In her novel Constellations of Eve, Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood centers the perspective of talented and complex women expected to be happy in a couple, as she follows three reincarnations of a protagonist named Eve—into an artist, wife, and mother—and her loved ones. Each reincarnation is a chance for Eve to “get it right” and ward off her most crippling fear of being abandon by the very people she loves the most.
This magnificent novel, with all its unexpected twists and turns, explores the Buddhist concept of destiny in a modern Western context that encourages individual choices: Is serendipity and mental health part of karma¾a belief in which people build merit and collect debts in one lifetime, to then be the recipient or payee in a following life? Can true love really transcend time and space, and what does true love even look like? What happens when one person suffers from a loved one’s emotional or physical absence? How many lifetimes does it take to repay each other’s karmic debts and find one another again?
Conjuring the most unlikely scenarios, Constellations of Eve keeps readers in awe of what just had happened to them as they read this dark, torturous, and passionate modern love story that defies what may be expected of an Asian American woman writer. Constellations of Eve is a literary jewel, wherein hope for true and restful love is unexpectedly lost and found.
This book also makes crucial interventions on standards of gender and genre in Asian American literature. In Constellations of Eve, Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood does not portray women characters as Dragon Ladies, sacrificial mothers, treasonous prostitutes, or waiting