirely left out, this story of Jesus's birth. Because the people in the Germanic tribes didn't operate that way. If a young girl was about to give birth, it was unimaginable for them to make her give birth in a barn without help, much less turn her away.
Anyways, back to This Other Eden, another aspect of this book that I took a bit of issue with was how it seemed to be very "location oriented." Let me explain: from dialect to scenic descriptions to directions, this book seemed to reiterate what New Englanders already know but create a knowledge barrier for those who aren't familiar with the area (like me, a born and raised Midwesterner). I think there is a way to do this effectively, I'm not at all in favor of authors over explaining to their audience. But This Other Eden seemed to do this in a way that was like "this book is meant for New Englanders only." I'm not sure if I can pick out any examples at the moment, it was just sort of a vibe I got while reading. I will definitely think about this more in the future with other books I read and see if I can make my feelings more clear.
I did a slight bit of research on Paul Harding before reading this book. He grew up in New England and based his first book, Enon, after the town he lived in as a kid. I didn't put this in the summary, but Thomas Hale's estate, where Ethan goes to paint for the summer, is in Enon, Massachusetts. -Which is just a nod to Paul Harding's other book. I'm not sure about how I feel about authors doing this; I think it can be a little fun thing to reference your other work, but I think it becomes more fun when it's subtle. That way only the hardcore fans can find it.
Something I did enjoy about the book was the writing style and I was glad to see that the review on the front cover is from Danez Smith! They are a black, queer and nonbinary poet from the place that I live. I've read some of their poetry and watched some of their live performances. I have to say, I'm a big fan. But back to This Other Eden, Paul Harding chooses to not use quotation marks so the line between thinking and speaking is blurred. I'm not always a fan of that artistic choice, a couple years ago, I had a lot of trouble reading Cormac McCarthy who does the same thing. But I think Paul Harding really pulls it off. I also like how seeing and feeling were able to combine, and how the whole book seemed very peaceful. You're really put into the setting while reading.
There's one part that stuck out to me where Bridget asks why the stars only chirp in the summer and not in the winter. I stopped for a while after reading that and was confused at first, the I thought to myself "I know what she means." A couple paragraphs later, Ethan thinks to himself that he doesn't want to reveal to her that the stars don't chirp, the crickets do. But the detail to observation on Paul Harding's part is really impressive.
Getting to some symbolism, the first thing I want to talk about in the theme of incest, which I've done some thinking about while writing this. Like I said before, I first came into contact with the theme of incest while reading Frankenstein, with Victor's love for his first cousin and everyone supporting that, but also the relationship between Victor's parents. To sum it up, Victor's dad was friends with the dad of Victor's mom. After Victor's maternal grandfather's death, Victor's dad took on the father figure role which ended up turning into a romantic/sexual relationship.
In This Other Eden, the Lark family consists of two parents, Theophilus and Candace, and their four kids. Theophilus and Candace tell everyone that they're cousins when in reality they're brother and sister. I think it's also said in the book that they most likely come from a long line of incest. Because of that, both parents and all but one of their kids suffer from intellectual, mental and physical disabilities. It's also revealed throughout the book that Esther's father started to "take Esther as his wife" after Esther's mom died and her sister ran away. Which is how Esther became pregnant with Eha, she gave birth to her own brother.
Esther never seemed to recover from the abuse she suffered from her father. She tried to kill Eha as a baby, and then kill herself and Eha. After Zachary found and saved both of them, Esther instead killed her own father. Which no one found out about except for Zachary, who kept it to himself for Esther's sake. Throughout the rest of her life, Esther would see her dead father and talk to him. There would also be things, seemingly daily, that would remind her of him and the abuse she suffered. Esther said later in the book that she liked how Eha was practically mute because Eha's voice and tone would sometimes remind her of her father too. I think all this pain and abuse aged Esther quickly. She's always described as being this frail, elderly woman, when Zachary is at least a decade older than her, and he's still able to climb trees and scavenge for his own food.
I think the main purpose of the theme of incest is to immediately let the reader know "there is something very wrong here." To bring up Frankenstein again, Victor starts his story off by telling how his parents met and started their relationship. Even though it's portrayed in this romantic way, it gives off this feeling of something disturbing and gross. Something deeply unsettling, or maybe in the case of this book: sinful. In the Lark's case, it's to show how the parents are already unwell to begin with, in Esther's, it's to show how deeply her father's abuse effected her throughout her whole life.
The majority of this book is about the life experience of a mixed race person and how racism and colorism come along with that. If you've noticed my left hand in the pictures I post on here, it's pretty easy to tell that I've a very pale white person, so I'm not able to speak on any of this personally and getting a fuller analysis of this topic would need to come from a person of color. That being said, I do think that this book sends a very nice message on the strength of being mixed race. The characters in this book use this analogy of how "combining blood makes your blood thicker," and how "plain white people" are "people who have blood as thick as water." From what I do know, lots of mixed race people have trouble with their identity. They either feel like, or have been told, their too (this color/ethnicity) to be (this other color/ethnicity), which is so horrible.
The other way Apple Island represents the garden of Eden was how none of the characters seemed to care or point out that they were different in any way from each other. Like in Noah's story, they were all different colors yet they were a family. Having communities of people who are mixed race like this is the inevitable future, and it's for our own good as humanity. There is strength in having mixed blood.
Finally, I want to touch on the theme of disability and the community oriented approach we see the Apple Islanders having towards one another. Although it's very clear the majority of the Apple Islanders are disabled (either by birth or by trauma), they don't treat each other as "lesser than." They accept each other for who they are and rely on each other for their strengths. This is shown really well during the preparation for Ethan's going away feast. Everybody pitches in and helps, in some way, to set up a big table and chairs, gets dishes for everyone, collect ingredients and prepare the food. The Apple Islanders treat each other not as "disabled" but just as "different," and their lives are more fulfilling because of that.
However, once the government officials and doctors show up is when the diagnoses start. After all the islanders get an un-consensual check up, there's this huge list the doctors make of all the ailments the islanders have. Even though the doctors are right, that some of the islanders do need help, the "help" they offer is detrimental; sending them away to what is, essentially, an insane asylum. Later in the book, it says that only one of the six Lark family members survived more than a couple months in the school for the feebleminded.
I think the doctors coming in and offering "help" is a really good representation of a colonist mindset. The people who live on Apple Island have lived there for over 100 years at this point and have been not necessarily prosperous, but fine on their own. Other people coming in and deciding rules and laws always ends up with people getting hurt in the end. We also know now that phrenology is completely fake and insane asylums are just places where people went to get abused and die. But even now, disabled people are still cast aside in modern society. Of course it's better than it was a hundred years ago, but with how lacking affordable help and government assistance is, to be disabled is to not even get a chance at societal integration. If the whole world operated in a community approach, like Apple Island, mixed with well researched medical care by doctors who mean well, there would be no "disabled" people, only "different" people.
The colonist mindset also reminds me of what Esther thinks about Matthew Diamond. How Matthew thinks he's helping, and how he has good intentions, but because of his lack of knowledge of the culture of Apple Island, he messes things up in the end. Esther also has a jaded view of Matthew because he reminds her of her father. I think the work that Matthew is doing is overtly good, him opening that school allowed the children of Apple Island to gain some experiences and talent they wouldn't have known that they had before. It's just a shame that his work and involvement lead to the dismantling of Apple Island.
I'm slowly growing my already large book collection. I found a used book store close to where I live and I've already bought a couple volumes from my ever-growing booklist. I'm about to start reading scary books since it's the season for it, which I'm excited about. Anyways, that's all, thanks for reading!
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