Hardcover
-
SHIP THIS ITEMTemporarily Out of Stock Online
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
“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.” – Kirkus Reviews
In loving Noah, his wife never imagined she’d end up in this gray and wet little town where it’s been raining for as long as anyone can remember. Newly appointed as pastor, Noah is determined to bring the eccentric townspeople back to the church, but the members of his congregation only want to keep their homes afloat. As the water swallows up the houses, the renowned zoo, and the single highway out of town, Noah, his wife, and their new neighbors must confront not only the savage forces of nature but also the fragile ties that bind them to one another.
Poignant and whimsical, playful and wise, Noah’s Wife challenges our expectations of love, commitment, and redemption. By reimagining this classic story in a new and modern light, the novel asks: how do we know when to stay and when it’s time to go?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780399159237 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 01/26/2016 |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
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.
Reading Group Guide
1. The narrator only confers proper names on a handful of characters; others are “named” through their relationships to others. Why do you think the author chose to do this? Also, even those characters that aren’t “named” by the narrator are referred to by name in conversation with others, except for Noah’s wife. Why do you think she remains “Noah’s wife” throughout?
2. Noah is fighting a difficult internal battle to overcome his crisis of faith. Why do you think he is struggling with his beliefs? Have you ever experienced a situation in which you doubted your ability to have faith? What types of faith, other than religious, do we see in the novel?
3. The biblical flood story describes the “pairs” of animals that march into the ark. How is this novel, too, a story about “pairing”?
4. Why have the townspeople decided to stay in this dying town? How do the characters reconcile their decisions to remain even when it’s clear that it’s dangerous to do so?
5. The town in the story is overcome by the ungovernable forces of nature. What message does this send about the relationship between humans and their environment?
6. Is there a villain is this novel? If so, who and why?
7. The novel is full of references to animals—both literal and metaphorical. What is the role of the zoo in the novel? Do the animals further divide the townspeople or do they bring them together?
8. Noah’s ark in popular culture is often used as a sunny theme in nurseries or at birthday parties—the animals, the rainbows, and so on. Yet the story itself is very dark in its depiction of the destruction of the world. Is this novel optimistic or pessimistic? How does the story combine lighthearted elements with darker aspects?
9. Noah’s Wife is based on a “minor” character in the biblical flood story. Does she succeed as a protagonist? What is the role of “minor” characters in this novel?
10. At the end of the novel, which characters have changed and which have remained mostly the same? Do you think the story portrays a realistic view of how humans react to uncontrollable circumstances? How do you imagine the future will unfold for Noah’s wife and the townspeople? For Noah?