Christian Fiction & Literature, Literary Styles & Movements - Fiction

Fallen

Name: Fallen
Author: David Maine
ISBN: 9780312328504

by David Maine

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Overview

From the internationally acclaimed author of The Preservationist comes a provocative retelling of the story of Eve and Adam, Abel and Cain -- a novel of temptation and murder, exile and loss.

Once expelled from the Garden, Eve and Adam have to find their way past recriminations and bitterness to construct a new life together in a harsh land. But the challenges are many for the world's first family. Among their children are Cain and Abel, and soon the adults must discover how to be parents to one son who is everything they could hope for and another who is sullen, difficult, and rife with insecurities and jealousies. In the background, always, is the incomprehensibility of God's motives as He watches over their faltering attempts to build a life. In Fallen, David Maine has drawn a convincing, wryly observant, and enthralling portrait of a family -- one driven (and riven) by passions, jealousies, irrationality, and love. The result is an intimate, in-depth story of brothers, a husband, and a wife -- people whose struggles are both completely familiar and yet utterly original.

About the Author
DAVID MAINE was born in 1963 and grew up in Farmington, Connecticut. He attended Oberlin College and the University of Arizona and has worked in the mental-health systems of Massachusetts and Arizona. He has taught English in Morocco and Pakistan, and since 1998 has lived in Lahore, Pakistan, with his wife, novelist Uzma Aslam Khan.

Synopsis

Once expelled from the Garden, Adam and Eve had to find their way past recriminations and bitterness to build a new life in a harsh land.

The Washington Post - Ron Charles

The book's best moments take place in the middle, when the family is at its fullest. Maine is enormously talented at extrapolating rich characters from a few brief verses in the Scriptures. In his telling, the first family is comically (and tragically) typical.

About the Author, David Maine

David Maine was born in 1963 and grew up in Farmington, Connecticut. He attended Oberlin College and the University of Arizona, and has worked in the mental health systems of Massachusetts and Arizona. He has taught English in Morocco and Pakistan, and since 1998 has lived in Lahore, Pakistan, with his wife, novelist Uzma Aslam Khan.

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Editorials

Janet Maslin

Fallen - an instantly disarming book, thanks to the image of squabbling cherubs on its cover - is a risky, original undertaking. It is not one of those parasitical fables that siphon all their inspiration from borrowed material. Mr. Maine uses 40 chapters (a number with much biblical resonance, starting with Noah and the flood) to reconstruct the early Book of Genesis in reverse, as a way of amplifying hindsight and regret.
— The New York Times

Ron Charles

Publishers Weekly

Maine tackles biblical narrative once again in his inventive second novel (after 2004's The Preservationist, which starred Noah and his large brood), a spirited retelling of the creation yarn and the conflict between Cain and Abel. The novel opens with Cain as a "jumpy, scared old man," marked for life and wandering the desert in exile for killing Abel. Flashing back years, Maine fills in the story: Cain's "smoldering challenge[s]" to Adam's authority; his scorn for Abel's innocence; his lust and greed and anger. (Eve was convinced that Cain, in utero, killed a twin brother.) Maine's equally compelling retelling of the creation myth explores, among other things, the dynamic between the world's first husband and wife as it evolved, bumpily and confusingly, after they were banished from the Garden of Eden. What makes this intelligent, funny, meaty and moving novel so fascinating is the ease with which Maine inserts a modern sensibility and keen psychological analysis even as he jumps back and forth between the timelines of the two narratives and remains faithful to their biblical roots. Agent, Scott Hoffman. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Maine uses the story of Adam and Eve and the subsequent fatal conflict between their two sons as the basis for this meaty, lusty tale. Fallen opens with an introspective Cain in his later years and works backward from there to Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden. The novel is divided into four sections. The first centers on the Cain of the present: shunned by society after murdering his brother, he is a surly, reclusive man whose one joy in life is his son Enoch (or Henoch in the story). The second series of chapters relates Cain's and Abel's growing up years and the events that lead to Cain's decision. The focus then shifts to Adam and Eve and the years they spend raising their family. Finally, readers are taken back to the events leading up to the Fall and the period that immediately follows their expulsion. The portrayals are vibrant and three-dimensional; there is a raw energy to Adam and Eve, especially, that makes them almost leap off the page. Cain's simmering resentment is disturbingly appealing, and the reverse chronology is a masterful stroke that emphasizes the stark power of regret. The language throughout the book is spare and beautiful, and the author weaves his story with such finesse that readers are left thinking, "Well, of course it happened that way!" Fallen breathes new life into one of humanity's oldest stories.-Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A thought-provoking account of man's fall from grace. In illuminating the story of Genesis (his 2004 novel ,The Preservationist, concerned Noah and the Ark), Maine re-imagines the first family, from Adam and Eve's expulsion to the murder of Abel, offering an intimate portrait of a damaged, all-too-human clan. Told in reverse chronology, beginning with the death of Cain, the novel inches backward, each movement unveiling those wounding moments and fatal flaws that can lead to disobedience and murder. As the world's first murderer, Cain spends years wandering, shunned and stoned, bearing the mark of his crime and also protected by it, until he finds a wife and has a son, and then, ironically, becomes the first architect and builder of a great city. As a young man, Cain is clever and moody, a diligent worker, but also dangerously questioning, and as with all natural rebels, a thorn in the side of authority. So unlike mild-mannered Abel, full of mediocre advice and mindless acquiescence (even Adam sees Cain as the more noteworthy man), Cain seems predestined to murder (Eve expects no less from her child, whom she suspects killed his twin in utero). Though the tragedy of the two brothers, and the repercussions in a world in which murder can now exist (Cain disturbingly happens upon a young boy who has followed his murderous example) is good drama, the story's winning moments are in examining the novelty of being the first of your kind, of having to literally discover everything in the world. Eve copies a spider's web for a fishing net, and Adam brings home fire from a lightning strike-and both are tormented that any of this has to be invented at all, because life was perfect in the Garden. Atonce witty and poignant, Maine captures the frail humanity of the world's first family.

From the Publisher

"Author David Maine brings motive and inner dialogue to the story, and narrator Simon Vance brings those elements alive, from Cain's rage at the God who cast his parents from Eden and his regret at his murder of Abel, to Eve's fears during the first childbirth and Abel's and Adam's faithful love of God."—-AudioFile