Product Description

'Eden - it's where your life began, Madeleine. It's a place where the current of life runs stronger than anywhere else. In Eden the sun shines more fiercely, the rain strikes harder, and the trees are so green that it hurts your eyes. Eden is beauty and ugliness and joy and madness and decay. Beneath the great old silk-cotton tree, where the orchids and lianas hang right down to the ground, and the fireflies glitter like spangles from dusk till dawn...'Madeleine is left to bring up her younger sister in a remote cottage on the west coast of Scotland after her mother, Rose, has died in childbirth. Tainted by the discovery that she is illegitlmate, Madeleine is plunged into poverty in London before marrying out of desperation a wealthy cousin of her father's, who does not know her true identity. And thus she comes to live at the old family estate of Eden in the hills of Jamaica, often talked about by her mother - a beautiful, decaying house with its overgrown garden, lush sugar plantation and myriads of secrets. Rose had loved Eden more than anything, and now Madeleine has to take her place there.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23626 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From the Back Cover
EDEN. In the depths of the lush Jamaican forest stands a ruined house of haunting beauty - the last remains of a great estate founded on slavery. Abandoned for decades, it still casts its spell down the generations. A place of dreams, magic and madness.

Worlds away, ten-year-old Madeleine's untroubled Scottish childhood is cut short by a fateful encounter with the handsome, disenchanted Cameron Lawe. Left alone to raise her new-born sister Sophie, growing up an outcast in Victorian London, she seizes her chance to escape and returns to the decaying Jamaican plantation where she was conceived. There she finds a people haunted by a savage legacy; a family torn apart by obsession and betrayal; but there too she finds Eden - where she must finally confront the shadows of her past.

About the Author
Michelle Paver was born in Malawi; her father was South African and her mother is Belgian. They moved to England when she was small and she was brought up in Wimbledon, where she still lives. After gaining a first in biochemistry at Oxford she became a lawyer and was until recently a partner of a large City law firm, specialising in patent litigation. She has now given up the law to write full-time. She is the author of Without Charity, A Place in the Hills and The Shadow Catcher, all published by Corgi.

Customer Reviews

highly enjoyable - if not Wolf Brother!
I read this, and The View From the Hills, because I loved Paver's children's novel so much. It's good - several cuts above the usual historical fiction, closest in feel to early Susan Howatch. The plot grips you from the first page, and the characters are sympathetic if predictable. Madeleine, the heroine, is first seen as a terrified but resourceful child helping her abandoned mother Rose give birth alone in a freezing house to the little sister she didn't want. Both are illegitimate, and when Rose dies in childbrith this is a huge stain on them as Victorian girls left without means and at the mercy of a grim relation. It isn't until Madeline enters into a hopeless marriage with a cousin and man of the cloth that she returns to Jamaica, and the plot really hots up with witchcraft, attempted murder and more. What is especially enjoyable is Paver's feeling for place, and for the exotic flora and fauna of the island as well as its inhabitants. It's this side which she developed in her marvellous forest of Bronze Age man...A most interesting imagination if a bit too predictable as far as adults are concerned. By far the best writing in the book comes right at the start, with Madeline's snowy ride through the forbidden grounds of a nearby forest.

A good read
I must admit to having read her children's books, which I found a refreshing delight. I am a real fan of historical novels, although set in the 19th Century with the background of slavery in the immediate past and its aftermath - this is more of a romance in the 'Thornbirds Tradition' with the taboos of adultery and family pride causing the grief. It did keep me turning the pages and wanting to read the subsequent books in the trilogy.

Can't Wait for the Next Book!
I have now read all three books by this author and have been utterly spellbound by all of them. This book takes us from the well travelled roads of Victorian London to the hot tropical climate of Jamaica. Although the outcome of the book is fairly obvious from the word go, this does not detract in any way from the power of the narrative and prose. It was an utter joy to read and I can't wait for the next book.

Well done Michelle - keep the new books coming.