Rebecca Kanner

Dear Readers,

Sinner and the Sea by Rebecca Kanner is not for everyone.  I know I have said that before about books, but this one for a couple of different reasons.  First and foremost because of the time in history that it is written about.  Since this is the story of Noah’s wife, it is about a time in the earth’s history where man-kind was so evil and so awful that God decided to destroy us all and start over.  Wow how bad could humans be?  Well Rebecca doesn’t leave a lot of doubt and that comes through in her writing. 

The characters you meet are base and they use language that we normally wouldn’t use.  They have no social skills and if you can say a society is completely depraved of God, these characters are it.  At first I thought maybe she had gone over the top, but what would make a loving God decided to get rid of the very beings he had made in his image?  Well it wouldn’t be a bunch of people that were only slightly sinful, but completely and happily sinful. 

The second reason is because it embellishes the story from the Bible.  This is not the safe story that we tell our children were smiling Noah and his family welcome all the peaceful animals on to the ark, but one that is full of the failures of humans.  One that I am not sure I would want to read about.  There are a few points of the story that I didn’t agree with.  Noah comes across as a self-centered man that has little time or love for his children and family.   I feel that Noah would have wanted to make sure his family would worship and love the same God he did, at the very least try to instruct them.  Instead the family is left pretty much to their own devises and because the wife does not believe in Noah’s God, neither do the boys. 

I did find this book interesting and it did make me once again think about a Bible story that has become very clinical and clean.  What was it like at that time?  What was it like to know that you were never going to be seeing your family and friends again?  Something I never thought about, could they hear the other people as they were drowning?    As the flood waters rose, did people try to fight their way onto the boat?  How much work was it to feed/clean/take care of the animals?  Did they all get along well?  Did they fight amongst themselves?  Did they think God forgot about them? 

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.  It is not a novel for everyone, but it is one book that is probably not going to leave you comfortable as you read it either.

Happy Reading