About

Set on an island in Bass Strait, Eden Observed tells the story of a growing friendship between Francie, a young woman who is HIV positive, and Bea, the widow of an ex-prisoner-of-war who went to the island under the Soldier Settlement scheme, and the tragedy that the relationship leads to. One of its themes is what do women know of love? The women in this book find that all love has to be paid for.

Loosely structured around Dante's Divine Comedy, the novel is a rich blend of contemporary issues and timeless dramas.

This novel explores how the heart can survive and transform its moments in hell, recreating a garden, in language, at the meeting place of memory and imagination summoning precise colours, sounds, smells and textures of island life and nuances of island community, and dealing with the problem of how survival depends on the recall of what is unbearable.

Angela Rockel,
Australian Women's Book Review

Shimmins' tantalising detail in sensual 3D imagery highlights extraordinary characters who draw you on through their bickering, their deceits and disasters, their respites and moments of glory, and the awful burden of being human and needing to love and be loved.

Avril Caney
The Sunday Tasmanian, 8/8/99

Eden Observed is a remarkable book, which should take its place in Tasmanian literature alongside Flanagan's The Sound of One Hand Clapping.

Pat Hudspeth
Tascribe

Proudly published by Bumblebee Books

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