BOOKS: Fallen, David Maine (2005)

We all know the stories of Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel. But we only know them in sketchy outline, because that's all the Bible has room to give us. In Fallen, David Maine offers a fleshed-out version of those stories, and it's a sharp, sly, witty family portrait, occasionally irreverent without ever becoming sacrilegious.

Cain and Abel are in conflict from the beginning, brothers whose personalities simply don't mesh. Cain is the dark, brooding one, given to suspicion. Abel's personality is sunnier, but he tends to bossiness; his two favorite phrases, Maine tells us, are "you should" and "you shouldn't."

As for Adam and Eve, they are constantly haunted by the expulsion from the Garden of Eden; their new life is difficult, and they struggle to reconcile their guilt over having eaten the forbidden fruit with their anger at God for setting up such a trap for them in the first place.

Maine draws strong parallels between God's treatment of Adam and Eve, and Adam's treatment of his own children. We learn how to be parents from the way we were raised, after all; and Adam is just as given to cryptic pronouncements and "because I said so, that's why" as God ever was.

And Maine lets his characters contemplate the theological puzzles raised by their own story. Eve tries to solve the riddle of the serpent, for example:

This is what keeps her up nights. No matter how many times she goes around with it, in never quite coalesces into anything logical.

If she had been taught to sin, who then taught her? God and Adam were her only companions. As for the serpent, she had seen him only the one time. And besides, if the serpent was evil, what was it doing in the Garden in the first place?

Far more likely, then, that Eve was born a sinner; of if not born exactly, then created with some flaw that led her astray as surely as a snake, born legless, will crawl on the ground. But in that case, how can she be held accountable for her acts? It's as mad as blaming the snake for its lack of legs.

There's a surprising amount of humor in the book, too, as when strangers move into the area, and Cain and Abel try to figure out where exactly they came from.

Maine's first novel, The Preservationist, was a re-telling of the Noah story (and is also a fine piece of work); if he chooses to continue in this vein, there are certainly enough Bible stories to keep him occupied for many books to come. Both books are highly recommended.