Surviving the Flood

by Stephen Minot

Noah's youngest son, Ham, describes his family's experiences building and living on the ark

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1981

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main merit of this book is its concept, which is interesting, playful, and extremely well thought-out. The framing narrative is very effective in playing out this concept as well as in moving along the plot (which is also quite good). However, the writing on a sentence level is often (though not always! There are some really good scenes, the one with Athaliah dressing Sapphira springs to mind) unpleasant: it's extremely overwritten in places, doesn't have much flow, and is often evocative in a bad way. It's also teeming with sex scenes that I found to be just inexcusably weird. The kind of strange that, if I were a friend/acquaintance/relative/etc. of Stephen Minot, I would have trouble looking him in the eye for a while. When a piglet performs cunnilingus on the leading lady in your book it is seriously difficult to bring much else away from it!! But that doesn't mean I haven't tried...I liked the continuing thread of how stories and memories warp over time to fit convenient wider narratives...but I always go with my gut, which was left roiling as though I was afloat with Methuselah and the rest.