Today I’m going to be reviewing a collection of prose and poetry I recently finished called, Between Eden and The Open Road by Phillip Garber.
Honestly, when picking up the book, and judging it’s cover, I had no idea what to expect from this book. The cover leads you to religious path, with the lone tree and the fallen apple, but DO NOT judge this book by it’s cover, or else you’ll be missing a hilarious, truthful collection of insightful prose and poetry.
This collection is a wild ride. I would suggest that a man would be the target audience for this collection, because sometimes women have trouble diving into books which are written in a male narrator voice, but don’t let that stop you. If you do, I think you’ll regret it.
The self-effacing humor that’s used in some of the poems is beautiful, the interactions are real, and raw and interesting. So many times in life, I think we’ve all met people and gone through similar experiences that happen to the narrators of the poems.
This collection deals in complex thoughts and issues, but presents them in simple ways: conversations, phone calls, first dates, and family dinners are just some of the ways we view life through this window. It reaches out and grabs you, and brings you in to these situations to be able to see the humor, and sometimes the pain, behind people’s stories.
This collection is meant to make you laugh, but it’s also, I believe meant to make you think, to make you look more closely at the world around, and more closely at yourself. The author grasp of poetry, his perfect brevity and sense of words and meanings, and overall writing is beautiful. He paints perfect pictures on the page for us to read and love.
I am glad to have this book on my shelves next to my other poetry collections. It stands on it’s own for poetry lovers and non poetry lovers alike. You need to take this wild ride into the world that resides “Between Eden and the Open Road”.
About the Author:
Philip Gaber spends the majority of his day attempting to reconcile differences between his conscious and subconscious. In his spare time he tries not to drift around his community as an invisible spirit or juggle more than a handful of moral dilemmas at a time. He currently lives and work in Charlotte, North Carolina.
***I was given a free copy of this collection in return for an honest and truthful view.
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