Adam & Eve: A Novel

Adam & Eve is unlike anything else I've ever read. Part thriller, part exploration of biblical themes, this is a story that I at first thought would be very close to some other books I have already read. (Dan Brown perhaps?) However when I dove into the story, I was instantly blown away by the beautiful writing style and the metaphors on each and every page. Sena Jeter Naslaund doesn't just write the story for the reader, she shows it.

Let me go back a bit and explain. The first half (to about 2/3) of the book is dedicated to Lucy and Adam's stories. Lucy's husband was a world renowned astrophysicist who met an untimely death. It's not certain whether this was pure accident, but all Lucy knows is that she is now the sole keeper of files that have the ability to overthrow thinking as we know it. Intriguing, am I right? Then we meet Adam. A soldier who has been dumped in the middle of the desert, Adam believes that he is the Adam from biblical times. Out there alone, in his tiny Eden oasis, he believes he is the beginning of the world. The first man to ever have been made. In fact, he's a poor man who has been beaten half to death, but it's a fascinating parallel.

As these two characters meet and interact, I was smitten with the way the story progressed. There are lovely allusions to the story of Adam & Eve, along with topics that make you think beyond that. Basically the entire book is a battle between the idea of creationism, and scientific study. It definitely gets a little heavy handed at times, but I was able to loose myself in the overall story. That is, until the end. Once the first half of the book is over and these characters are ripped from their Eden, things were tough to follow. The already slightly overbearing topics of religion and science were even more apparent, and I didn't feel like following anymore. To be honest, I almost didn't even finish the book.

If I'm being honest, I'm not at all certain how I feel about Adam & Eve. The first half of the book held my attention beautifully, while the second half just descended into confusion for me. Therein lies the problem. I wasn't sure how to rate a book that I loved for half of it. So, I chose this rating. I hope this review accurately explains my views, even though I'm not 100% sure of them myself! If you pick this up to give it a try yourself, let me know what you think!

**Full Disclosure: I received this book free of charge at a publisher's book event at ALA Annual Conference**Lucy watches as her husband Thom is crushed and killed by a suspended piano. That morning Thom had told her he had discovered extraterrestrial life and gave her his thumb drive with all his research. Unsure what to do now that Thom is dead, Lucy attends a symposium in his name a few years later. There she meets Pierre Saad an anthropologist genuinely interested in her well-being more than Thom's research.A few weeks later while traveling around Egypt, Lucy runs into Pierre and his daughter Arielle. They ask her to smuggle a new codex for the book of Genesis out of the country. Lucy agrees and flies out of Egypt on a small plane. A few hours into the flight she loses control of the place and crashes. She's not sure where she is but is helped to safety, after being badly burned during the crash, by a naked man named Adam.It turns out they are in a modern day "Eden" between multiple war zones in the Middle East. Lucy nurses herself back to health and learns to accept her nudeness as well. Adam doesn't know how long he's been there and he shares how he was raped and left on the side of the road in Iraq. Lucy & Adam learn to trust each other and provide for themselves. They help a pilot who crashes in Eden and search for the codex that Lucy threw out of the place before she crashed.Certain events finally cause them to leave Eden and return the codex to Pierre. At the airport they run into "the bad guys" Perpetuity and somehow escape them. Before escaping Lucy finally gets to see again what is on the memory stick that Thom left her that day. She finds out that he loved other "Lucys" and not just her.Adam and Lucy eventually make it back to Pierre & Arielle safely. The four dive into translating and figuring out the codex. They explore the underground caves under Pierre's house. The bad guys eventually show up and try to take the codex from them but they escape but not without injury.This book was not what I expected after reading the brief synopsis. I thought there would be more science versus religion questioning. But I felt the major theme was more philosophy driven. At times I was confused how the next chapter related to the next. The whole book was set in 2020-2021. I think the premise of the book is interesting but the action of the plot kinda stopped three-quarters of the way through the book. Also parts of the plot were very sparsely described. The author tries to generate a DaVinci Code drama with the Perpetuity group but those chapters were hard to read and link to the other chapters.

This is an odd and fairly wonderful book. I think it is the best Naslund has done since "Ahab's wife," which I considered unabashedly brilliant. This book shines in many ways, multiple rivulets flashing from a clay jar fountain in the desert. There are creepy plot threads of murder and betrayal which work their way through the stories, and provide a ground. Eve's husband killed by a falling piano; the perrenial watchers and schemers in the background. The pursuit through a world of cave paintings, the underground womb of our people. Hitchcock meets the Golden Bough.Although the plot line could be compelling, dealing with both the discovery of a new Genesis (or text explaining the origin of Genesis); the discovery of life on other worlds or extraterrestrial systems, and efforts by fundamentalists to suppress same, somehow the plot is almost irrelevant and less interesting than the major characters and their series of beginnings and re-beginnings. Like the waves of the sea each beginning throws up its flotsam on the beach, highly decorative and involving and then subsuming inexorably into a new beginning. Adam, with experience corrupting his innocence; Eve, with the utility of her experience compromised by her intrinsic innocence. Eve (or Lucy, an excellent conceit) with the generosity of the Jewish mother who can forgive her dead husband his affairs with "all the Lucys in the world," but carries her husband's thoughts on an albatross of a computer memory stick; who can cope with the mentally ill Adam and his three faces, including the primitive force of male violence that brings testosterone poisoning and murder to their little matriarchal society, their Eden; who can in the end give Adam away, conviently to someone who can support his multiple needs and childlike nature.The writing so beautiful that one does not care until it ends, with new waves about to surge with new life, leaving memory fragments, the dust of bones, scattered in the sand.

