A novel about reading, writing, desire and the imagination, told through three intertwining voices.
Ernest Hemingway struggles to write through an extended period of ill-health and instability. The antagonist of his novel, Catherine, attempts to break free from the confines of her fictional world. Decades later, Modernist scholar Penelope becomes obsessed with Hemingway’s book and the young student she shares it with.
'Superbly voiced... one of the best novels of the year.' Jude Cook, Literary Review 'Overall has done something radical and new here, like a melding of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths.’ Violet Hudson, Times Literary Supplement 'A shimmering exploration of sexual obsession, intimacy and the imagination. Sonia Overall dissects love, desire and betrayal with creative daring and tender guile.’ Rebecca Abrams, Touching Distance ‘A beautifully crafted novel, as rich in ideas as in human drama, Eden is both a meditation on and a compelling instance of the story-telling art.’ Josh Cohen, How to Live. What to Do. How Great Novels Help Us Change. ‘An intriguing and ambitious puzzle box of a novel about nothing less than what it is to write, to read and to be read, and one that will stay with me long after closing the final page.’ Wyl Menmuir, The Many, Fox Fires ‘A stylish, subtle and playful novel which investigates how novels, and the ideas they contain, reverberate through disparate lives and cross the boundaries of time and physical space.’ Alice Jolly, Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile ‘In a braid of three startling, elegant narratives, Eden confronts the limits of desire, agency, and freedom. Sonia Overall’s novel fearlessly breaks Hemingway open and forms him anew.’ Isobel Wohl, Cold New Climate ‘A novel that knows its subject. The Hemingway segments seem to emanate from the writer himself. You can almost feel the scratch of his pencil on the page.’ Danny Rhodes, FAN
Weatherglass Books, July 2022
Listen to Sonia’s interview with book podcast Across the Pond