Customer Reviews

The Preservationist

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Biblical fiction boasts a proud tradition of high literature, perhaps most masterfully seen in Mann's Joseph cycle. Sadly, this fine genre recently seems to have fallen on hard times, now consisting of taking a bible story, adding in a dose of sex and modern sensibility and mixing. Such novels, and they are legion, dilute the power of the original story, offering readers an easily digested mockery.

David Maine, beginning here with his novel "The Preservationist" and continuing with his critically acclaimed tale of Cain, "The Fallen" brings the genre back in the direction of its powerful past. Showing both great respect, thought, and considerable humor, Maine delves into the story of Noah, fleshing out the characters with a sensitive eye towards both the narrative and the reader. Most importantly, while making the characters multidimensional and sympathetic, the novel never tries to white wash to ethical complexity of the Creator destroying most of his creation.

Readers familiar with the biblical account of the flood will recognize that the story includes a heavy dose of family drama. Maine builds on this deftly, creating tension and an engaging thread that binds the story together. Further credit must be given for the author's excellent use of the midrashic stories that surround the biblical text, often to create great humor.

A word must also be said about Maine's excellent use of the character of the Divine. Most biblical fiction either ignores The Creator's central role, a strange betrayal of the original text, or turn the characters into puppets pulled on strings. Far from either of these pitfalls, The Preservationist demonstrates a clever balancing act, turning the story into an interesting and yet strangely familiar tale of the challenges of faith.

In The Preservationist, David Maine takes one of the Old Testament's most fanciful, seemingly allegorical episodes and brings it kicking and bleating to life. Maine takes the story of Noah's ark and dares to fill in the gaps, rendering the logistics of Noah's (or Noe's) feat surprisingly credible while grounding the narrative in fresh, earthy detail. What ultimately makes this novel more than a precarious literary stunt is Maine's deft characterizations--the women, in particular, inject the tale with sly resourcefulness and dry wit. The Preservationist is darkly funny and often irreverent, but its timely themes (which address family, faith, and the very meaning of life) pack a deceptively powerful punch.

This novel captured my attention because of the wonderful cover art, one of the best I've seen. Last year, I read the great "Life of Pi" and enjoyed that story so much, I guess I wanted to read a similar novel...spiritual story of people at sea with a bunch of animals. For anyone who loves "The Life of Pi", I recommend checking out this novel.

I've always had a lot of difficulty with the whole Noah's Ark story, because the idea of ancient man creating a big enough boat to hold two of every species on earth for months (plus the constant feeding and waste removal), that a perfect, all knowing God would become angry enough to kill all of His creation save Noah's family instead of punishing only the guilty, along with the idea of the whole earth under water (which would have to cover the peak of Mount Everest) always seemed a bit far fetched to me. It makes an interesting fictional account and I'm glad that a writer was confident enough to sketch out the details of the Biblical story.

What this novel presents is a very interesting character drama, written from different points of view, which I really enjoyed. I found myself liking the women a lot. They were clever thinkers and intelligent, and I especially liked the part about one of them using knowledge of a coming eclipse of the sun to scare a group of thuggish men to follow her lead. The sentences are well crafted and an immense joy to read. My favorite character is Chem, the more independent son of Noe, and the one who struggles the most in his faith, yet dutifully helps in the building of the ark and keeping up the maintenance while they are afloat. He's not a bad guy at all...just doesn't understand what kind of God would do the kind of things to His creation that they all were witness to and saved from.

Even when delivered to safety to begin human society anew, God still makes demands of Noe, which can be seen as a test of his faith and devotion. Though a slim read, it is worth one's time and won't take long to finish. When I finished reading it, it made me want to go back to the Biblical account of the great flood. I believe this author has found a unique niche and I would love to see his take on other Bible stories. This novel would make an excellent reading selection in Sunday School, if churches are willing to have their own book reading clubs. There are a few profanities and mentions of procreation...but it's done quite tastefully and shouldn't embarrass even the most sensitive of readers. I recommend this novel.

David Maine has produced a modern masterpiece in what is one of the best books of the year so far. The Preservationist (or The Flood in the UK) is the story of Noah told from the perspective of his family, who are variously confounded, angered, excited, nervous or just plain stoic about his Holy orders.

Maine's strength is his stunning portrayal of the women in Noah's life, viz. his wife & three daughter-in-laws. Clearly Maine loves his women and portrays them as storng characters without whom the men would fall apart ion shambles. And most of us know how true that is at any part of time or place.

