Reading guide: This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Inspired by historical events, This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island: an enclave off the coast of the United States where castaways – in flight from society and its judgment – have landed and built a home.  

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey arrives on the island with his Irish wife, Patience, to make a life together there. More than a century later, the Honeys’ descendants remain, alongside an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours.  

Then comes the intrusion of ‘civilization’: officials determine to ‘cleanse’ the island. A missionary schoolteacher selects one light-skinned boy to save. The rest will succumb to the authorities’ institutions – or cast themselves on the waters in a new Noah’s Ark…

Paul Harding attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied English, and has taught writing at Harvard University and the University of Iowa.

This Other Eden, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023, is Harding’s third novel. His debut novel Tinkers, was published in 2009 and won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2010 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, among other honours. He published his second novel, Enon, in 2013.  

He has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University. He lives on Long Island, New York, with his family. 

Paul Harding’s writing style throughout This Other Eden is lyrical, imbued with a poetic sensibility. There is often a considered and deliberate cadence. ‘As he lowered into sleep the salty pined breeze and cricket songs and schools of stars poured into and birled around his brains so the night became his mind and his mind the night and the mother owl watching over him swooped down from her tree and through his dreams.’ (Page 102). Discuss the effect the poetry of the novel has, and what it adds to the reading experience.

The novel is written in third person with the narrative often quickly switching viewpoints to first-person when it serves the story. Why has Paul Harding chosen to write in this manner? Does this narrative technique offer a broader range of perspectives from the collective inhabitants of Apple Island?

The inhabitants of Apple Island live offbeat lives, when compared to those who live on the mainland. Yet Harding humanises them and writes them humbly. These characters are crafted with nuance, without opinion or judgment. What impact does this have within the novel and what sense does it evoke for you as the reader?

There are many biblical references throughout This Other Eden. ‘She knew how holy it was that only one family went into the ark and came forth from it. And she knew how terrible it was, too.’ (Page 208). Why do you think Harding has chosen to use such iconography throughout the novel?

The story of This Other Eden is based on the real-life events of Malaga Island, whose residents were forcibly removed in 1912. Paul Harding used this as inspiration, but then worked his own narrative around this. ‘I immediately set about getting an imagined version of the events and, more importantly, the characters up and running, in which I’d be free to shape the story in the context of different literary traditions that resonated with what seem like the universal human experiences of displacement, marginalization, exile, and so forth,’ he told the Booker Prizes website. Where do you see fact and fiction intersecting in the novel? 

Matthew Diamond, a white missionary and school teacher comes to the island to teach and spread Christianity to the islanders. His religious ideals tell him that ‘all men are brothers, all women his sisters’, yet he wrestles with his own morality, feeling a ‘visceral, involuntary repulsion in the presence of a living Negro’. Discuss Matthew’s white-saviour-like role in the novel and how complicit he is in the destruction of Apple Island. Could Matthew be considered a white supremacist?

The state of Maine sends a committee to study and analyse the people of Apple Island, two of whom are doctors ‘with a particular interest in subjects deteriorated by inbreeding’. The doctors are members of the American Breeders’ Association, a real-life group that peddled pseudo-science under the guise of eugenics. To what extent do you think This Other Eden is intended as a cautionary tale to present-day attitudes and racism? 

The governor of Maine resolves to evict the inhabitants of the island from their inherited land, for the sake of ‘humanity and public health’. Discuss the parallels between the treatment of those on Apple Island and colonialist events in contemporary history. What countries and communities do you see the author drawing inspiration from?

Ethan Honey, the lightest-skinned member of the Honey family, is sent to study art on a mainland estate. Here, he meets an Irish maid called Bridget with whom he enters into a relationship. But everything changes when Bridget chances upon a photograph of Ethan with his family. ‘How can he be from a colored family if he is a white boy?’ (Page 148) Discuss Bridget’s confusion and change of heart with regard to racism in the United States. Why does this new knowledge change her feelings towards him? 

The residents of Apple Island created a society that was tolerant and without prejudice. They lived an often harsh life, but they endured. Could they have survived without intervention? And could they ever have been accepted simply for who they were? 

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