Michèle Roberts, The Book of Mrs Noah

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If The Wild Girl problematizes its own narrative trajectory, The Book of Mrs Noah is an exploded text. Michèle Roberts' fourth novel is fragmentary and allusive – a literary Flood – containing a multiplicity of narratives and references to other works, most notably the Old Testament. The novel begins in Venice, employing that city as a route to many watery metaphors and fabulous scenarios. Any reader expecting a continuous, realist narrative will be sorely disappointed, as The Book of Mrs Noah plays with generic forms, dabbling in magical realism, biblical fables, biography and autobiography. The central narrative, although it relinquishes all authority in its playful relationship to the truth, is the tale of M…

2038 words

Citation: White, Rosemary. "The Book of Mrs Noah". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 April 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10198, accessed 28 March 2024.]

10198 The Book of Mrs Noah 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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