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notesofacrocodile 's review for:
Eve Out of Her Ruins
by Ananda Devi
dark
tense
so this was an interesting read. i had seen that it was labelled as y.a., but due to the mature themes present, it's probably more accurate to say that it is meant for readers who are aged 15-16 and above.
a fast-paced, dramatic novella, eve out of her ruins is set in the island of mauritius, although not the mauritius that probably springs to the mind of a tourist. we see the grimy, dark, and poverty-ridden underbelly of its capital port louis through the eyes of four teenagers: eve (a girl who learns to trade her body for small favours), saad (in love with eve and rimbaud's poetry), clélio (an angry, hardened thug with a sweet voice), and savita (the lover and emotional anchor of eve). the cogs of the plot begin to move with the seemingly meaningless murder of one of them.
the themes touched upon included the loss of childhood innocence and the shaping of femininity and sexuality amidst the ravages of poverty. it explores how poverty leaves you with no choice in multiple avenues of life, and how it twists into a vicious cycle that is determined to keep the individual and community trapped within it through the weaponisation of social and political structures.
i had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the prose. on one hand it was incredibly poetic, making me want to underline many portions. on the other hand, it sometimes bordered on purple prose; all aesthetics without having any actual purpose and/or meaning. i also found saad's perspective to be almost redundant in how it contributed towards the story.
overall, i found the story deeply immersive, and i could feel the depressive atmosphere of grime and violence that enveloped the world of the four main characters.
a fast-paced, dramatic novella, eve out of her ruins is set in the island of mauritius, although not the mauritius that probably springs to the mind of a tourist. we see the grimy, dark, and poverty-ridden underbelly of its capital port louis through the eyes of four teenagers: eve (a girl who learns to trade her body for small favours), saad (in love with eve and rimbaud's poetry), clélio (an angry, hardened thug with a sweet voice), and savita (the lover and emotional anchor of eve). the cogs of the plot begin to move with the seemingly meaningless murder of one of them.
the themes touched upon included the loss of childhood innocence and the shaping of femininity and sexuality amidst the ravages of poverty. it explores how poverty leaves you with no choice in multiple avenues of life, and how it twists into a vicious cycle that is determined to keep the individual and community trapped within it through the weaponisation of social and political structures.
i had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the prose. on one hand it was incredibly poetic, making me want to underline many portions. on the other hand, it sometimes bordered on purple prose; all aesthetics without having any actual purpose and/or meaning. i also found saad's perspective to be almost redundant in how it contributed towards the story.
overall, i found the story deeply immersive, and i could feel the depressive atmosphere of grime and violence that enveloped the world of the four main characters.