This is what you should know: Adam & Eve is a book most people won’t like. If you’re picking it up thinking it will be a fictional retelling about the first Adam and Eve, correct your thinking. This story is set in the very near future, in the year 2020. Lucy Bergmann is a recent widow, who carries evidence for two amazing discoveries: the existence of extraterrestrial life, and newly discovered ancient documents exploring the origins of man. There are those who want to suppress the release of this information, and Lucy is commissioned to secretly fly her precious cargo out of Egypt to the safety of France. Instead, Lucy crash lands in a near-mythical Eden-like oasis, and discovers another inhabitant: the unstable former American soldier, Adam. What follows is an exploration of origins – what are the most basic elements of humanity. Naslund’s story is unusual and dreamlike; suspiciously providential and strange. When I started reading it, I thought, Ugh. This is going to be a chore. Yet, I found myself thinking about it a lot, longing to pick it up again and find out what would happen. In contradiction to most reviewers, I found I quite enjoyed it.Adam & Eve is about beginnings. It is about the big picture of who we are as humans. It is about what makes us special, set apart from animals. However, it is less about “faith versus science”, though that question is certainly posed, than about the tension between spirituality and rationality. Naslund opens a lot of cans of worms. She pokes at fundamentalism, but doesn’t necessarily disparage belief in God. She suggests that the first sacred texts of humanity originate not with Genesis, but with parietal art, that is, cave paintings from tens of thousands of years ago. Both her characters and readers are gently nudged to grasp the bigger picture of the story of humanity. We don’t know everything, she seems to suggest, but we will continue to learn, and that will change how we view ourselves, our history, and our religions, but that this is okay – the fear of doing so is perhaps the greatest of mankind’s failings. What she argues is that most of us have a limited view of ourselves. Yet, having opened the door to dialogue, she doesn’t provide much more of an answer to the age-old questions other than to suggest that people really haven’t changed that much from the beginning of time: we strive to live and love; we kill, we fear; we dance and we die. This open-ended nature of the book will frustrate many readers. So will Naslund’s refusal to try and make profound scientifically and theologically-based arguments. This is a metaphysical meditation.Readers will be looking for Naslund’s own ultimate conclusions about the questions her story raises. However, Naslund’s references to belief in a Higher Being are ambivalent, and yet looking at the unfolding of her narrative, there seems to be Providential/Authorial suggestions. She is content to let the questions stand. Perhaps there is the underlying belief that there is a certain kind of arrogance in “having the answers”; she, and later her characters, are content to live in the mystery of the uncertain and unknown.Surely, there are parts of this book that are downright silly and improbable. For example: as much as Perpetuity seems to know about the secret existence of the codex and Thom Bergmann’s discovery of extraterrestrial life, they take an inexplicably long time to track Lucy, and later Pierre, down. And if they are that “connected”, why don’t they have the police in their pockets? And what is this “Eden” where Lucy and Adam find themselves? It seems to be a sort of cultivated oasis and wildlife preserve that is abandoned, probably because of the war, but is never fully explained. There are many unanswered questions and it seems clear to me that Naslund was very intentional about this. There is a great deal of ambiguity in life, and many people are reluctant to live in the tension of “not knowing”. This willingness of Naslund to take the reader there demonstrates to me what is most frustrating and wonderful about this book.Naslund does not presume to provide any ultimate answer about human origins. But she paints a picture spanning from tens of thousands of years in the past to the suggestion of what wonders lie ahead in the future. Ultimately, I really liked this book. The parts that I thought were the unlikeliest, were strangely resonant and evocative. That said, I don’t think this is a novel that will be easy to stomach for most people.

