Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781600061240
ISBN: 1600061249
Label: NavPress Publishing Group
Manufacturer: NavPress Publishing Group
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2008-10-10
Publisher: NavPress Publishing Group
Studio: NavPress Publishing Group

Eve, exiled to a life outside paradise, nears death. As she waits, she recounts the story of her creation and a cruel existence. Revisit the birth of humankind through the eyes of the first woman ever to live.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Not a cookie cutter - paint by number novel
Comment: Tosca Lee has a different way of looking at the world. Her first book Demon alerted me to that fact. This book solidified it. Some of her phraseology causes me to pause and admire it. How could it not be interesting to read a fictional account of my great to the thousandth power grandmother? Tosca's imagination and vivid verbiage enhance that experience.
Donald James Parker
Author of All the Stillness of the Wind

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Preslaysa's Review
Comment: This was the best novel I read in 2008. Lee's writing is very unique and poetic. In the beginning (nice pun), I felt like I was in the Garden with Adam and Eve. Then, my heart broke as I watched Adam and Eve's relationship corrupt after the fall. By the end of the book, I was sobbing, Lee wrote a beautiful plot twist that has me thinking long after I closed the book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Getting back to our real roots...
Comment: I thought that "Havah" would be this nice little historical fiction book about Eve and I was looking forward to it. I had no idea what I was getting into...WOW! The scope of this project was huge - we are talking covering about 900 years where we have a little fact in Genesis and a lot of speculation. Tosca manages to take all of that and make Eve a real woman who engineered the downfall of man, birthed the world of man, helped form civilization, went from paradise to life as we have never known it and yet dealt with many of the issues we still deal with today. Tosca makes Eve real in a way that I have never thought of her. The hard thing is that like most Biblical fiction books - it can become hard to separate truth from fiction in our heads, but most importantly this book will make you want to go back and reread Genesis and figure it out. It is beautifully written and will make you think about your real roots.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Havah: The Story of Us
Comment: If you enjoyed Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, Tosca Lee's Havah: The Story of Eve will leave you breathless. Havah exceeds the excellent The Red Tent in nearly every category: delving into more intimate historical detail, stretching the scope of speculation with sound research, and breathing life into characters that could so easily fall flat. Importantly, Havah avoids the stereotyping of our ancestors that plagued some parts of The Red Tent.

If you think you know the plot of Havah, think again. It truly is an experience you won't soon forget.

Here are just a handful of the questions that I found being addressed through the course of the compelling narrative. Not only did I experience the alien lives of our ancestors and origins in Havah, but I also was subtly challenged to contemplate all manner of mysteries both great and small,* including:

The source of iron content in human blood.
The roots of Satan's "Lord of the Flies" monniker.
Death as an alternative control.
The miracle of self-awareness.
Insects as sin-amplifiers.
The concept of naive superintelligence.
The meaning of language.
The origin of dragon mythology.
The birth of idolatry.
The importance of (what we now call) incest.
The meaning of guilt.

And there is much more than that. There is blood in this book. Bad blood. Good blood. God's blood.

When Demon: A Memoir debuted in 2007, it became readily evident that a new, inventive and meaningful storyteller (in the deepest sense of that word) had burst upon the scene.

Demon: A Memoir and Havah: The Story of Eve are companion books, but this is unlikely to be apparent at first blush. Though a great span of time (from origin to present) separates their settings and all but two characters (both of whom are critical, but also almost never overtly "on stage") are entirely different, both stories make it clear that a new world (and worldview) of Providence and the fantastic has been birthed by a most capable midwife in Tosca Lee.

*One of my favorite qualities of Havah is that there is a subtle shift from romance languages (in the Garden) to grittier Anglo-Saxon vocabulary in exile. Lee is nothing if not a writer who builds in layers.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Eve finally has a voice
Comment: One of the most misunderstood Bible characters has finally been given a voice. Havah is Eve's story of Creation, the Fall, and life after the Fall.

Poignant and poetic, this book will satisfy readers looking for something edgy and fresh as well as ones who insist on Biblical accuracy. Amazingly, the author has taken a familar Bible story we all think we know well, and made it a page turner.

Especially haunting are the author's descriptive contrasts of life before and after sin enters the world, and how it changed the earth, the animals, and most heartbreakingly, relationships.

Havah is well-written and well-researched, and takes Biblical fiction to a new level of excellence. A must read.

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