Bowen’s often quoted “it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden” is a metaphor, usually taken out of context: “No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden. One kind of power to read, or the power that reading had over us, is gone. And not only that: it is a mistake too as much as re-open the books of childhood—they are bare ruined choirs.”
In context, the statement is part of Bowen’s remarks on the power of reading which, like the expulsion from Eden, causes us to lose our innocence.
See Elizbeth Bowen. “Out of a Book” In Collected Impressions. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1950; Patricia Laurence. Elizabeth Bowen: A Literary Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan 2019