I had tried to read this book once before when I received it last year and couldn't get into it. I thought maybe it was the timing and that I just wasn't ready to read that type of book right then so I set it aside to read at another time. That time was last week and much to my dismay it wasn't the timing. It really was the book. It starts off interesting enough with Lucy Bergmann's husband dying a tragic death by falling piano (yes, seriously). He leaves her with a thumb drive that contains proof of life on other planets. Some time after her husband's death Lucy is invited to speak at a conference in his honor. She realizes she is still very grief stricken over his untimely demise and while there is contacted by a man who asks her to smuggle an ancient codex giving an alternative version of Genesis out of Egypt. Lucy agrees but when she is flying over Mesopotamia her plane goes down in a lush area that resembles the garden of Eden. There she meets Adam a soldier who has gone slightly mad and actually thinks he is Adam from the Bible.Ok now onto the problems I had with this book (and there are many):1. This book is set about ten years in the future (2017-2020). Is there any reason for this that I could discern while reading the book? No. All the things that occurred in the book could have occurred in the present with no alteration of the story at all.2. The whole reason Lucy is asked to carry the Codex out of Egypt? Well, because she was there and therefore convenient. Apparently no one else in the entire country of Egypt could be found to accomplish this. It must be Lucy. Conveniently enough, she is a pilot as is Arielle, the daughter of the man asking her to undertake this dangerous mission. They must be handing out pilot's licenses like greeting cards ten years into the future.3. The alternate version of Genesis (the Codex) is supposed to rock the three major world religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) to the core. Why? I couldn't really figure out why. The information contained on the flash drive is also supposed to make major life as we know it altering waves. Why? Couldn't figure that out either because it is only vaguely discussed and no clear explanation is given. You would think that since these two items are supposed to cause changes of epic proportions there would be some urgency to the whole matter. The book never really built up any kind of suspense except maybe for one scene. 4. The "Garden of Eden". I understand after surviving a plane crash, Lucy wasn't in the greatest of shape. What is her first course of action upon crashing? To seek out the naked man she saw lying by the river for help. Yeah. That is exactly what I would do if I were injured, I was carrying important historical documents, and my clothes had burned off in the crash-seek out the naked man lying in the mud who may or may not be a homicidal maniac. I'll just have to take my chances that he's not I guess. Also-Adam is dumped off here. Lucy crashes here. Another soldier ends up crashing here. What is this place? The Bermuda Triangle of the Middle East?5. The whole ending for the thumb drive/codex with information that may change the world-completely lackluster. I didn't like the ending at all or the way what little love story the author had going ended up. Didn't like it at all. I found the ending really bizarre.There are a few good parts in this book. I actually enjoyed the parts that were set in "Eden" where Lucy and Adam were helping each other recover. Adam has a child like quality about him that is very endearing and I liked how the two main characters related to each other. Unfortunately, that is about all I liked. As for the writing itself, Naslund writes beautifully but the way the story would focus on Lucy for a chapter then jump to Adam without any kind of transition was a little too spastic for me. I really enjoyed Abundance, her book about Marie Antoinette. I have also heard from several who have liked Ahab's Wife so I will not be giving up on this author. I think this was definitely a miss though.

An interesting read, its not usually a topic I opt for. This was a selection from Early Reviewers, so I think I chose it to branch out of my comfort zone a little. I loved Naslund's Abundance and was hoping for more of the same feel with this book, but it seems that Adam & Eve just had a lot of different complex layers to get through.

Hours before his untimely and suspicious death, world-renowned astrophysicist, Thom Bergmann shares his diswcovery of exrtaterrestial life with his wife, Lucy.. Thom entrusts Lucy with his flash drive, which holds the keys to his secret work. Lucy keeps the secret but is then asked by THom,s friendm anthroopologist Pierre Saad to smuggle a newly discovered artifact out of Egypt.

Like others I was intrigued by the premise, and I agree the author writes beautifully. There were also some interesting ideas, but they were handled very poorly. (1) How does a physicist determine the existence of 'biomolecules' from thousands of light-years away? What is a 'biomolecule' anyway? (2) What reason is there to think that the presence of 'biomolecules' actually means there are living beings on other planets? What if those 'aliens' are like bacteria or yeast or something? do we still have to feel intimidated because we're not as special as we thought?(3) Why was Lucy willing to risk her life over a religious text? one that she's not at all curious about? and also, she's not religious - why would she care at all?(4) This book was a love letter to the patriarchy. The book is actually about men, despite the 'Eve' in the title. Major and minor male characters (n>=10) get their own chapters, while in the chapters supposedly about the (2) women, they are either talking and thinking constantly about the men, or the chapter actually redirects to being about the men. (5) Pierre a little too obsessed with how much his daughter resembles his dead wife. (6) Why have the subplot with F. Riley, or the 'monkey boy'? (7) The codex, as written about, was barely interesting. You want to knock people's socks off? Try finding scripture saying Jesus was a woman; Jesus married 3 wives, and had 10 kids; half the apostles were women; Jesus was an alien from another planet. You know, something actually surprising.

