I have not one but two books for you today that are essentially biblical fan fiction. Both Before the Flood by A.A. Milne and Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle are (as their titles might suggest) based on the story of Noah’s ark but that is all they have in common.
Before the Flood by A.A. Milne is a one-act play but not, I think, the kind of play most churches would pick to perform at any of their events, despite the biblical origins of the story. Milne imagines the domestic affairs in Noah’s home in the months between him receiving his divine instructions to build the ark and the day when the rains begin. The question hanging over them all – Noah’s wife, his three sons and their respective wives – is whether the floods will actually come and be quite as extreme as Noah has been ‘told’. It can be quite amusing at times, as the family debates the ark-related logistics that Noah’s divine instructions do not account for: how can they bring all those animals on board and prevent the predators from eating their natural prey? If the animals aren’t going to eat one another, what are they going to eat? Does the family need to bring extra animals on board for catering purposes? On the whole though, it is not the best of Milne’s work and easily my least favourite of his plays. I only laughed once, when, after Noah tells his family that they will be the only ones to survive the coming flood, one of the sons turns to his wife and says “Aren’t you glad now that you married into this family?” (or words to that effect). The book ends when the rain starts to fall, leaving the question of whether Noah is a prophet or a madman unanswered.
Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle, on the other, leaves no doubt as to the veracity of Noah’s claims. In fact, Noah is but a minor character and he and his ark are ignored for a large portion of the book. The focus in this children’s book from 1986 is on the interaction between the earthly and divine in this imagined pre-flood world where angels walk among men. As soon as I started reading, I remembered why I found this book so weirdly fascinating when I was young. Not good, necessarily, but fascinating. It is the fourth book in the “Time Quartet”, the series that begins with A Wrinkle in Time, L’Engle’s most famous book, but it was the only one I ever felt compelled to reread. The mechanics of L’Engle’s idea of time/space travel never appealed to me but seraphim and nephilim, for some reason, did.
Sandy and Dennys Murry, the teenage twins who find themselves transported back to (they eventually realise) biblical times after disturbing an experiment in their parents’ home lab, are not remotely interesting. They are flat and really unbelievably stupid at times. Stuck thousands of years out of their own time period, they are remarkably relaxed, even with their knowledge of what is about to happen. Having befriended Noah and his family, they are perfectly content to work in the garden, help build the ark when the time comes, and pine after Noah’s youngest daughter, Yalith. Yalith is far more developed than either of the boys – all the female characters are – but still not very compelling. Still, she doesn’t need to be. This is not a book that requires in-depth characterization. Instead, we get to read a lot about sex, which some might find slightly surprising for such a religious book. There is a worrying but not entirely consistent tendency to equate sexual promiscuity with evil but the real message is that sex is a good thing for those in a loving relationship (not necessarily marriage) and a lack of emotional involvement cheapens what should be an intimate experience between two people. That, as well as a general opening of the twins’ minds to outlandish possibilities, seems to be the main lesson they learn over the course of the book.
Honestly, neither book is particularly excellent. Many Waters can feel stilted in its need to over explain both its scientific and religious elements and Before the Flood, though it asks the questions any skeptic ponders while reading the story of Noah, does not do so with Milne’s usual energy and so the story drags along. Both author’s approaches are interesting but their execution is lacklustre.
Biblical Fan Fic. I love the concept.
To go along with this theme, have you ever read Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage? That might make an interesting third to this duo of reviews. That was a strange book, that was, which I read with an equal mixture of appallment (is that a word? 😉 ) and fascination!
Many Waters – I read, or tried to read, that one a few years ago and couldn’t get through it. I remember being quite taken with L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time in Grade 7 – it was a novel study book in English that year – but subsequent experiments with the author have not been completely successful, either her juveniles or adult romances. It was interesting to read your review of it; it reflects my own impression of the book, though I did not make it to the end.
‘Biblical fan fiction’ – hilarious!
I think this was AAM’s last play, and I agree, definitely not his best work by any means. Oddly it was the first play of his I read, having stumbled across it for 75p in a secondhand bookshop – I didn’t realise how tricky it was to find at that point!
I read Many Waters for the first time as an adult and thought it was one of the weirdest books I’d ever read at the time.
I remember reading Many Waters when I was younger and enjoying it, though like you, I found the twins boring and was more interested in the seraphim and nephilim. It was my favourite of the Time Quartet books, though I didn’t like any of them enough to want to re-read them.
I never thought much of Many Waters. I enjoyed A Wrinkle in Time & the 3 others in the set, but Many Waters felt like a bit of a clumsy afterthought. And I never really liked the twins much anyhow!