“I am Lilith. Made not with commonplace,
pedestrian sperm and egg, but by God’s own hand. I am the very first woman,
before even Eve’s time.” Eden Abandoned by Shinie Antony is the story of
Lilith, the putative first wife of the first man on the Earth (Adam) who left Eden as curiosity was her biggest vice, her inability to
nod ‘yes’, her biggest defect.
Crafted by God himself, she asserted she came second
but wasn’t secondary, she wasn’t going to take anything lying down. A fallen
wife, an OG rebel, a seductress and stealer of sperms, a baby killer, if
Lilith stood for unrestrained rage, desire and promiscuity, Eve who replaces
her, crafted from Adam’s rib embodied prudery, piety. If Eve loved to walk in
Adam’s shadow, Lilith loved to hold a mirror to Adam.
“In order to make one man unspecial, you must
make many men special” and Lilith does everything egregious to rip Adam off her
life, but does she manage to? She earns the tag of a historic villainess, she’s omitted
from the Bible and Torah, neither the Aramaic nor the Tower of Babel mention her, can she be resurrected as a modern day heroine?
Read this slim book, just about the size of a smartphone, and brainstorm!
In Eden Abandoned, the gravitas is in the
words. Shinie Antony’s raw, unbridled power in writing fits Lilith well like a
glove that you sit back and wonder who fuels who. For instance, Lilith's love for the colour red is beautifully conveyed in lines below -
"Red was going to be my colour. The red of my times was different from yours. Our red came from stone sparking stone, from fireworks trapped in uncut rubies, from trees blossoming in menstrual hues, from the evening brocade the sun sews around Earth, from the last light of a dying star."
There are little nuggets of wisdom too - " A good partner I tell you is the yeast in your bread loaves". "Happiness is
nowhere as melodramatic as dawning of sense, rebuilding yourself one sinew
at a time. Happiness is so damn quiet that the happy often don’t know they
are happy until they are unhappy."
But this linguistic sleight
of hand gets arduous at places, especially in the last few chapters where things slow down and we begin to ruminate if Lilith is weighed down by guilt, loneliness, repentance before it is proved we are entirely wrong in the last page of the book.
There is no
denying that Eden Abandoned takes patriarchy head on but as with any ‘-ism’, it
espouses rebelling just for the sake of rebelling, trashes contentment as a
flaw and bashes those who don't align, as in this instance - “What a
pathetic woman a wife is. Seeking shade in her husband’s shadow. Doomed to be
in awe of him ..”
Women who have questioned/refused to bow to
male agency have always had it tough. Their fiery independence is seen as heresy by many. Lilith’s journey is no different. From a
person of flesh and blood to becoming a memory erased, as chapters countdown from
13 to 0, this mini firecracker of a book goes bang!, quite loud &
clear.
Rating 3.75 stars - As a feminist mythological retelling of a character hitherto unknown to most of us, I liked reading this book. I would rate it 4 stars because I believe one needs to tread a middle path between supporting extremes -complete, unadulterated independence/anarchy and servility. The final rating falls shorter for the writing feels arduous at places to navigate despite being potent.
(A copy of the book was obtained from the publisher in return for a honest review)