Lucy Bergman was married to Thom, a brilliant astrophysicist who quietly made an important discovery concerning extraterrestrial life. Thom kept all his greatest secrets on a flash drive, which he attached to a cord and affectionately hung on Lucy's neck. She considered it an act of faith and trust that he wanted her to carry his most cherished possession.This story is set in the near future, when fundamentalists from three major religions have grown dangerously defensive about any scientific discoveries that could possibly raise questions about their most basic beliefs. From this fear, a group called Perpetuity is formed, which ironically requires men from these disparate groups to actually cooperate to prevent science from getting in the way of a good rapture.Unfortunately, one day as Lucy is racing to meet Thom at the hotel where he is to make one of his presentations (she has his memory stick, remember), she witnesses his death: a grand piano, which is being hoisted into a window several stories up suddenly crashes to the ground and lands on top of him. This turns out to be a rather, um, orchestrated death. Certainly an unusual one.Meanwhile, a man named Pierre Saad (of French and Egyptian ancestry), has made an archaeological discovery concerning the writing of Genesis (the genesis of Genesis). He is eager to find someone to smuggle this ancient document out of Egypt into France, where he won't be so closely watched by members of Perpetuity. A few years after Thom's death, he catches up to Lucy, who just happens to be a pilot. Pierre is smooth and charming, while Lucy is still depressed and at loose ends, so she agrees to pilot a plane and smuggle this codex out of Egypt in a very well sealed French horn case.At this point, this particular reader is having some problems with this plot. Lucy knows that she's just taking Pierre's word that there's no dope or weapons involved, even though she barely knows him. And, when she leaves, there's no mention of a flight plan or that she has permission to just fly from Egypt to France.Lucy crashes. I don't know why; it's not explained. Before she hits the ground, though, she throws out the precious French horn case, so it won't burn up. Obviously, Lucy the atheist (I forgot to mention that she's an atheist) must be a real believer in whatever is in this case. I do understand why she'd be sympathetic to Saad's quest, since her late husband was also a scientist who guarded his work and was careful about how he presented it, but somehow it seems superhuman to be thinking about Saad's cargo while her life is in peril.After Lucy lands, she manages to drag herself to a beachy shore, despite some severe pain from the burns on her back. At this point, she doesn't know where she is and does not understand why there's a beach here or the appearance of redwood trees surrounding this place. Redwood trees in the Middle East! I was beginning to be reminded of Life of Pi, for indeed, Lucy has landed in a mysterious place and is rescued by a man named Adam who wants to call her Eve. He has been praying to God for a companion, and her she is! In fact,everything they need seems to just materialize. The weather is also perfect, which is a good thing because they're both naked.This is the segment of the book I found most intriguing, simply because of Adam. How did he get there? Well, he does remember being thrown off a truck. Not just that, but being beaten and raped and then thrown off the truck. Adam tries to describe how his life was saved by a strange boy who fed him and gave him water as he lay baking in the dirt. He was a soldier in a Middle Eastern war, but we don't learn what else he saw or had done to him during his tour of duty. Adam is usually here now, living in the moment, but he occasionally fills us in a little bit: his father was a tyrant, he had several younger brothers, and he was no angel. He dropped out of college and he has artistic ability. And major issues. However, living in the moment, Adam is amazingly resourceful, clever, and functional. He's even happy, when thoughts of the past don't cloud his vision.Then, one day, there's another crash, and a soldier parachutes from the sky and becomes tangled up and caught in one of the redwoods. Adam finds a way to get him out, and so a third character, Riley, enters the scene. Suddenly, Lucy feels naked and fashions herself an orange outfit from Riley's parachute, complete with bubble hem and puffy sleeves. Riley's a nice young man, and Lucy observes how Adam becomes a little more normal around him. Unfortunately, Riley is murdered by a wild child, a feral boy who inhabits this land, and after that, Eden is no longer the same. This boy has sacrificed a lamb, and suddenly, the animals around them are no longer a peaceable kingdom.It is at this point that Adam confesses that he has the French horn case that Lucy's been searching for. He hid it because he didn't want her to leave, but now they must go, and they do. It is around this point in time that Adam and Lucy become lovers. Adam has expressed the hope that she would be his wife, and stated that he'd always feel this way, but it takes awhile for Lucy to see him as anything other than a younger man afflicted with delusions.It is an arduous journey on foot, quite a contrast to their easy life in Eden (for lack of another name). When they come across an airstrip in the middle of nowhere, Lucy immediately decides to go looking for help. Coincidentally, a plane lands and who should appear but Gabriel Plum, an old friend she knew because he was a colleague of Thom's. Gabriel is no angel, though, and after running to Gabriel and greeting him, she realizes that this is no coincidence--Gabriel wants that memory stick. And the other two men in the plane? They are wearing sterotypical costumes that label them as Jewish and Muslim. Lucy knows tht Gabriel is a devout Christian. Right away, she knows she's being hounded by Perpetuity. Adam, who's been listening, suddenly yells, "Run!" Which she does, making a bee line for the plane. Adam quickly overpowers these three older men and joins her.So, Lucy and Adam fly out of the greater Bagdad area to France with the precious Codex, but first, before they go to visit Pierre Saad, they go shopping with Gabriel's money (he left his wallet in the plane), so they can show up looking quite fashionable.Pierre Saad's place in Paris, which he is sharing with his daughter Arielle, is another kind of Eden, and underneath this wonderful house of his is a series of caves with artwork dating back thousands of years. Pretty cool. After he shows his guests this secret of his, Pierre sits down to do some serious translating. In a couple days, he calls his three companions together to read the precious codex, and when he finished, I thought--is that all there is? Is that all there is to the codex?After that, there is another chase scene in which Gabriel and his two nameless friends show up at Pierre's house and chase them all through the caves. They separate and meet up on the other side, except for Adam, who has been shot in the ankle and is bleeding very badly. Don't worry, his friends do find him, but the details are sketchy.It all ends very happily for the four friends. Adam marries Arielle (he changed his mind about Lucy), and Lucy is happy with Pierre. Arielle and Lucy are both pregnant, possibly by the same guy, but that's okay; Lucy and Pierre care not who the father is.It all ends a bit muddled for me. I am left wondering many things: could Thom really have been the only astrophysicist in the world to have made his discovery, even though years have passed since his death? And we never do find out exactly what is and what isn't on that memory stick. Was this Eden place all a dream? How much of it was real? Was the translation of the codex ever published, and if so, what was its impact? In the end, how is Adam--really? Are they ever terrorized by Perpetuity again? They seemed strangely impotent; if they were a real threat, they'd have obtained anything they'd wanted from a single, unarmed woman long ago.Lucy does intend to seek out the right people to examine Thom's memory stick, but that is sometime in the future. For now, though, this is a happy foursome.Obviously, I didn't much like this novel. Naslund's writing style is very nice, but I'm afraid that this story was just--silly. It's quite a departure from her earlier historical novels, such as Ahab's Wife and Four Spirits, and it seems that she was out of her element this time.

