The Garden of Eden is a lovely collection of vignettes about the regulars who frequent the so-called Garden of Eden at Sakhne, a lovely spring-fed lake in Israel. The stories are mostly poignant stories of loss: the rueful divorced man who swims every day to fill the lonely hours between work and bedtime; the wistful Arab with a wife he 'gets along with OK'who gave up too easily on his relationship with the love of his life, a Jewish girl; the ticket-taker who wonders why she took 33 years to leave her abusive husband; the man who still struggles with guilt that he survived a war that killed his brother and best friend.
A charming movie. I had the good fortune to meet interesting people in line, one of whom had lived near Sakhne and had been there. He said it was a lovely as it looked in the film. Now I want to go there too.
