Review of Sinners and the Sea by Rebecca Kanner

Review
Kanner has filled in the sparse Biblical account of Noah, telling the story of the flood from the point of view of Noah’s wife, and thus creating an extended modern midrash. The style feels consciously simple and stripped down like myths or fables with the emphasis on broad sweeps of events rather than individual character development. Noah’s wife tries to build a “normal” life, but for the most part, exotic, mythic characters engage in actions outside the range of our experience, giving the book a slightly removed quality and putting it into the realm of myth.

In the Biblical story we are told that because of his righteousness Noah is commanded by God to take his wife, sons and the wives of his sons onto the ark. Everyone else is too sinful for saving. Kanner makes this issue of righteousness and what it entails much more complicated. Kanner’s Noah has been attempting to bring the sinners back to God in the manner of a modern day evangelical. He has failed miserably. He’s very old and odd—seen by his fellow mankind as a sort of harmless crackpot. The only person willing to marry his daughter to this aged prophet is a father with a daughter who was born with a birthmark that is interpreted by everyone in her village as the mark of a demon. Her mother deserted her, and her father has striven loyally to protect and love his pariah offspring. Noah decides she’s the only pure woman around, and given the villagers’ interest in killing the demon woman, her father decides the best option is letting her go off with this strange man as his wife. Right off we are presented with a conundrum. This father of Noah’s wife (she’s nameless) seems like a very righteous man. Yet we know he will be among the drowned eventually. The world does indeed have many sinners—we see them in abundance in this book—but God seems to have blinders on about some of the good men and women who also reside on his earth.

This theme of moral ambiguity continues when the sons that Noah and his wife raise turn out to be as flawed as anyone—with tendencies toward unlimited violence and sexual appetites, the two major “sins” that Noah identifies as problematic in God’s eyes. So why do they get to restart the world but none of the other colorful characters we meet will survive? Noah takes God’s directives very literally. He never questions the commands—no one but his wife, his sons, their wives come along, even if it means dumping someone overboard—but we are left less certain.

We see this ambiguous, violent world through Noah’s wife’s thoughts and perceptions. We get a sense of her inner struggles, although we leap over her years of marriage to Noah without hearing about her growth and adjustments, nor what she learns about her husband. We see Noah’s separation from others, but get little sense of his inner world until the very end of the novel when the burden of all the destruction begins to show and Noah and his wife interact in a supportive way toward each other. I would have enjoyed having a fuller sense of this enigmatic, isolated figure. Given the vast scale of death and destruction built into this tale, it is perhaps necessary to keep the reader from getting too close in to the thoughts and needs of the characters in this novel. Perhaps that glimpse is impossible to imagine. Mythic, flat characters make the horror bearable, but it also makes for a distanced read.

Kanner has explored the moral complexities of the story of Noah in a nuanced way. She has given a voice to the previously absent wife of Noah. Her choice in “marking” the nameless woman and then making the damning mark also act as a source of salvation is an interesting twist on the tale. This book leaves the reader with a lot to think about.

“A fascinating look into a feral civilization of turmoil and hardship.” – Historical Novel Review

About the Author
Sinners and the Sea is Rebecca Kanner’s debut novel. Rebecca is a Twin Cities native and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. Her writing has won an Associated Writing Programs Award, a Loft mentorship Award and a 2012/2013 Minnesota State Arts Board Grant. Her personal essay, “Safety,” is listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2011. Her stories have been published in numerous journals including The Kenyon Review and The Cincinnati Review.

Along with other authors including Anita Diamant, Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks and Ron Hansen, Rebecca will be featured in the upcoming title Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists.

You can learn more about Rebecca, and find links to selected stories and essays, at www.rebeccakanner.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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