I intentionally waited a few days between finishing Adam and Eve and writing this review so that I could be as objective as possible. Indeed, I hoped that waiting a few days would help me appreciate this novel as I had with other books by Sena Jeter Naslund. Despite the distance in time, I am still left with a general feeling of disappointment in Naslund's newest effort. Adam and Eve kept my interest, much like watching the aftermath of an accident. I shouldn't look (or read, in this case), but I kept doing it. Why? I chalk it up to two reasons: (1) A hope that the story would get better; and (2) Wondering if the story could get any weirder. At least the latter came true.Lucy was the widow of a man who found scientific evidence about alien life forms. She accepts an offer to smuggle ancient and controversial texts out of Egypt to France. Little did she realize that a group called Ingenuity was after her and the texts. Her plane crashes in an Eden-like place already inhabited by a deranged American soldier who conveniently was named Adam. He takes care of Lucy and eventually helps her finish her mission.Blech. I can't even make the summary sound tantalizing.Perhaps Naslund was flexing her creative muscles with this story, but I think she strayed from her talent as a historic storyteller. Leave the religious texts, alien theories and love stories to Dan Brown, Mary Doria Russell and Nicholas Sparks, and go back to what you excel at - writing beautiful historic novels.

Sena Jeter Nashlund is a wonderful writer. However, I had difficulty reading her latest novel, "Adam and Eve". She seemed to struggle with coherency and had difficulty interpreting her own meaning. She was dealing with complex subject matter - theological and philosophical contrasts, love, war and human nature - worthy of pursuit. However, all of the characters were so implausible, it felt ridiculous coming from such a, usually, profound and beautiful writer. It felt more like a Dan Brown, "Da Vinci Code" novel then one written by Nashlund.

In 2017, Lucy Bergmann is walking to meet her husband for lunch when right before her, a piano that was being hoisted up a window falls and kills him. She is traumatized and floats around in grief for about three years. In 2020 she is invited to speak at an event honoring her husband and while on this trip she meets a scientist who was also acquainted with her husband. He asks her to transport a scroll that is of great importance to the world because its revelations will forever alter the three major monotheistic religions forever. For some mysterious reason, Lucy agrees and pilots a plane from Egypt to Paris. Unfortunately, her plane goes down somewhere in the Mesopotamian forest and here she meets a naked man (drop dead gorgeous of course) who is also marooned in the same forest. This gorgeous naked man is named Adam and they set up their version of the garden of Eden. Yep...you read that right, its Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. And just as they are getting comfortable in their home, they find themselves running from killers who want to destroy the scroll that Lucy had set out to deliver. I am not even sure what happened here. I was really excited to read this book but even a day later, I am still in disbelief as to how much this book fell through. The characters are caricatures of real people running around spouting theological tenets that feel more like the author staging her ideas. In addition to all of this, the book is not sure what it is. Is it an anti religious tract, thriller, romance, or all of these and more? Personally I could not tell you because even after 335 pages, I was left with little in the way of insight. I guess it was all some great metaphor that I did not get. *Review Copy provided by Harper Collins publishers.

A total surprise. Having read Naslund's Abundance last I assumed this was historical.. Although it proved to be totally the opposite, I was not disappointed. It was marvelous! Naslund created a well-researched, well-crafted novel that touched on spirituality, art history, humanism, and science. Next on my list is Ahab's Wife. (I know I'm late in the game to this one, but better late than never!)

I was disappointed in this book and seem to be batting .500 with Ms. Naslund. I LOVED Ahab's wife and enjoyed the Marie Antoinette book. I abandoned 4 Spirits, which is very rare for me. I found myself really working to get through this book, especially after they returned from Eden. I did enjoy the Eden portion of the book until its gruesome ending. The motivation of the characters was very hard to find. I did want to know more about Adam but am seriously glad the book wasn't longer! I found the whole concept of the book very interesting, especially the link between extraterrestrial life and a Genesis, but feel the author really failed to deliver.

I've admired Naslund's writing since I first ran across Ahab's Wife. Her prose style is consistently elegant and intelligent. In that way, Adam and Even does not disappoint. The first chapter in particular is beautifully written. There are sections throughout the book that are lovely to read. A feast for the reader. However, as a coherently plotted novel, I found it problematic.The reason for this is that Adam and Eve is a message book. And message books are very difficult to write successfully. It's difficult to draw three dimensional characters when you must also concentrate on your message. Also, the style of the novel often times runs into "thriller" territory. However, the pacing is all wrong for a thriller. It simply doesn't hold up. You can have cardboard characters in a thriller because we don't have time to realize how unrealistic they are. In Adam and Eve, we have plenty of time to realize that the villains and heroes of this piece are unbelievable, and are doing things that really, they simply would not do. For example, I was never convinced the villains, if they were true villains, would pile into a plane to hunt down the protagonists themselves. How foolish! No, they'd use their vast resources to hire capable mercenaries to do the job, and do it right. It became too difficult for me to believe Lucy, or Adam, or certainly Pierre could possibly be or do the things they were doing. The action scenes were poorly drawn and impossible for me to visualize. The discussions, while lengthy and intended to be interesting, showed a lack of knowledge on the part of the characters about what they were talking about. The fact that Naslund's codex seemed so completely out of step with the time in which it was written in threw me out of the book entirely. A little more research seemed needed.The secondary plot of alien life struck me as unnecessary. It didn't add anything to the plot. That theme was never integrated into the codex, so it was never clear to me why it mattered. It seemed a waste of time. Lucy couldn't do anything with it. Pierre didn't care.I don't know why anyone did.Overall, there were simply too many things that weren't convincing to me, or seemed to have no purpose. Maybe I know too much for this book. Maybe I live in a place were these issues are so completely non-issues, the message lacks urgency to me. I hope to read Naslund's next book, and that she will return to a topic that is more personal to her, since that is where I believe she truly shines.

