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Fallen by David Maine
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Not long ago David Maine’s first novel
The Preservationist
(now in paperback) caught our collective Watermark fancy. Maine’s story of the
biblical flood and Noah’s struggles with his family, his neighbors, his animals,
and his God captured a familiar tale in a modern language with a sensibility
both humorous and wise. It was a clever, moving, and in some ways brilliant
novel. Just released is Maine’s new novel Fallen, and once again he has dipped into the rich narrative of the Old Testament to recreate the story of Cain and Abel. Although this time around the idea may not seem as fresh, I find Fallen even better than The Preservationist. Perhaps because this tale of sibling jealousy and father/son strife touches a theme that has echoed throughout the whole history of Western literature, Fallen seems more universal and even more contemporary. Adam and Eve are tossed out of Paradise by an angry God and forced to populate the earth, feed and clothe everyone, and figure out how to build a world on their own. They bicker. Their many children hardly know each other and each has some special skill or role. But the angry, brooding, temperamental Cain casts a cloud over this growing family. When the innocent and favored Abel tries to win his brother’s praise, Cain caves his head in with a rock. The world turns ugly. Maine has a deft touch with language and structure. Fallen moves back and forth in time beginning with a “marked” Cain on his death bed, still angry and still visited by the ghost of Abel, and then the story jumps back in time to the murder itself. As he did in The Preservationist, Maine weaves practical domestic issues into a very contemporary conversational and even occasionally flippant tone. The biblical story is all here, but the tale is very much of today. The Creation story may be on the minds of many in Kansas at the moment, but they surely should read Fallen to see just how complicated such an origin of species theory might be. I don’t know if Maine can or should continue this path of recreating biblical stories (even Sue Grafton will presumably quit at the end of the alphabet, but this latest novel is excellent. It makes me wonder do I want more, or do I want him to have a go at something different? His talent is such that we readers will win either way. Bruce Jacobs, September 7, 2005
Related review: David Maine's The Preservationist: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0604-008.html
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