“Patiently, and unflinchingly, Ackerman is becoming one of the great poet laureates of America’s tragic adventurism across the globe.” —Pico Iyer Eden lies in a hospital bed, unable to move or speak. His wife Mary spends every day on the sofa in his room. We see them through the eyes of Eden’s best friend, a fellow Marine who didn’t make it back home—and who must relive the secrets held between … held between all three of them as he waits for Eden to finally, mercifully die and join him in whatever comes after.
A breathtakingly spare and shattering novel that explores the unseen aftereffects—and unacknowledged casualties—of war, Waiting for Eden is a piercingly insightful, deeply felt meditation on loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and love.
“The Tim O’Brien of our era.” —Vogue
“Devastating.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Haunting. . . . Daring.” —The Boston Globe
“Heart-wrenching.” —NPR
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Eden Malcolm is an Iraqi war veteran who was severely burned by an explosion during a tour. He has been hospitalized for several years and is unable to move or communicate. He is visited daily by his wife, Mary, and has never seen his young daughter who was born while he was deployed. Eden was joined in Iraq by his best friend but he died in the same explosion. This friend serves as the narrator for the story which swaps back and forth between pre and post-tragedy. Mary’s reluctance to end his suffering is a key focal point of the story.
Waiting For Eden by Elliot Ackerman tugged at my heart. I was surprised by the small size of the book but it is so wonderfully written and full of emotional content that it’s destined to make a bunch of “favorites” lists.
Best literary fiction I’ve read in 2020–not for the faint hearted, but if you appreciated Tim O’Brian’s books, you’ll like the under-200 pp one
fast read, different, rather haunting
The best description of this book is that anyone who has known a family member who died or was maimed or mentally destroyed in any of the terrible and mostly unnecessary wars the U.S. has fought in should read it. I give out 5 stars about once every three or so years so I found this book exceptional.
I have lived through many of the wars mentioned above, WWII where a neighbor on our block lost a son in the Pacific Theater of War and my uncle was with Patton in Europe and came back mentally disturbed. He functioned normally but had devoloped “triggers” that came and went for the rest of his life.
My college roommate died from PTSD after serving as a paratrooper in Korea, the toll from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos among my musician associates and running buddies was horrible, and the horrors of the middle east “conflicts” is mind blowing.
This is a must read for everyone. I just wish that we could get the alt-right idiots to read it.
Insightful, haunting, living in another’s skin. I listened to the audiobook. Short but powerful.
This is a haunting, heartbreaking story that grabs you. A disturbing read. Gut-wrenching. Narrated by Eden’s war buddy who has died but can’t move on. I don’t want to write a spoiler, so I’ll just say about Mary, the wife, I didn’t agree with her decision. Especially, after Eden clearly gave his…
It is a short book, 173 smallish pages. And it is “serious” literary fiction. Why on earth would I pick up such a book, promising to be a hard read? Don’t know. But I did. And luckily I started it early in the evening, because I couldn’t put it down.
WAITING FOR EDEN, a finalist for the National Book Award, tells the story of Eden, a badly burned veteran who is not expected to live. It is also the story of his best friend, now a ghost, who waits to escort Eden to the Other Side, and the woman that they both loved.
How do you communicate when you can’t talk and can’t see? Eden finds a way, and it profoundly changes the lives of those around him, including his wife and the medic in the ICU ward. I found the tale to be raw and emotional, not sad but rather an uplifting tribute to the human spirit and the will to survive, whatever the cost.
From the nurse who cared for him on the night shift: “In his body she felt many things at once. Frozen soil. the bark of a tree. Baked sand. A handful of gravel. Glass, both shattered and whole. His textures were a mosaic of many, trapped in the inches of skin…In the space between them there was only her whispering:’If you want to go, go. But if you want to stay, sleep.'”
I felt replete when I finished reading this novel. I hope you will be, too.