Adam and Eve is set just a few years in the future where we meet Lucy Bregmann, happily married to Thom, an astrophysicist who may have discovered life elsewhere in the universe. He is tragically killed (murdered?) and she is left only with a flash drive of his last report. The report that may or may not show where that life is.In Egypt Pierre Saad stumbles upon a lost codex with the thoughts of a pre-Biblical man on the origins of Genesis. He needs to get it out of Egypt and translate it.Lucy is attending a conference honoring Thom and there Pierre asks her to fly the codex to France where he lives. As she is cruising the plane starts to fail and she crash lands in a large oasis where she finds Adam; a somewhat delusional US soldier who had been captured, tortured and dumped in the desert to die.Adam thinks he is ADAM, the first man and that he talks to God. He thinks Lucy is Eve and that they are in Eden. He has flashes of lucidity but it's not until they decide to leave Eden that he stays on the right side of sanity for long periods.After reading the synopsis I couldn't wait to begin this book. I was excited at the prospect of delving into a Bible-bending suspense thriller. I am sorry to say that the book didn't live up to its description. Ms. Naslund's way with words IS magical; her descriptions of Adam and Lucy's Eden bring to mind a truly perfect place to live. The way she describes the cave paintings in France brought them completely to life for me. I just wish the story had been as complete. I was drawn in immediately. The first half to two thirds of the book is very good, it started to fall apart for me when another soldier parachuted into Eden, hurt after his plane was damaged. There is minimal explanation for the continuing war. Why was no one sent to find this soldier? Why was no one sent to find Lucy for that matter or Adam? It just makes no earthly sense.Then the mysterious "bad guys" - they are not at all fleshed out. They zoom in and out with no real purpose other than to "get" the codex and the flash drive. I really think that an excellent book was lost in the midst of a philosophical debate over where we came from. It all could have been included but in trying to appease all no one is satisfied.Or maybe I am just too literal and it went over my head. I don't know. I am not sorry I read it but I am sorry it was not what I wanted it to be.

Pushes the limits a bit, but interesting.

Oh, my, there are so many layers to this book I don't even know where to start. It's a love story. It's an adventure story. It's a mystery. It's psychological suspense. It's a thriller. It's magical. It's gritty. It's about religion. It's about science. It's about the past. It's about the future. There is art. There is murder. There is profound innocence. There is evil. It is a compelling, confusing, contemplative, page-turning, wondrous read.

I'm still not sure what to make of "Adam & Eve" by Sena Jeter Naslund. It was an enjoyable read ... I enjoy Naslund's writing style and thought that the various storylines and back stories were written well. At the same time, however, the stories themselves were a bit convoluted. I liked the way it started out ... with Lucy protecting her husband's proof of extraterrestrial life in the universe from a radical religious organization. That storyline seemed to get lost, though, in others that I didn't really care for or find plausible. Overall, it was an enjoyable read, but I guess I just didn't get it and didn't care to. Maybe I need to revisit it again at some point.

I was so excited to read this book; the title was intriguing, the synopsis was imaginative. Unfortunately, the book did not deliver. The writer's attempt to tackle religion, philosophy and science did not go well. She was unable to give enough detail to make the reader understand what she was saying and her storytelling left me bewildered and perplexed (not in a good way). Ms. Naslund's subject matter would have been better in a longer novel or a 2 book novel. All-in-all, I was disappointed.

Outlandish – there is no better word to describe the bizarre novel, Adam & Eve, by Sena Jeter Naslund. In the year 2020, Lucy Bergmann’s husband, astrophysicist Thom Bergmann, is murdered just as he is about to reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life. Lucy carries his research on a thumb drive she wears around her neck. As if that isn’t enough, Lucy also ends up in Egypt with an ancient codex that rewrites the book of Genesis. In her effort to smuggle the codex out of Egypt to France, she crash lands her plane (yes, she’s even a pilot!) in a Mesopotamian Eden. There she meets Adam, a wounded American soldier, and the two of them live an Adam & Eve existence in Eden until they flee in the face of fundamentalist forces that are trying to get the thumb drive and the codex. I gave up at that point, a little over half way through the book. This is the first time I didn’t finish an Early Reviewer book as I take my reviewing obligation seriously, but this book simply got too weird.