This is a realistically funny, poignant story told with a great sense of good humour about it, and is bound to be of enormous interest irrespective of whether one is a believer or not. A strong recommendation to anyone interested in literary fiction.

Noe, at six hundred years old, while out searching for a lost lamb, has been chosen; his God, Yahweh, has come to him in a vision and instructed him to build a boat and to prepare for a deluge.

Noe, with his wife, must gather his sons together; the oldest Cham and wife, Ilya, Sem and his wife Bera and the youngest Japheth with Mirn. They must build a very large ark to hold two of every living species that they can collect, store provisions before the rains start and be ready for a very long voyage.

This first published novel by David Maine is different. Different is good. Therefore, this book is good. However, it is much more - it is a readable, if not a familiar bible story, told in a very familiar style for the 21st century. To explain his reference material, the author notes that "Quotations are taken from the 1914 printing of the Douay Bible, translated by the English College at Rheims in 1582 and first published at Douay in 1609. All names are spelled as in that edition."

The reader is right there, inside each character's head, as the trials and tribulations unfold. What are these people feeling? Living at such close quarters, young and old, animals, insects, reptiles and humans, they experience many emotions. The author reveals to the reader what he thinks would be overwhelming the immediate family members in this confinement, especially the feelings toward Noe. During the early part of the voyage, Ilya imparts passionate insight in a modern colloquial reflection:
"To be honest, when the rain started I was shocked. I had supposed my father-in-law to be something of a crackpot, though admittedly a compelling one. I never expected him to be right."

The morbid conditions of imprisonment in the boat during the deluge "...collecting buckets of dung from the holds" the dangers of firing a cookstove so that "Noe shudders: one solid wave would pitch those coals into the tar...", the foul air, "...the relentless swinging of the boat..." are the no-holds-barred style of Maine that makes his telling of this story so vivid.

Sem is delighted that after six months "Just like that the clouds start shredding, sky showing through. I swear I had forgotten what blue looked like, but there it is. I start crying then. We all do." The boat settles into mud and silt. Noe ventures out and on his return commands the family set about releasing the cargo. A marvelous and picturesque representation by the author of what happened next:

"The animals bolted, a snarling, trumpeting host. Elephants squelched knee-deep in marshy soil; big cats slunk away like sinners; buffalo and wildebeest lumbered off. Giraffes ambled, zebras trotted, wolves darted. Rhinos stepped carefully, shortsightedly, like old people."

How could a reader not be enchanted by Maine's words, believer or not?
After a year at their settlement, the human and animal population has thrived and increased; life is good. Noe, while walking in the hills receives another message from Yahweh, his God. Noe is to send his sons and their wives out into the world to explore, settle and populate. The sons and wives have matured and become settled in their ways, but they heed their father's wishes and prepare to leave. Mirn, the wife of Japheth, who was thought to be the immature and brainless one, has obviously grown emotionally and intellectually. She muses and predicts to Japheth:
"Of course people will tell something, it was the end of the world after all. A story like that won't be forgotten. But things will get added and left out and confused, until in a little while people won't even know what's true and what's been made up".

Even those of us who are Christian non-believers will be charmed with this telling and with the style of the author David Maine. A small book in size but even the jacket design and cover by Jonathan Bennett is creative and adds to the originality of the presentation and the contents.

On the surface of it, there's not much to David Maine's novel THE PRESERVATIONIST. After all, most of us probably knew the plot already, right? The animals came two by two, it rained for forty days and forty nights, and there was a rainbow at the end. What else can be said about the oft-told Old Testament tale of Noah's Ark?

A whole lot, as it turns out. From the well-known Biblical story, Maine constructs a fully realized novel that not only explores issues of faith, doubt and devotion that arise from the Biblical text itself but also fully examines the effects of crisis on individuals and families.

Since the novel's basic story is already familiar to so many readers, much of the book's richness arrives from the way the story is told, through the voices of its many exquisitely drawn characters. There's Noe, of course --- Maine utilizes the spelling of names from the 1609 Duoay Bible. Zealous, stubborn, sometimes barely in control of his mental faculties, the aged man is alternately pitied and feared by his family. Noe's wife also narrates several chapters, and the narrative plays with the fact that the woman is usually nameless in most traditional retellings of the story. Noe's three sons also play key roles, each with his own part to play not only in the construction of the ark but also in the telling of the tale.

