UK reviews:
‘A stunning short novel.’ — The Guardian
‘I never read a book twice. However, I have read this one a second time and I might read it again to relish the beauty of the writing and to delve again into the depth of the characters.’ — Waterstones reader’s review (five stars)
‘Told in a lyrical, haunting voice, this grief-riven tale about the underworld of Mauritius is harshly compelling.’ — The Bookbag
‘...one of Devi and Zuckerman’s greatest triumphs in this book is that each character has their own distinct rhythms, with power and poetry drawn from the cadences of their speech ... the narration is extraordinary, shifting between describing solid, often sordid details with vivid precision, and soaring into more abstract passages that echo the ebb and flow of the sea that 'surges, escapes, shatters' on the island’s shore ... Together these voices provide a stunning immersion in Troumaron, an impoverished area of Port Louis, and in the surges of teenage lust ... [a] stunning short novel.’ — Deborah Smith, The Guardian
‘[Devi] confronts us with instances of great pain and suffering, yet seldom without embracing the redemptive qualities of attentiveness, spirit, beauty. This is a novel that can take you to fathomless depths. Its artistry is such that you are unlikely to close it feeling ruined.’ — Matthew Adams, The National
‘Told in a sparse, economical prose– Eve out of Her Ruins is a quietly harrowing portrait of the moral toxicity of groupthink, and the insidious banality of gendered violence. Headstrong and unapologetically wilful, Eve’s monologues are a bleak meditation on the contingent nature of personal sovereignty in a social world defined by deeply entrenched power relations: ‘We’re butterflies caught in a net,’ she observes, ‘even at our most exultant, even at our most resistant.’ — Houman Barekat, New Internationalist
'In contrast to many titles pitched at YA readers, this is not so much a coming-of-age novel as a story about coming of agency.' – Rosie Eyre, European Literature Network
‘...it would be wrong to suggest that Devi’s ‘poetic’ language somehow lessens the impact of the poverty and hopelessness she is describing. The language is only ‘poetic’ in the sense it is precise, that it uses words to perfectly capture the experience, the thought – that, like poetry, it is both unexpected and recognised at the same time.’ — 1streading blog
US reviews:
‘The novel’s voices are distinct, but they all flash with the hot mirages of adolescence—all four kids see with the hard certainty of desire things that are and aren’t there... Devi’s novel is of a piece with an important strand in postcolonial feminist writing that locates the central tragedy of survival in the necessity of repeated leave-takings, which are always acts of betrayal—betrayal of home, of history, of nation, of those who stayed....The challenges of getting Devi’s tropical-guttural-teenage mood right are considerable, but Zuckerman’s translation is confident and accomplished, capturing the marine clarity of the prose without losing any of its poetic heat.’ — Anjuli Raza Kolb, Bookforum
‘Eve begins: “Walking is hard. I limp, I hobble along on the steaming asphalt. With each step a monster rises, fully formed.” This novel is a telling about how the monster came to be formed. ... ferocious and unforgettable.’ — Full Stop Magazine
‘One of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean.’ — PEN American Centre
‘The power of this haunting novel is its universality; the stark contrast between the pleasures of the rich and the struggles of the poor has been explored previously, but Devi breathes new life into a familiar conflict by offering four interwoven perspectives, with each narrator affected differently and tragically by the impossibility of changing their circumstances. The beauty of Devi’s prose belies the horror of the world she conjures up. This is a visceral portrait of violence rendered honestly and gracefully.’ — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
‘I read it in two huge swallows on the train and then did that embarrassing thing of being so wrecked by a book I started weeping in public and everyone around me politely averted their eyes. It is a hard book, I’m not gonna lie, but also one of the most gorgeous things I’ve read in a long time.’ — The Rejectionist
‘A remarkable book that is as much a call to action as it is a love story, Devi beautifully juxtaposes the beauty and despair of the island through her dreamy, ethereal prose, and the audacity of her characters’ ambition.’ — The Gazette
‘Eve’s coping, her delicious revenge and small acts of goodness by other characters give the translation a hopeful tone. Eve sidesteps poverty and abuse — the true antagonists in the novel — and Devi’s poetic writing provides portraits of characters who force their own bodies into mattering.’ — Allison Cundiff, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
‘This. Book. Is. Excellent.’ — Lisa Lucas, National Book Foundation
Rest of the World reviews:
‘Ananda Devi confronts us with instances of great pain and suffering, yet seldom without embracing the redemptive qualities of attentiveness, spirit, beauty.’ — The National (Abu Dhabi)
‘Devi’s prose is both thoughtful and torrential in its force.’ — Le Monde
Further praise for Ananda Devi and The Living Days
‘Devi is alert to the ways in which social forces, such as racism and ageism, are reshaping London’s already complex post-colonial landscape, and her fluid, poetic language memorably conjures a union of two outcasts.’ The New Yorker (Briefly Noted Book Reviews)
‘This is a novel of great beauty as well as discomfiting disclosure. Ananda Devi’s writing challenges us to reconfigure our own beliefs about right and wrong and to look beyond our own comfortable lives to consider the reality of others.’ — New Internationalist
‘The Mauritian author explores how legacies of colonialism and empire persist amid acts of cruelty and violence in London ... A meditation on urban inequality, in which the politics of race and class loom large’ jazzed up by ‘tonally awkward moments.’ — The Guardian
‘Mary Grimes, the central character of The Living Days exists, like the novel itself, in a liminal space between the possible and the mythic; between material being and ghostly half-life... This is not a novel which offers any reassurance. We never enter a settled space of familiarity. Even within the internal logic of the novel, the nature of what we are reading becomes unstable... The Living Days is never a predictable novel, indeed it is never less than perplexing and unsettling.’ — The Irish Times
‘Beautifully written, visceral and ecstatic. Unafraid, as Angels might be, to bear witness to the force of entropy pulling us all towards death.’ — Preti Taneja
UK & Ireland reviews:
What I learned from reading books by women from every country in the world, Sophie Baggott, The Guardian, 8 March 2021
‘...a quietly harrowing portrait of the moral toxicity of groupthink, and the insidious banality of gendered violence’, Houman Barekat, The New Internationalist, 2 October 2016
Teenage lust amid the tropical heat and dust, Deborah Smith, Guardian, 30 September 2016
#RivetingReviews: Rosie Eyre reviews EVE OUT OF HER RUINS by Ananda Devi Rosie Eyre, European Literature Network, 17 September 2021
US reviews:
Yikes! We need more books in translation, Sarah Ullery, Book Riot, 23 May 2019
Love and despair in paradise, Laura Farmer, The Gazette, 8 January 2017
Eve out of Her Ruins – recommended by Adam Hocker, Albertine Books, 30 October 2016
Three Percent BTBA Favorites So Far, Jennifer Croft, 27 October 2016
Every Eve is born in writing, Anjuli Raza Kolb, Bookforum, 16 September 2016
Other reviews:
Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi (review), Tony’s Reading List, 6 August 2020
Growing up in Ananda Devi's novel about Mauritian teens, Matthew Adams, The National (Abu Dhabi Media), 13 October 2016