I'm not sure what to say about this book. The description sounded interesting so I gave it a chance (the description gave it a kind of Da Vinci Code kind of feel). It just didn't do it for me though.

A scientist discovers proof of extraterrestrial life. A discovery in the Holy Land of an ancient text that contradicts the biblical book of Genesis. A group from all three major religions that will stop at nothing to keep those secret. ...and a man (Adam) and woman (Lucy) that end up naked in a desert oasis seemingly just to have a naked man and woman in the story to give it that Adam and Eve feel.

You almost had me at first there.

To be fair, this book is not my usual genre.

The plot had an almost dream-like randomness to it. Characters seem to do things with no motivation. Seriously? A woman crash lands her plane and all her clothes burn off. Convenient for the plot. She decides to stay in the oasis with a crazy man she's never met before that thinks he's the biblical Adam? And she's okay with this? There's a feral boy that feeds sheep hearts to unconscious people. Characters show up to advance the story and then disappear or die.

There's some action in the book towards the end when the bad guys finally show up for a short chase through some caves.

My favorite character was the old mule-riding father of Pierre.

If the book had ended with Lucy waking up from a nap and realizing she was late for her lunch date with her husband, I would have believed the book more. Otherwise, it just didn't work.

IJustFinished.com provided the book for me to review.

I had such high hopes with this book but after reading it I'm very disappointed. The only part of the book I really enjoyed was the middle, the Eden story. But getting to that and then past it I felt the writing was meandering and very disconnected. Why the editors let that happen is beyond me. The writing was VERY difficult to get through, it seem as through Ms. Naslund was trying to write about something she knew nothing about. I feel reading this book was a complete waste of my time.

Because I loved "Ahab's Wife" I requested a review copy of "Adam & Eve." I also have an interest in the line between spirituality and science. This book did nothing positive for me on any level, I'm afraid. I read every word in the hope of finding *some* redeeming value, but it never came through.In "Adam & Eve," Lucy's husband, a scientist, dies, and leaves her with a "memory stick," his proof of extraterrestrials--a threat to those who believe that “Earth is God's chosen place.” Years later, an acquaintance of Lucy's husband asks her to smuggle a codex out of Egypt to him in France for transcription, but a group of religious fundamentalists, the Perpetuists, learn of her assignment and the search for her (the codex) begins. Her plane crashes, she is saved by a crazy, albeit well-built soldier, they live/heal/bond for months in Eden before they head out to find their way back to France and run into the Perpetuists, from whom they manage to steal a plane and fly off in escape. They all eventually meet again under the roof of Pierre Saad, the hopeful transcriber of the codex.The writing, while at times quite poetic and rich, felt forced too often and the characters/dialogue were not believable. The story, as presented, was far-fetched.Perhaps the strongest negative for me, however, is that I don't think I can trust anything Naslund writes and I'm not sure if I'll ever pick up anything by her again. When the author puts monarch butterflies, tiger swallowtails, crows, cardinals, garden phlox, all North American species, in Africa, even if it is "Eden," how can one trust that she knows anything about religion, the Bible, cave art, codex, or anything else? The book simply did not work for me and was quite a disappointment.Time to move on.

One of the oldest stories ever told, that of Adam and Eve, gets a unique remake of sorts in Sena Jeter Naslund's Adam & Eve.Lucy is in Amsterdam for a scientific conference with her husband Thom, an astrophysicist of renown, who tells Lucy that he has proof of extraterrestrial life. He gives Lucy a memory stick that contains all of his evidence.Thom is killed by a falling piano, and Lucy is devastated. Still grieving her loss three years later, Lucy is invited to welcome scientists to a conference in Cairo. It is too much for her, and she breaks down on stage.She meets a young woman who takes Lucy to her father, a scientist Lucy met at the conference. They convince Lucy to smuggle something out of Egypt for them- an alternate version of the book of Genesis that they have found buried.There are fundamentalist Christians, Muslim extremists and literalist Jews who have banded together to stop anyone from finding out about this discovery, even willing to kill to prevent the world from reading this other Genesis.Lucy agrees to fly a plane to France with the scripture, but her plane crashes and she is discovered by Adam, a young soldier who was kidnapped and assaulted by soldiers. Adam believes that Lucy is his Eve and that they are living in the Garden of Eden.This is a big book, full of so many themes it can make your head spin. Lucy and Adam's life in Eden parallels the Biblical story, particularly when another soldier lands in their garden. His presence dramatically changes the dynamic of the Garden. Is he the embodiment of the devilish snake from Genesis?The violence that is an everyday part of life in the Middle East is explored as a root cause of the rise of dangerous religious fundamentalism. Throw in the possibility of life on other planets and the fear of that knowledge endangering religious doctrine. Add in the discovery of very early human drawings in caves in France and you've got a lot to think about.Naslund has packed a lot of ideas into 350 pages, and her characters are well-drawn and interesting. Lucy and Adam's life in the garden is fascinating, and thriller fans will be rewarded with an action-packed sequence that resolves the story. Adam & Eve is the thinking person's answer to The DaVinci Code.

