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Summary
Summary
Full of whimsy and gentle ironic humour, Noah's Wife is a wise and poignant novel about a community battered by a relentless downpour from the heavens, a grey and wet little town teeming with eccentric characters who have learned to endure the extraordinary circumstances of the rain with astonishing human fortitude and wilfulness. Drawing upon the motifs of the biblical flood story to explore the true meaning of community, it asks whether hope can exist even where faith has been lost.
Author Notes
Lindsay Starck was born in Wisconsin and raised in the Milwaukee Public Library. She studied literature and writing at Yale, Notre Dame, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently writes and teaches at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband and their golden retriever. Noah's Wife is her first novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Debut author Starck inventively imagines Old Testament stories within a contemporary setting. Noah and his photographer wife swap his city parish for ministry in an unnamed coastal town where it won't stop raining. The former reverend of the town committed suicide, but the remaining townspeople are a resilient, quirky bunch, including Mrs. McGinn, the outspoken diner owner and de facto mayor, and Mauro, a shopkeeper. Sometimes the naming is a bit obvious: Adam is the zookeeper, and Jonas is the weatherman who foresees doom. Noah begins the thankless tasks of restoring the dilapidated church and encouraging his parishioners, but doubts he is making any difference. His dutiful wife-never named-serves the community on his behalf, tending to displaced zoo animals and concocting a flood evacuation plan. The novel's 40 chapters cleverly reflect the 40 days of the Genesis flood. Minor characters, such as a widower who performs magic tricks, take on more and more significance, until eventually their sermonizing supplants Noah's former role. Meanwhile, his wife largely remains a cipher. Still, the biblical motifs of pairs, exodus, exile, prophecy, and hope echo strongly. Starck's bright voice should hold particular appeal for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Sara Gruen. Agent: Laura Langlie, Laura Langlie Agency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
There's an endless amount of rain, animals from a once-renowned and now ruined zoo, various boats, and a man of God named Noah. But this isn't your average biblical flood scenario. First of all, the setting for Starck's debut is the United States, primarily a spot that was once a charming tourist destination in the hills but which, after the nonstop downpour, has become a moldering ghost town. Second, the era is modern, complete with TVs, trucks, and a visiting state weatherman who warns the townsfolk that no end to the rain is in sight and that they are doomed unless they evacuate within the next week. Charismatic, joyful, energetic minister Noah has arrived, along with his wife, after the previous minister's deathwas it suicide?with a simple mission: to do some good. But can his faith triumph where another has succumbed? Starck's unusual, often charmingly phrased fable is constructed around the responses of a band of individuals to life's unpredictable challenges. The townsfolk who stay onloyal zookeeper Adam, sincere Italian storekeeper Mauro, indomitable diner-owner Mrs. McGinnshow their mettle as the fabric of their lives and homes crumbles away, even billeting the zoo animals after their quarters are inundated. There's comedy in the penguins lodging in Mrs. McGinn's walk-in freezer and tragedy as Noah falters in the face of the onslaught. But Starck's story has largely upbeat messages to deliver: the animals point out a path to safety; the community comes together; true hearts are conjoined; and Mrs. Noah rallies the rescue forces. Variously romantic, symbolic, philosophical, feminist, and fanciful, this is an atmospheric tale that meanders to a sweetly rousing conclusion. Forget the ark, forget the patriarch. It's the women who tend to triumph in this modern take on an Old Testament parable. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
It's safe to assume that a novel called Noah's Wife would feature rain a lot of it. It's been raining so long in the unnamed town that provides the setting for Starck's story that no one can remember when the rain began. When the energetic new minister, Noah, and Noah's wife (she has no other name) arrive, they find a small gray ghost town. Most of the townspeople have fled, just a handful of animals are left in the zoo, which was once a tourist draw, and the previous minister walked into the river and drowned. Noah inspires the townspeople to take the animals into their homes when the zoo is washed away, but his despair at not being able to save the town leads to a crisis in faith and, for his wife, a reevaluation. Meanwhile, the townspeople who have refused to evacuate are trapped and forced to move to higher ground with the animals when their homes are flooded. Starck has crafted a quirky tale with several strong characters, and despite occasional lapses into didacticism, her modern-day fable of faith, hope, loss, and illusion is intriguing.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
It's been raining for years in this isolated town, once renowned for its zoo and its hospitality. Many have moved away, but a few stalwarts remain, refusing to evacuate the drowning village even at the urging of the weatherman. Noah is assigned to the town's church after the previous minister commits suicide, but he suffers his own crisis of faith, while his photographer wife lives to serve others but lacks her own identity. The townspeople gave up on praying long ago and don't want sermons urging patience and endurance. Suddenly, the zoo floods and they unite to save and house animals, from snakes to penguins. Carolina Quarterly editor in chief Starck populates her first novel with memorable characters, of which Noah and his never-named wife are the least interesting. These include an outspoken councilwoman who "keeps the place afloat"; the devoted zookeeper and his long-suffering fiancée, who yearns to leave town; and a cardiac surgeon who worries about her widowed amateur magician father. -VERDICT Starck does more telling than showing, slowing the pace of the action and hobbling character development. Themes of grief, loyalty, and illusion resound, but devotion to the allegory at the novel's core ultimately feels contrived. [See Prepub Alert, 7/6/15.]-Paula Gallagher, Baltimore Cty. P.L. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