Surprisingly enough, the heart of Maine's novel lies with Noe's daughters-in-law, who barely receive a mention in most retellings. These women --- strong, industrious and ingenious --- not only take responsibility for collecting the animal species, but also hold the family together through adversity and ensure the perpetuation of the species. Each of these women is an individual, from the fiercely independent northerner Ilya to the powerful but vulnerable African Bera to the childlike but surprisingly insightful Mirn.

For ages, people have had a hard time reconciling how Noah's story could contain literal truths. Maine cleverly, sometimes irreverently, addresses many of the criticisms of the story's plausibility. Despite its playfulness, though, the novel possesses a deep respect not only for the Biblical story but also for the faith that underlies it. As Bera narrates, just when the future seems bleakest for the small band of travelers adrift on an endless sea, "Hope swamps my throat...I hope the waters will fall back and the plants will somehow, impossibly, sprout green in springtime and life will go on as it did before. Except perhaps with less sin, and more approval from God."

Hope, faith and love are the real truths at the center of the Noah's Ark story, and THE PRESERVATIONIST gets right to the heart of those truths.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

I really loved parts of this book. I loved how the author, David Maine, has us look at this classic biblical tale from several different points of view. We see this tale though the eyes of Noe (Noah), his children, his wife, and his daughter-in-laws. I loved how Bera questions God's will and Ilya declares "only a man's god would show love for his creation by destroying it". I love how Noe's basically a stubborn old coot, bedding teenage girls in his five hundredth year, bargaining with giants for timber and pitch and acting almost gleeful at those perishing around him as the waters come pouring down. I loved a lot of things about this book, but for some reason I didn't love the book.

There are been a lot of attempts at recreating Noah's famous adventure, there was a boring movie, a dreadful mini-series and of course many books. The real trick is taking a story that last but for a few pages in the bible and turning it into an epic. Maine is ultimately successful. He is faithful to the scripture while at the same time a critic. How could a God do this to his creation? is a theme that is addressed through out the book. Noah has faith but his son's wives don't see things in such black and white terms. Maine also reminds us that we dealing with Adam's God...a God that's easily spurn. A God that makes his presence know, a God that strikes others down.

For me the biggest problem with this book is that a consistent voice is impossible to hear, this is what makes the book so unique but it also makes it hard to enjoy. I loved the multiple points of view, but I hated what they were doing to the overall story.

I recommend "The Preservationist", it's an excellent complement to the biblical story but for a more fanciful experience about Noah and his Ark I recommend "Many Waters" by Madeleine L'Engle the final book of the "Time Quartet" (the Wrinkle in Time Series). It's more fun than "Preservationist" but its waters aren't as deep.

Rehash the story of Noah and the ark? Why? What writer would tackle such an idea? You have to admire anyone with the courage to make the attempt, but it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. The religious groups are likely to be offended, while the non-religious are sure to turn an apathetic shoulder. Of course, the potential for historical and biblical blunders rises like Mt. Ararat in the mind of any novelist.

But Maine is not any novelist; he's a talented wordsmith. "The Preservationist" walks a tightrope of accuracy and creativity. No, it dances along that tightrope with irreverent--and sometimes poignantly reverent--abandon. Maine breathes color into his settings and life into his characters. He paints Noe's family in realistic hues that leave us catching our breath. We can relate to these people. Their struggles are not unlike our own. They are gritty and real. Through the jaded and flawed character of Noe, God brings about judgment and redemption.

Which brings me to the most astounding accomplishment of "The Preservationist": It never preaches; it never condescends; it surprises and startles; yet somehow it manages to make God's Word seem viable for the questions and struggles of our present age.

On top of that, it's one very entertaining read!

Noe and the Flood retold in a completely refreshing way. Powerful language. Short, well-crafted sentences. Gentle humor. Characters you come to know and love. All in a slim book for a long weekend. Enjoy!

David Maine's first novel is a thought-provoking, fresh twist on one of mankind's oldest stories. As a casual but curious Christian, I was a little apprehensive about picking up a religious book, but I was very pleasantly rewarded. Maine brings Noe [Noah] and his family to real life as a bunch of regular people struggling with day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and fears while fulfilling their monumental undertaking. The story is not sugarcoated in any way; each character gets a chance to speak through their own chapters complete with uncensored remarks, observations, and musings.

This was a quick and easy read, and I find myself hurrying through the pages to find out what happens - even though everyone knows how the story turns out. Maine's storytelling is simple, yet creative and as realistic as it can get for a very unrealistic situation. At some points you can actually visualize the Ark with hundreds of birds perched on its rails, the deck covered in you-know-what. Good book, and even better given that it is the author's first novel!