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Type: fiction
Status: liked
Author: David Maine
Description: This story of Cain & Abel & Adam & Eve (after their banishment from The GardenThis story of Cain & Abel & Adam & Eve (after their banishment from The Garden of Eden) is necessarily even more imaginative than The Preservationist, because there's so much less detail in the biblical account. This one, with its more serious themes of fratricide & banishment & disinheritance (both God's of Adam & Eve & theirs of Cain), lacks much of the humor that was integral to The Preservationist, but it has the same wit & keen insicht couched in the same spare, precise prose. Here the story is told backwards, with each chapter (40 of them, a good biblical number) about a time preceding the previous one. Through the characters' memories, Maine skillfully drops hints about earlier events but also introduces surprising developments in nearly every chapter. And his method heightens our sense as readers of how events shape later events. ...
2009-11-29
