The Diaries of Adam & Eve

In this witty, charming work Mark Twain retells the Garden of Eden story in the first person, presenting the separate perspectives in diary form of the legendary father and mother of the human race. In Twain's version Adam comes across as the original couch potato, grumpily uninterested at first in the new long-haired creature with the different shape who keeps pestering him with her new ideas. Eve, by contrast, is the talkative, ever-curious experimenter whose inquisitive nature prompts her to name all the animals in the garden and leads her to the discovery of fire, among other things. Cain and Abel also make brief appearances as squawking infants whom Adam largely ignores while Eve does all the hard work of child-rearing. It doesn't dawn on him till they are almost full-grown that these puzzling new creatures are his children. This is a funny and touching retelling of the age-old myth, full of Twain's sarcastic humor, incisive intelligence, and subtle touches of pathos for the foibles of human nature.