The Preservationist By David Maine St. Martin's, 230 pp., $21.95 Buy this book more books most popular most commented A G.I.'s Strange War Tale by Sean Gardiner Horacio Castellanos Moya Does the Twisted by Jed Lipinski The 2008 New Yorker Cartoon Standings by BRIAN PARKS Sasa Stanisic Turns Gruesome History Beautiful by Sidra Durst Rivka Galchen's Twisty Mistaken Identities by zach baron Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein by Tony Ortega Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing? Savage Love by Dan Savage At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X by Andy Kropa Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem by Graham Rayman The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17) Nat Hentoff Scientology's Crushing Defeat (14) Tony Ortega Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9) Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6) Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5) Savage Love: Dan Savage

First-time novelist David Maine, an American who lives in Pakistan, intrepidly imagines the details of ordinary life on the ark. Maine's Yahweh is an indifferent taskmaster, infiltrating Noe's head with his commands and growing irritated when called upon. The sons, Sem (the good boy), Cham (the rebel and primary boat-builder), and Japheth (the accident-prone rascal)—all good, strong characterizations—bring their wives into Noe's divine scheme. Writing in a breezy present tense, Maine imagines how they spend their time: telling stories, feeding larvae to birds, getting bummed out, rutting. He writes of the ship's interior: "From the darkness around them rises a dull effulgence of elephant dung, of rhino shit and wet hippo gas." The wives bring a gently feminist slant to the tale. They set out to gather the animals, and Ilya, who hails from a matriarchal land in the north, argues for a god that is part male and part female, "a hermaphrodite, perhaps."

While the characters are distinguished from one another by quirks and obsessions, their voices are not—a problem, as the chapters alternate points of view à la As I Lay Dying. Nonetheless, the existential loneliness that overcomes them once they leave the ark is palpable, more so when they must separate to populate the ends of the earth, leaving stones along their trail so they might someday find one another.