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• "The Legacy of Eden" is nothing short of a mesmerizing novel. Once engaged, I couldn't stop reading it if I wanted to. Every word must drip from Nelle Davy's illusionary pen like silver. She is a word spinner--simply captivating and crushing your psyche from one sentence to the next. Her writing abilities are staggering. And this grotesque, family dynasty novel is of the best kind, reminiscent of Steinbeck's "East of Eden," and Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres." I expect great things from Nelle Davy's book and from her in the future.Primarily this is a novel written from the perspectives of women. Women are complicated beings to begin with, and Nelle Davy creates her Hathaway characters with such complexity of feeling and depth that you can only believe they lived and breathed and acted just as she writes about them. For instance, Lavinia Hathaway, the damaged, psychotic and destructive matriarch of the family is so malevolent, she's difficult to comprehend without having inside information into her evil plots and manipulations. She's a triumph of a character! And, she is the center from which the story works. A vicious, devious, controlling woman who was the snake in the garden of Aurelia's eden, she orchestrates the demise of her family for several generations. What a villian. This is an amazing accomplishment by an author. I've read so many books, and Lavinia is one of those similar to classical literature characters who you just don't forget."Hatred--it always comes down to that, doesn't it? But I've found that it's always at its most potent when it's laced with love." Lavinia Hathaway.Meredith, the narrator and youngest of the three girl grandchildren of Lavinia, tells the story of their home, Aurelia, the farm that nurtured the Hathaway family for several generations. Like most family homes, it embodied the tragedies and dark sides of the family while it sustained them, and held them together in a dance macabe. Aurelia was the beautiful and the ugly...the harmful and the heart of their lives. Memories were made there and those memories for good and for bad are what "The Legacy of Eden" is about. Meredith also tells the intimate stories of each family member through the life details of her sisters, her grandmother and her aunt.Nelly Davy takes simple tableaus such as the dinner table and creates powerful family scenes that crackle with the friction and horrors of a powder keg ready to ignite. She can make a subtle flick of a child's tongue over her teeth, and the gentle clatter of a tea spoon on a cup at the perfect moment in her dialog, send shivers through you. Nelly knows family dysfunction and she can dish it out in perfect cadence with her imaginative writing. It's just amazing to read.

  5.00 out of 5

  BookishDame

• Meredith has avoided going to and thinking about her childhood home as much as possible in her adult life. But with one letter that all changes. Her cousin, who had been running the family farm in Iowa, has passed away. And though the thought of going back physically makes her sick, she decides she needs to go through her parent's things before the farm is sold. Meredith gives us the story of the farm and her family from when her grandparents met in 1946 through Meredith and her two older sisters' teen years. She does this through her own memories, and through the stories her grandmother told her while on her sick bed. Lavinia, Meredith's grandmother and the matriarch of the family, was probably the most fascinating character of the bunch. She was very much family-centric in a not healthy way. She wanted the farm to be in the family for a very long time and couldn't understand why any of her family would want to leave. She also worked to make the farm perfect and her neighbors to view it in envy. She could be quite mean and vindictive and used others, including family members, to get her way. I liked the way Davy presented the Hathaway family. Meredith shows us her happiness as a child, the tragedies through her teens, and her own mistakes she made with an awful discovery she made involving her sister, Ava. We get the rest of the family's story from Lavinia. She seems to need to confess all that she did to and for her family to Meredith. I was absorbed with this family's story. But I do think Meredith's present story was a little less successful. I guess I felt like she didn't make any type of progress personally or with her sisters. Though the parts in the present with Meredith and her sisters did help to show the deep rifts in the remaining family members. Maybe there are just some things you can't forgive or forget. Overall a riveting story of the fall of a family. ARC provided by NetGalley.

  4.00 out of 5

  Lavinient

• THE LEGACY OF EDEN by Nelle DavyPublished by MiraISBN-10: 0778329550ISBN-13: 978-0778329558 At the request of Meryl L. Moss Media, an ARC TPB was sent, at no charge to me, for my honest opinion. Synopsis: An epic, sweeping tale of a dynasty rotten to the core, driven by ambition, lust – and hatred.For generations, Aurelia was the crowning glory of more than three thousand acres of Iowa farmland and golden cornfields. The estate was a monument to matriarch Lavinia Hathaway’s dream to elevate the family name—no matter what relative or stranger she had to destroy in the process. It was a desperation that wrought the downfall of the Hathaways—and the once-prosperous farm. Now the last inhabitant of the decaying old home has died—alone. None of the surviving members of the Hathaway family want anything to do with the farm, the land or the memories. Especially Meredith Pincetti. Now living in New York City, for seventeen years Lavinia’s youngest grandchild has tried to forget everything about her family and her past. But with the receipt of a pleading letter, Meredith is again thrust into conflict with the legacy that destroyed her family’s -great name. Back at Aurelia, Meredith must confront the rise and fall of the Hathaway family…and her own part in their mottled history. My Thoughts and Opinion: I remember reading, and some of you may too, a Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford in 1979. It was with that book that I sought others of the same premise. How the role of the matriarch came to be. Usually with ruthlessness, revenge, lack of remorse, greed, and hatred but in the end was always alone. Family members emotionally destroyed along the way. Secrets kept hidden. But memories never die.The Legacy of Eden was just that book. The author, Nelle Davy, in her debut book, pulled you in from the start. Meredith, one of three grand daughters, who had tried so very hard to forget those years living at Aurelia, was located and notified that the farm was to be sold. The writer alternates between the present and past as stories that were related to Meredith from her dieing grandmother. The family members come to life but are products of their upbringing that at times you feel sorry for them. I could actually feel the lack of emotions between family members. There were hints of secrets within the family throughout the book, which one could figure out but then it still made the family what it truly was. A figment of their own imagination. A very engrossing saga, especially for a debut novel. My Rating: 4

  4.00 out of 5

  CMash

• Oh the evil than can be wrought with the best of intentions. That is the story told with this dark and troubling book. Aurelia is a large farm built from nothing and its master is dying. He calls back his prodigal first son and despite the fact that his second son has worked his heart out for the place, it is left mostly to the first born. You can imagine the rift this causes between the brothers.Cal has an affair with the local doctor's wife, Lavinia and they eventually marry creating the dynasty that makes Aurelia great but behind that facade lies a history of secrets. Secrets told to Meredith, one of Lavinia's granddaughters as Lavinia lay bedridden. Secrets Meredith wanted to know up until they reached the time of her family. Then she didn't want to hear any more - but Lavinia forced her to hear it all.The book is told as the stories of four main players in the history of Aurelia through the voice of Meredith. It got slightly muddled at times trying to figure out whose voice was doing the telling but overall this was a compelling tale of mostly unpleasant people. Despite there being no one to really root for, I found it hard to stop reading. Most of the characters were so flawed they had very little to redeem them. No one got along, at least not for very long. All was done for the sake of Aurelia as if it were a living being instead of a farm. Lavinia had big plans for herself and for the farm and she did everything in her power to see that they were fulfilled. Needless to say she was not a warm and fuzzy matriarch.Meredith is not really happy about returning the Aurelia because it has too many memories for her - both happy and sad. She has settled into her life and managed to put her childhood behind her but she and her sisters are now the only ones left when their cousin dies and the estate is left in debt. The lawyer calls to see if she wants to retrieve any of the family belongings. She heads out to do so and that is what starts her remembering of what her grandmother told her. This is not a happy story by any means but that does not mean it is not a good story. It is well written and you truly feel the pain and anger of the characters as they live through Lavinia's machinations.

  4.00 out of 5

  BrokenTeepee

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