First, I would like to thank William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers for sending me this uncorrected proof. In return, I am providing an unpaid review of the book containing my personal opinions of Naslund's newest novel Adam and Eve. In her two previous novels, Ahab's Wife and Abundance, the author brought a fictional character to life - Ahab's wife (from Moby Dick) and took a real life character - Marie Antionette, into a fictional world. In her latest novel, Naslund wraps her characters around ancient religious symbols and texts - moving from Amsterdam, to Eden (somewhere in the Middle East), to France.Lucy Bergmann was in Amsterdam when her husband was killed. Shortly before his death Thom, an astrophysicist, had given Lucy his flash drive with the quip that it was the keys to the kingdom. And the kingdom included extraterrestrial life! He could prove it. At this point, I was thinking, oh brother ~ another one of these stories ~ but I persevered! And I loved this book.The book bounces back and forth in time, but is easy to follow. We meet people who are to help Lucy, like Adam who finds himself adrift from a war he never believed in - adrift in Eden. Alone until Lucy ~ his Eve ~ crashes a plane nearby. Together they look for a case Lucy was carrying ~ holding ancient biblical texts. Lucy and Adam are not the only people searching for them and the two find themselves in the center of a battle between the three main ancient religions.I was glued to this book from beginning to end. I had to hear what the ancient texts said, I had to follow Adam and Lucy in Eden, I had to know who the bad guys were, and was there a happily ever after? I hope that you will grab this book and spend some time with it. I plan to read it again as soon as I can and check out the author's previous two books as well.I found this to be a beautiful book that provoked joy and deep thinking about our place in the universe. A perfect blend of mystery, faith, and beauty.

 Lucy Bergmann has a problem. Her astrophysicist husband has just been killed, crushed to death by a grand piano while walking around in Amsterdam. His Wile E Coyote-inspired exit leaves Lucy in possession of of his just-clinched proof of extraterrestrial life (as evidenced by pulsing red dots in a computer program, apparently) on a flash drive (no backups, but of course). Lucy adopts the weird obsession of wearing this 'memory stick' like a talismanic necklace. Ah. And this is just the first chapter.Then, in whirlwind jags, we're suddenly in Egypt, and Lucy is in the thick of some sort of intrigue that involves a purported ancient manuscript which brings into dispute the authorship of the Book of Genesis. The codex is sealed inside of a French horn case, and Lucy, who can of course pilot aircraft, is roped in to smuggle the thing to France; then there's something about the caves at Lascaux and--wait, what? Lucy is now crashing in flames into a Mesopotamian paradise where she gallivants around naked for several months with an insane man named, sigh, Adam. The book is a mishmash farce of a thriller, replete with cringe-inducing, quasi-religious meditations and incredible coincidences. Naslund, whose 'Ahab's Wife' is not only tolerable but is often held up as a rather good book, here blithely stumbles into a theological minefield and staggers around in it with all the grace of a newspaper tabloid. Meanwhile, the plot fragments bombard the reader like broken glass. Naslund's distracted paragraphs carom off of the halfhearted plot arcs and scatter away, never to resolve themselves. Where did the lurking 'brown man' in the turban, with 'eyes...as dark as dates, but menacing' from chapter five go? Don't know, don't care. The only partial respite from the onslaught is the slightly languorous middle part of the book, where Lucy is discovering a slightly magical Eden with Adam. Problem is, Naslund's stylized neo-Adam isn't cute crazy, he's just crazy crazy. Creepy, loose-cannon crazy. Lucy, who--get this--is nominally an art therapist in a mental institution, sort of seems to forget about this after a while. By the end of the story I think we're supposed to think he's just a bit eccentric.Naslund tries to cram cliched theme after hackneyed symbolism into the space of one novel, as if she's worried she'll never get another chance to write again. As such, everything is treated with the barest of attention before we're barreling on again to something else trite. Men's dominance over and violence toward women. The dangers of rigid literalism in religion. Imperialism. Fidelity and widowhood. Cave art as transcendent expression. The evils of endless war. It's exhausting.Oh, wait, I forgot to mention the hastily pasted-in bit about the international religious conspiracy. And all of this happens in a near future that Naslund utterly fails to take creative advantage of: Flash drives are slightly smaller and the wars in the Middle East are still burning brightly; that's about it.It's not even laughably bad. In fact, it's not entertaining at all, save for a brief moment of hope here and there. It has all the hallmarks of a really bad book without being enjoyably bad. Problem is, Naslund can actually turn a nice phrase. And does. Which makes the ham-fisted, inattentive plotting just that much more jarring.

I listened to this book and it kept me entertained at a point where I was driving 3 - 4 hours a day.

Admittedly, I was expecting something much, much different. I don't mind a writer being unique, taking a different tack, I've even been able to follow, and like, some stories such as Dreaming In Cuban.But I just couldn't get that with this latest by Naslund. I tried, but I just couldn't suspend my disbelief long or hard enough to keep reading.Sadly, this book was one of the rare DNF's I've had in the last few years. But as I always say to others, I read this with my eyes and my sensibilities and they are not the same as yours. All I can say is that I am not the only one disappointed as the overall rating here suggests. I hate, hate, hate giving a bad review or a "no recommendation", but this is going to be one of them.

I don't know what this book wanted to be when it grew up. There are elements of international conspiracy/thriller, too easily overcome. There are elements of back to nature/horrors of war cautionary tale, too easily abandoned. There are elements of relationships, too easily ambiguous. Naslund writes well, but needs to decide what to write.