ALTHOUGH describing himself as a “North Korean-style atheist”, Jim Crace often plays with religious myths as he shapes his own enigmatic fables. His beguiling, shimmering novels can feel like doors without an obvious key to hand. His eden (note the lower case) is a good example of this: a narrative not referring to God so much as reflecting us back to ourselves, unsure whether we can afford our aspirations.

Adam and Eve have been expelled, and 50 or so immortal “gardeners” continue to live and work in eden. They must obey the angels: bird-like beings who maintain the “sublime uniformity” of this paradise where “order is the order of the day,” and where sex is unknown, but touch is a comfort. Beyond the walls of eden lie, they are told, wild mortal beings, ghosts, and a chaotic wilderness in which they love and have children.

For Tabi, “the garden’s loudest mouth” and “a bouncing breeze”, the labour, surveillance, and containment of eden are too much to bear. She longs for the messiness of freedom. She breaks out. Alum, a spy who works for the angels as if he had “eyeballs in his arse”, takes charge of getting her back. Crace utilises a vocabulary that Hardy would have relished to build up the tension of a brewing insurgency in this restricted regime. His descriptions are anti-romantic and recognisable, but we are also made aware of Jamin, who flew over the walls only to damage a wing seriously, and who returns ever to remain a “broken angel”.

Do we need mortality to create meaning? Is security enough for the soul? Can we ever know who we really are if we are unable to compare ourselves with those outside our gated communities? “This is what the world’s about,” one character concludes. “It’s wondering and stories.” Crace should be celebrated for magically conjuring up both.

Canon Mark Oakley is Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge.

eden
Jim Crace
Picador £16.99
(978-1-5290-6243-4)
Church Times Bookshop £15.29