Little Eve
Centered on the bond between Eve and Dinah, girls raised inside a sealed community on a remote Scottish island, the novel explores violence, control, and the pull of the wider world. Its gothic atmosphere is marked by the distortions of faith and power.
Work Information
Inside a closed community, friendship and control become unsettlingly entangled.
Little Eve reveals the violence and cult-like order of an isolated island community through the experiences of Eve and Dinah. Though it has the surface of a fairy tale, it sharply depicts the fear and desire that grow inside closed relationships.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Published
- 2018-04-19
- Pages
- 288 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14 x 2 x 21.8 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780297609681
- ISBN-10
- 0297609688
- Price
- 8938 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Horror
Eve and Dinah are everything to one another, never parted day or night. They are raised among the Children, a commune of strays and orphans ruled by Uncle, the mysterious patriarch. All they know is the grey Isle of Altnaharra which sits in the black sea off the wildest coast of Scotland. Eve loves the free, savage life of the Isle and longs to inherit Uncle's vision. She is untroubled save by her dreams; of soft arms and a woman singing. Dinah longs for something other. But the world is at war and cannot be kept at bay. As the solitude of Altnaharra is broken, Eve's faith and sanity fracture. In a great storm, in the depths of winter, as the old year dies, the locals discover a devastating scene. Eve and Dinah's stories of what really happened that night contradict and intertwine. As past and present converge, only one woman can be telling the truth. Who is guilty, who innocent?
CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA from the University of East Anglia. Her debut novel, RAWBLOOD, won Best Horror Novel at the 2016 British Fantasy Awards, was shortlisted for the Author's Club Best First Novel Award and was selected as a Winter 2016 Fresh Talent title by WHSmith. RAWBLOOD is published in the US and Canada as THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD (Sourcebooks, 2017). She lives in London and Devon.
Reviews
-
This book is everything you would expect from a Catriona Ward story! Great twists and turns!
-
Me he debatido todo el libro entre seguir o dejarlo, aunque hacia la parte final mejora, para mi gusto. En general se me ha hecho un poco pesado, pero el trasfondo duro de la historia me ha parecido que merecía la pena
-
On New Year’s Day 1921 on a remote Scottish island in a circle of stones lie ritually arranged mutilated remains. Only Dinah survives and she testifies that Eve killed them all and drowned escaping. This is their story. If you like stories about cults read this, if you enjoy descriptive prose read this, if you enjoy gothic literature read this, if the wildness of the natural world enthrals you read this, if words are the seeds of your imagination plant this book in your brain. This is so rich and beautiful, such evocative and exquisite storytelling. It is a haunting and claustrophobic tale of delusion, a dark labyrinth with unexpected turns and a chilling atmosphere of fear and paranoia throughout. It is so good. Go into it blind, the synopsis is enough. This book is enchanting and devastating, I cannot wait to read it again. This goes straight into my best reads this year, 5 stars
-
Intricate, wonderfully written horror story. The plot makes you question every bit, BUT not by author withholding the information, but by reader travelling together with protagonist. At the end all bits marvelously fit together. Like a pure magic. One of my favorite horrors forever.
-
This is my third Catriona Ward novel, and I am finding them harder and harder to review. Little Eve is told end to beginning. So, you see the fallout of what happened. Then, we are shown how it happened. This plot device worked very well for this novel. I really enjoy Ward's writing style. It is very whimsical, but it is still able to capture the eeriness of the story. My biggest fault with this novel is that the chapter lengths are LONG. Now, I don't mind a long chapter here and there, but it was like trying to pack 3 years of content into one chapter. So, while time is a concept, it got lost along the way. After finding Little Eve, I'm still unsure how to collect my thoughts. I'm feel like this is Ward's style.