Animal instincts
Modern-day Bible fable is something of a zoo
As the title of Lindsay Starck’s debut novel suggests, Noah’s Wife has the quality of a fable, beginning with the question: who is Noah’s wife? In the Bible she is scarcely mentioned. All the attention is paid to God and the patriarch Noah and his three sons, survivors of the Great Flood that drowned everything on earth except the inhabitants of the ark.
Starck then is faced with t he delicate t ask of bestowing character traits on what is, in effect, a blank character, Noah’s wife, while respecting her mythic dimensions. We never learn this heroine’s name, f or example — she is always “Noah’s wife.”
Adding to the sensation of fable is the lack of references in the novel to specific time periods and locales. It is set almost entirely in a small town, name unknown, but from the sounds of it, somewhere in Washington state or Oregon, where the rainfall on the eastern, mountainous part of the state is usually heavy. Starck’s treatment of time period is equally teasing. We are in modern times, but not too modern — char- acters drive cars and trucks but television is nowhere in evidence, cellphones and computers are unknown and Walmart stores have not yet made an appearance.
It is a very strange small town then, but i ts chief oddity, as the novel opens, is the weather. Upon this settlement it has been raining seemingly forever, an endless downpour that is beginning to wash away chunks of the highway, and create puddles in kitchen floors. Most of all it is eating away at the morale of the villagers, including that of the town’s de facto mayor, a feisty and outspoken woman named Evelyn McGinn, and her husband, daughter and daughter’s fiancé, who happens to be a zookeeper. Other major characters are an Italian storekeeper, a spinster who plays the church organ and approaches life with stoic resignation, and Jonas, a government weatherman who is the closest thing to a villain in the novel. His job is to persuade the townspeople to leave before they drown — a task in keeping with his particular view of life. “No people, no problems” is his motto.
Into this woebegone community — this “small, grey ghost town,” as Starck puts it, “this town beset by darkness, a rain that will not end” — steps the new minister Noah and his wife. The minister has his work cut out for him, a whole community in need of solace and invigoration, a rain- sodden town so gloomy its previous minister may well have committed suicide. (His body was found in the river.) But Noah is determined to save this town — he has confidence in his ability to uplift spirits, a gift that has never failed him. He is a do- gooder par excellence. “He came to this town,” Starack writes, “because he knew he would be needed.”
Noah’s wife is not so eager to challenge the powers of darkness. She is not so certain why they left a plush ministry in the big city to rescue people who may not even want to be rescued. But she has faith in her husband. She will stand by him no matter what.
There ensues a moral drama, with the rain symbolizing all the sadness of the world, causing various townspeople to lose their faith, and others, like Noah’s wife, to discover unseen resources of moral courage. It is a highly schematic narrative with symbolic colours — “grey” versus “gold” — symbolic individuals, the weatherman versus stubbornly independent locals — symbolic creatures, animals versus humans.
As it happens, the town had been supported largely by a tourist attraction, a 200- animal zoo — an enterprise kept going by the tenacity of the zookeeper as the rain washes away exhibits and causes some of the animals to perish or be sold to other zoos. Now the zoo is down to 60 beasts, “becoming as spectral as the town itself,” according to Starck. In a high point of the story, a heavier than usual downpour causes townspeople to save the zoo by boarding creatures in their homes. Henceforward the action is frequently interrupted by bizarre images of wildlife at home in somebody’s house or place of business — a baby alligator in a bathroom sink, a group of penguins in the kitchen cooler of a diner, and other startling and surrealistic sights.
It is all improbable of course, in the way that the zoo itself as a widely visited tourist destination seems to have been improbable. But this episode of boarded wildlife is the heart of this charming tale, the wild animals roaming with hardly any restrictions through the town, even forging bonds of affection with some of their caretakers — all this played against the background of relentless and menacing rain. And why are the prayers of the people for an end to it not heeded?
Given these wonderfully evoked scenes, it may be ungrateful for the reader to point out that the human characters do not always come to life and that the moral debates can become a tad preachy. In the same way, such institutions as an old- fashioned general store and the zoo itself must be seen as quaint hallmarks of an American fable, not to be taken entirely too seriously. The novel itself is as much about the ultimate destruction of an ideal community, with homegrown entertainment provided by an elderly novice magician, and peacocks roaming the streets, as it is about the life and death of the human spirit.