Joseph meets Ruth during their College years, and they strike up an acquaintance that wastes no time becoming more than just a friendship. Ruth takes Joseph into her confidence on the first date. In fact, she insists on doing this as a prelude to sexual intimacy. Rather than find this odd or a put-off, Joseph becomes enraptured with her. To say their relationship is unusual would be an understatement.
Ruth has had an eating disorder since her parents divorced. Joseph has a sister who killed herself as a teen. Together they dance around the daily eating disorders with sexual tensions, averted eyes and, for one of them, a mind closed to the realities of what exactly is being sought within this tango.
When Joseph meets an old family friend, he begins a journey into library medical jargon that he prays will free Ruth. As he is coached along with the friend’s help, he delves deeper and deeper into the mysteries of food and wanting, sex and rejection, desire and temptation. Rejection threatens to end the relationship and the quest for becoming a savior, but the rejection isn’t what one would expect and neither is this book.
Eve's Apple has wonderful prose and verbiage with unusual and fascinating correlation. It fills the reader’s senses with never-before-known connections in our day to day waking worlds. The words are the journey more than the storyline; for those who love great sentences, this book can’t be beat. On a more serious note, for all who struggle with an eating disorder or love someone who does, although fictional in nature Eve's Apple gives an outlook on this usually chronic disease that is insightful and interesting.