Kanner successfully undertakes a formidable task retelling a familiar religious story through the eyes of Noah’s wife. The...
Noah and his wife take on a boatload of animals and family members—and the close quarters lead to situations that would try the patience of Job…but that’s another story.
Kanner’s debut novel is based on the Old Testament story of Noah’s wife, an unnamed woman who’s been shunned since birth for the mark of a demon, a raspberry birthmark, she bears on her forehead. Her mother is long gone, but her father does his best to shield her from harm and arranges for his 19-year-old daughter to marry Noah, a taciturn man dedicated to preaching about the God of Adam. He takes his wife to Sorum, the town of exiles, where prostitutes, murderers and others sinners run rampant. Old Noah’s sight and hearing aren’t what they used to be, but he’s surprisingly frisky for a more than 600-year-old man. He sires three sons: Shem, who often clings to his mother; Japheth, who prefers fighting to settle scores; and Ham, the funny son with the sharp wit whom his mother favors. Noah’s wife also develops a fondness for Herai, a young girl with mental limitations. She tries to convince Noah that Herai will be a good match for one of their sons, but Noah, fearing that his grandchildren will be similarly afflicted, refuses to permit the marriage. When Noah claims that God is sending a flood to destroy mankind and has chosen his family to build an ark, ride out the storm while tending to the animals they are tasked with saving, and repopulate the Earth once the floodwaters have receded, he’s the subject of ridicule in the community. But the family does as Noah instructs, and as the rains begin, they embark on their voyage. Sibling rivalries become more pronounced aboard the vessel now that each brother has a wife (Ona, Herai and Zilpha), and their mother proves her strength and character as she tries to protect her family from each and from the outside forces that threaten.
Kanner successfully undertakes a formidable task retelling a familiar religious story through the eyes of Noah’s wife. The narrative’s well-articulated, evenly balanced and stimulating—but it’s definitely not the familiar tale that’s so frequently illustrated in children’s books.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9523-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s...
The acclaimed author of The Underground Railroad (2016) follows up with a leaner, meaner saga of Deep South captivity set in the mid-20th century and fraught with horrors more chilling for being based on true-life atrocities.
Elwood Curtis is a law-abiding, teenage paragon of rectitude, an avid reader of encyclopedias and after-school worker diligently overcoming hardships that come from being abandoned by his parents and growing up black and poor in segregated Tallahassee, Florida. It’s the early 1960s, and Elwood can feel changes coming every time he listens to an LP of his hero Martin Luther King Jr. sermonizing about breaking down racial barriers. But while hitchhiking to his first day of classes at a nearby black college, Elwood accepts a ride in what turns out to be a stolen car and is sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory that looks somewhat like the campus he’d almost attended but turns out to be a monstrously racist institution whose students, white and black alike, are brutally beaten, sexually abused, and used by the school’s two-faced officials to steal food and supplies. At first, Elwood thinks he can work his way past the arbitrary punishments and sadistic treatment (“I am stuck here, but I’ll make the best of it…and I’ll make it brief”). He befriends another black inmate, a street-wise kid he knows only as Turner, who has a different take on withstanding Nickel: “The key to in here is the same as surviving out there—you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course.” And if you defy them, Turner warns, you’ll get taken “out back” and are never seen or heard from again. Both Elwood’s idealism and Turner’s cynicism entwine into an alliance that compels drastic action—and a shared destiny. There's something a tad more melodramatic in this book's conception (and resolution) than one expects from Whitehead, giving it a drugstore-paperback glossiness that enhances its blunt-edged impact.
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s novel displays its author’s facility with violent imagery and his skill at weaving narrative strands into an ingenious if disquieting whole.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-53707-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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