The Garden is Ms. Aidinoff's story of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. The story and characters are told from a decidedly different perspective than the reader might be familiar with. Eve is caring, intelligent, curious, talented and just plain lovely. Adam is good with his hands, slightly vacant, and almost incapable of introspection. God is an exaggerated version of Adam with the difference that Adam's puppy-like likeability is absent in God. God also has the added characteristics of cruelty, shallowness, empathy stripping ego and virtually no redeeming qualities. The Serpent is wisdom, justice and knowledge. He is everything God is not. (Guess who raises whom in the garden.)
My problem with the book (setting aside my personal beliefs) is my problem with most sitcoms of the day. There seems to the need to make the male character as dim and bumbling as possible, short of making him an actual monkey, in order to highlight the strength of the woman. I don't see the necessity. It's insulting to the man and, frankly, makes the woman more than a little stupid for picking such an obviously inept and buffoonish man.
The story goes to such pains to make God the bad guy and the Serpent the good guy that it gets a bit tiresome. Not to mention the unforgiveable thing that God does, but that somehow becomes okay when the Serpent does it. Apparently the ends do justify the means.
I like strong characters, male and female alike. Characters of either sex that can only be strong at the expense of the opposite sex are not strongly written characters they are naggingly told perspectives. I prefer strongly written.
Overall Opinion:
Since we're taking a page from the book and going with obvious overtelling, I didn't like the book.
Rating:
Doesn't Even Make the Scale
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