My second read from the Booker Prize longlist left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t because of the writing – Paul Harding writes beautifully and with a concise purpose (albeit with a tone that reminds me of works that want to appear smarter and more literary at the sake of losing the actual story-telling aspect), and This Other Eden (W.W. Norton 2023) is a slim novel with pretty words and an intriguing storyline. But that storyline is based on actual events and actual people, and the storyline Harding runs with is the exaggerated and provocative rumors and blatant lies that resulted in the complete destruction of a community.
Harding’s Apple Island is “inspired by” Malaga Island and the mixed-race community that called it home for over a hundred years. His Benjamin Honey is clearly Benjamin Darling, a former slave who married an Irish woman. On Apple Island, Blacks, whites, and Indigenous folks live, love, and work side by side. That was true of Malaga Island as well.
History tells us that the people of Maine were horrified over Malaga Island because it was a mixed-race community, and the mixing of races was “unnatural.” Articles were published about the depravity of the community, making wild allegations of incest and people living wild and in squalor and sin. This just wasn’t true, and studies from Malaga show that the inhabitants lived pretty much the same as those on the mainland; they were hardworking and poor, but their community was only a “blight” because of the mixed-race element. But Harding runs with the incest and the squalor as if it were true.
Now Harding does capture the sense of community regardless of race and the love they all share for each other, but he paints them with the same brush with its false bristles that was used by the government to have them removed from the island in the first place.
The truth of the matter is that the government and many of the people in Maine did not approve of a mixed race community, wanted the island cleared of this community so that it could be owned by the State and used for tourism purposes, that several members of the island were involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital and were likely sterilized through a eugenics program, (being poor and mixed race means that weren’t worthy of breeding), that several other members of the community were rejected from mainland communities because of their heritage and they just floated around, that Malagite became a racial slur, and that the State finally “apologized” for their actions in 2010. Harding hits on some of the truth, but it rings hollow.
Based on other reviews, I’m pretty much alone in my dislike of this novel. But I do not recommend it, and I am disappointed it was longlisted.
Booker count: 2 of 13
PS. The dogs die. ****One of the 2023 judges is a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve decided to keep track of the novels that name drop Willy Shakespeare. This is the second one that does.
A Girl Named Tommi 