In the beginning it was not raining, but it is raining now-- and steadily. It has been raining for so long that even though it has not always been raining the townspeople begin to feel as though this is the case--as though the weather has always been this way, the sky this gray, the puddles this profound. They feel, sometimes, as though the sun has never risen over their town at all, not ever; that its very existence is nothing but a rumor: a product of the same sort of fallacy and telescopic inaccuracy that had everyone thinking for so long that the world was flat or that the constellations were arranged in patterns. "There are no patterns!" they say to one another now-- and darkly. "There are no stars. There is only the rain, and the clouds." They divide their lives into two sections: the time that came before the rain and the time that will follow it. But after a while the rain soaks so thoroughly through their consciousness that they begin to feel as if there is no time but the present. "Today is the only day!" says Mauro to his neighbors when they enter his general store. "You mean--there is no day but today," they say. They propel their arms in circles to rid their sleeves of rainwater. In the beginning they had all believed that it would end because whenever it had rained before (as it rains everywhere), it had always ended. After a few weeks, when it didn't stop, they tried to find a scientific explanation for it. At first they congregated in the library to seek counsel from written accounts of great rains of the past, and rotated the rabbit ears of their television antennae in a vain attempt to find a weather station that would illuminate their situation. As the rain continued, the transmission of their televisions and their radios grew worse and their sense of isolation increased. They turned the damp pages of their books, and when they met on the street they exchanged theories about the rain as some sort of meteorological quirk resulting from a change in the winds or the tides. Later on, as the vitamin D drained from their blood and a damp despair seeped deep into their hearts, they decided that there was nothing that could explain it and so they stopped trying. "It is not something to be explained," they say to one another, philosophically. "It is merely something to be endured!" They endure. What is more: they take pride in their endurance. They strive to see the rain as something that sets them apart, makes them stronger, wetter, wiser. "If this had happened to anyone but to us," they remind each other, "those people would not have been able to bear it. They would have left long ago." Thus staying becomes the quality that singles them out. Staying becomes the symbol of their strength, their response to clouds hanging heavy and low, the mantra that they mutter when they find their outlook to be especially gray. Sometimes, on the days when they believe they cannot bear it any longer, the rain seems to let up--but the clouds never scatter, and a day or two later it has begun to fall again in earnest. The water pours down roofs and rushes through gutters and falls in silver arcs from the eaves to the ground. It collects between the cracks in the sidewalk and then spreads in pools across the pavement. The townspeople postpone school picnics and town parades, put away their bicycles, carve ditches through their lawns, take baseball bats to knock the rust from their cars. They purchase special light boxes from a mail-order catalog because the description promises that the bulbs will cheer them by simulating the sun. They look at the sky so often that they become experts on the many different shades of gray. They collect ponchos and rain boots and wear them with self-conscious style. They learn how to walk two abreast on the sidewalk while carrying open umbrellas. The trick is in the tilt: a slight movement of the elbow toward the side of one's body so that the spokes do not collide. "How lovely the streets look with the color of all the umbrellas!" says Mrs. McGinn to her neighbors with a fierce and dogged optimism. "How pleasant it is not to have to water our lawns or wash our cars." In short: they adapt. They are, in fact, surprised to find how fluid their lives are. They are surprised to discover how easy it is to make these alterations, how simple it is to shift their daily habits to fill the empty spaces and restore balance. Weeks become months and years. By the time the new minister arrives in town with his birdlike wife, it seems as if it has been raining forever. "There really is a certain beauty in it, isn't there?" exclaims the wife, examining the jeweled drops that cling to the windowpanes. She looks attentively to her husband. "My cup runneth over," says the minister, watching the water topple out and over the edge of a brimming rain gauge. His voice is hard and bright. "There are good days and there are bad days," explain the townspeople--and this is true. There are days when they wake full of pristine joy, when the town outside their windows seems cleansed of trash and filth and old muddy dreams. But there are also long hours of mildew and frustration; there are moments when they lash out at their friends with bitter words or threaten each other with strong resentful shakes of their spiked umbrellas. They are not always happy, or at peace. They miss their shadows. Sometimes when they step outside in the morning the first drop of rain on their plastic ponchos echoes in their ears with the resounding toll of a funeral bell. Sometimes when they return home in the faint gray light of evening, they cannot bear the hoarse whispers of their rusted wind chimes and they cannot bear the sight of the water steadily rising in their rain gauges. They despair; and they are sick of despair. With swift and sudden anger they take up the shining cylinders and they hurl the water into the grass and they fling the gauges with great force toward the concrete, standing and watching while the glass shatters and breaks. At the moment of impact they feel something crack within their very souls and then they go inside--repentant-- to find a broom to sweep up a pile of pieces that are jagged and clear. In the rain, the wreckage shines like diamonds. Excerpted from Noah's Wife by Lindsay Starck All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
