What is this Ark?
Writing a book with “Mrs. Noah” in the title brings up certain expectations, undoubtedly. The title sounds like it might be parody or at least a straight retelling even if satirically told. But this proves to be something substantially deeper that is almost certain to subvert expectations. For instance, the Ark here is not a literal vessel, but a metaphorical container of those parts of myth and history where women were diminished or left out entirely or, of course, worse:
“The Ark of Women is the Other One. The Salon des Refusées. Des Refusantes. Cruise ship for the females who are only fitted in as monsters: the gorgons, the basilisks, the sirens, the harpies, the furies, the viragos, the amazons, the medusas, the sphinxes.”
Daphne and Apollo
The book is about a history of legend and myth which has been passed down through the ages via patriarchal filtering. This filter has squeezed out many of the parts of the story that implicate women in a positive light and reveal their consequential roles. It is not just Noah’s wife who gets transformed here, but also familiar characters in familiar stories like Daphne and Apollo, of whom Mrs. Noah argues, metaphorically:
“This story has an earlier version. Rewritten, it has almost been erased. Its forgotten words, trampled in the dust of the male scholars’ sentences, yelp in their elegant pauses, poke through the gaps between their graceful lines.”
The Flood
Everything in the story is symbolic as it relates to the original myth. The horrific flood brought down upon all of humanity by a God for seemingly no substantive reason included. Noah is not the main male character in this drama; that honor goes to the Gaffer, the self-proclaimed author of the Bible who is literally writing down “the Word of God.” He has a unique metaphorical perspective on the purpose of the Flood. Well, maybe not a unique perspective, but an idiosyncratic way of describing it:
“I saw the Flood as a sort of correction fluid, blanking out all the bad bits.”
The Librarian
Perspective in the novel becomes increasingly diffuse and ambiguous. It becomes harder to tell what is reality and what is a vision and whether the speaker is being sincere or mystical. It call comes back around to the allegorical Ark which at a point comes to resemble more than anything a library. And Mrs. Noah’s murky recollections of a possible past make this resemblance clearer even as reality becomes a more ambiguous concept:
“The unconscious of the library is held in the bookstacks…I clamber about Western culture’s brain. I find the locked room of uncatalogued, inaccessible and forbidden erotica, and I read these books too.”
Dreams
Visions run fast and furious through this narrative. And it all begins at the beginning. The story opens with a particularly vivid vision that is almost a fever dream. And that fever dreams concludes with one of the most visceral comparisons-by-simile to be found in the novel:
“I put my hand to my side, which is seared and raw, as though my skin has been torn off, as though Noah has been unpeeled from me by the fire. I am burning too. Loss is more than absence: it is the fire.”
