Outside the Gates of Eden
This is a long book, over 900 pages, but if like me you grew up listening to West Coast rock bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane – in fact any American band of the ´60s and ´70s – then this book will prove an absolute joy. Even if you’re not a music fan it is still a worthwhile read.
Outside the Gates of Eden is, in essence, a book about friendship and love. Romantic love, but also a love of music, the kind of obsession that grows from a creative mind. Cole and Alex are two teenagers at the start of the story, and by the end they are men of middle age who have found their way in a world that has changed radically, both for good and bad, since their teens.
The book features fictional characters and also a plethora of real individuals such a Bill Graham, Grace Slick and Jerry Garcia, icons of the 1960s music scene. But it is the fictional creations of Cole and Alex that make this such a great read. Both are finely drawn, and you will believe they actually drew breath, as well as played instruments, loved, married and divorced, all while they fought to be good people in a changing world.
Shiner has created a book that sits comfortably in the middle ground between fact and fiction and melds them seamlessly together.
