The Preservationist
by David Maine
What's Old is New Again
A review by Anna Godbersen
It's easy to see why first time novelist David Maine was drawn to the Noah-and-the-flood story. For one thing, it's richer in dramatic images than your average, autobiographically inspired debut. For another, it's set in a time when cataclysmic events demand a new world order. And yet Maine's retelling of the Noah story eschews lengthy description and allegory, focusing instead on the human element.
The hero of The Preservationist (Maine calls him Noe) "is an ordinary man, six hundred years old, conversing with giants, touched by God." After a vision from Yahweh, Noe must marshal his fractious family of three sons and three daughters-in-law into building the ark and collecting animals. Noe's world has a rustic, primordial feel: The sunlight is fierce, the women are shrewish and tough, there's a lot of squatting and rutting. Maine isn't trying to draw a consistent picture of the pre-flood setting, however, and he throws in some interesting anachronisms. In the last days before the flood, Noe and his family become a tabloid-style curiosity, as a shantytown of curious onlookers develops around the ark to heckle and wonder at them. At another moment, Noe's youngest daughter-in-law describes him as "something of a crackpot." There's a slight Mel Brooks quality here, and sometimes you can almost hear the laugh track. After God has explained his plan ("The unbelievers...shall be drowned in a flood of righteousness and brought before Me for judgement"), Noe "felt his bladder loosen, and hot urine streamed down his thigh." Later on, one of Noe's sons sums up the ark experience: "We'll have a Hell of a story for the grandkids."
Maine can be serious, too. He describes the horror and remorse that Noe's clan feels for the legions of sinners, destined to drown in the flood, with tact and sensitivity. He also imagines their familial relationships with a wry, contemporary depth. At heart, The Preservationist is a story about family, albeit one that has to start over for all humanity.
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