A Mad Eden Reading List

A Mad Eden Reading List

This article relates to Mad Eden

In Mad Eden, Morgan Thomas constructs a story that is nonlinear, circuitous, and sometimes downright diversionary, thinking outside the narrative box. One of Ro's most charming qualities as a narrator is their tendency toward reference and allusion—to poems, books, scientific studies, and more. Below I explore some of the references in Mad Eden I found most compelling or enjoyable to encounter.

Ro cites Etymologies, a 20-volume encyclopedia by the Spanish scholar Isidore Seville (c. 560–636), as potential source material for "Mad Eden," the self-published story they are reading about magicians and dragons at war with one another. Etymologies was Seville's attempt to compile "the sum of universal knowledge," and contained everything from grammar and theology to word origins, to descriptions of animals, metals, and everyday tools. The books became one of the most copied and influential works of the Middle Ages, shaping how classical learning survived into medieval Europe. They also, apparently, contained commentary about dragons and magicians, which Ro quotes at length: "For bold men explore the cave of the dragons, and scatter medicated grains there to put them to sleep, and in this way cut off their heads while they are sunk in sleep and take out the gems."

Ro and Liam quote the poem "Fugue" by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, in particular, its opening line, "Ton âme d'eau fuyante et mon âme de soif." Liam translates the line as "Our soul of flowing water, his soul of thirst," referring to the relationship between Quentin and Liam and Ro, who see themselves as Quentin's adoptive parents and frequently bail him out of trouble or otherwise provide for him. A more accurate translation would be, "Your soul of running water and my soul of thirst." Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (1874-1945) was a queer French poet and journalist who was romantically involved with American writer Natalie Clifford Barney (among other women).

The poem "Love Letters" by Victoria Chang, from her 2022 collection The Trees Witness Everything, is also in the couple's private lexicon. After dinner with Ro's colleagues, upon learning that Ro has not told their close friend Eva about their autism diagnosis, Liam quotes:

There is a bird and a stone
in your body. Your job is not
to kill the bird with the stone.

This is a reminder to Ro to let people in; to not go so far in the direction of self-preservation that they actually commit self-harm by refusing help from others. The Trees Witness Everything is Chang's sixth collection, and was named a best book of the year by the Guardian and The New Yorker.

When discussing the joy they have been experiencing with Liam with their therapist, Ro pulls out another reference: "But the happiness, if it's a delusion, is a delusion shared with Liam, and madness as part of a romantic partnership is a solid thing, one way the divinity of love is described in Plato's Phaedrus." This is from a dialogue in which Socrates is laying out the different kinds of madness: prophetic, ritual, poetic, and finally erotic: "There is also a fourth kind of madness—that of love—which cannot be explained without enquiring into the nature of the soul."

Ro refers to and quotes numerous scientific studies, concepts, and thinkers, but none more frequently than the study "Autism as a Disorder of Prediction," by Pawan Sinha et al, published in 2014 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study is significant to Ro for many reasons, but in particular because it addresses the concept of time and causality. Essentially, the study found that some people with autism experience difficulty predicting cause and effect, and that this is a leading cause in the development of symptoms like sensory overload, confusion about social cues, and strict dependence on routine, many of which Ro describes as being factors in their daily life.

Matte silver gelatin photograph of Lucie Delarue-Mardras from 1928, by Henri Manuel (1874–1947), restored by Adam Cuerden

Filed under Reading Lists

This article relates to Mad Eden. It will run in the July 15, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.