3 out of 4 stars
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First Family by Alice Langholt is a modern take on the biblical story of Adam and Eve. The author tells the story from four different perspectives: Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. While most people are familiar with this story from the Bible, the author has tried to make the story more relatable. The language is modern, which helps immensely.
Adam wakes up to find... everything. His senses are overloaded and he struggles to figure out how to even move his body at first. He begins to interact with animals, name them, and figure out which plants to eat. When Eve appears, she learns quickly from Adam, but she also has an innate boldness and curiosity lacking in Adam. When they are banished from the Garden of Eden after they eat the forbidden fruit, they learn to work together to create a life for themselves. Then children come.
Cain and Abel are as different as night and day. One is brash and arrogant. The other is gentle and quick to learn. The four different perspectives in the book offer a very well rounded view of this era. They have very different personalities, and each experience things in their own unique way.
First Family was actually very thought provoking, and I give it 3 out of 4 stars. Even though I personally don't agree with the way some things were portrayed doctrinally, I felt that she did an excellent job getting me to feel for the characters. They were believeable and all were even likeable, which I wasn't expecting. There were also many things that I had never thought about before. For example, how would Eve have felt being pregnant for the first time? Changes in her body and feeling the new life inside her, while not really knowing what it all entails, would have been unsettling, to say the least. The book was full of insights such as that one.
As historical fiction, the author took some artistic liberty with many of the instances that are barely mentioned in the Bible, and did well creating a daily life that isn't broached at all. I had to keep in mind that she wasn't making a theological treatise on how things actually went, but offered her view of how these people could have felt. I did not care for the way God was portrayed as aloof and unreacheable. My own personal view of God is different. Overall, however, I thought it was well done.
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First Family
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