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Intro
In “The Stowaway,” a woodworm narrates its experience sneaking aboard Noah’s Ark with the other woodworms after Noah denies them entry. Noah is far from the hero that modern humans idolize. He is cruel and temperamental, and he and his family mistreat the animals. They divide the animals arbitrarily into the categories of “clean” and “unclean,” which introduces the notion of hierarchy to the animals. Noah is not at the top of this hierarchy, however. He serves God, and he is desperate for God’s approval. At the end of the Flood, Noah sends a raven and a dove in search of land. The raven finds land, but Noah decides to credit the dove, because it makes a better symbol. When the Ark docks on land, most of the animals flee. The ones who remain are domesticated and become empty shells of themselves. The woodworm suggests that the way humans have put Noah on a pedestal reflects their tendency to ignore truths that don’t fit into the narrative they want to believe.
In “The Visitors,” popular history lecturer Franklin Hughes is working on a cruise ship when the ship is hijacked by terrorists. The hijackers divide the passengers by nationality and hold them hostage while making demands to world governments. The leader of the hijackers instructs Franklin to give a lecture that explains to the hostages that they will be shot in pairs every two hours. In exchange, the hijackers will spare the lives of Franklin and his assistant/girlfriend Tricia. Franklin is conflicted, but he ultimately agrees. He gives the lecture, and eight people die before the American Special Forces arrives and kill the hijackers. Tricia leaves Franklin and doesn’t speak to him again.
In “The Wars of Religion,” jurist Bartholomé Chassenée defends the woodworms in a trial in 16th-century France. The townspeople and their prosecuting lawyer accuse the woodworms of being sinful creatures sent by the devil to eat through the foundation of their church, but Chassenée effectively argues that woodworms lack human reason. He adds that the story of the Ark does not include woodworms, so Man does not necessarily have dominion over them. Chassenée wins his case.
In “The Survivor,” a woman named Kath becomes obsessed with the potential of nuclear disaster and an ensuing war. She leaves her boyfriend Greg, and, along with two cats, sets out into the open ocean to escape the apocalypse. She is plagued by bad dreams, however, in which she is in a hospital bed after a mental break caused by Greg breaking up with her. Kath’s health declines on her boat, and it becomes increasingly unclear whether her version of events is true, or if she is in fact in the hospital and the doctor in her dream is telling the truth. When she finds land, Kath’s health doesn’t improve, but the female cat gives birth to kittens, showing that life will continue after Kath’s impending death.
“Shipwreck” begins with a description of the 1816 wreck of the French ship Medusa. Most of the sailors escape the crashed ship on a raft, but they have no way of navigating or steering the raft. Only a small portion of the crew survive the two weeks they are stranded on the raft, and the ones that do survive are forced to resort to cannibalism. A modern-day narrator, suggested to be the voice of the author Julian Barnes, discusses how the painter Théodore Géricault turned the shipwreck into the artwork The Raft of the Medusa.
“The Mountain” takes place in the late 1830s. Amanda Fergusson is a passionately Christian young woman, and after her beloved father the Colonel dies without joining her in her faith, she decides to redeem his soul by visiting the remnants of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey. She brings her father’s friend Miss Logan, who witnesses Amanda lose her compassion and reason in pursuit of the Ark. On the women’s way down the mountain, Amanda is fatally injured, and she insists Miss Logan leave her behind. Miss Logan later realizes that Amanda likely hurt herself on purpose to prove her faith in God and His divine plan.
“Three Simple Stories” is split into three parts. The first follows an 18-year-old teacher who meets an old man named Lawrence Beesley, who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The teacher feels some disdain for Beesley, since he believes that any noble passenger would have gone down with the ship, and he believes Beesley’s survival confirms his own cynical view of the world. In the second part, the modern-day narrator discusses the story of Jonah and the whale, and how stories continue to influence people even if they don’t believe in them. The third part tells of the failed voyage of the St Louis, a ship full of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. The St Louis is forced to return to Europe after no country will accept its passengers.
In “Upstream!”, an actor named Charlie writes a series of letters to his girlfriend Pippa, who does not reply. He is filming a movie in the South American rainforest, and he is fascinated by the Indigenous people working as extras on the movie. He exoticizes them as wiser than Europeans, only to quickly change his tune when the extras rob the film crew and lead to the death of one of Charlie’s fellow actors. When Charlie leaves the forest, Pippa rejects him due to an affair he had.
“Parenthesis” is an essay by Julian Barnes that constitutes the novel’s “half chapter.” In it, Barnes talks about the woman he loves and claims that love and truth are intimately connected. Both are seemingly impossible to experience in their purest form, but humans need to continue trying to experience them anyway.
In “Project Ararat,” an astronaut named Spike Tiggler walks on the moon and hears what he believes to be God’s voice telling him to find Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat. He recruits a team to help him, and after they raise enough funds, Spike and his friend Dr. Jimmy Fulgood scale Mount Ararat in search of the Ark. They find human remains, but these belong to a woman (implied to be Amanda) rather than Noah. Undeterred, they plan to search again.
In “The Dream,” the narrator wakes up in Heaven and learns that Paradise is tailored to the people who believe in it. It only exists because people believe in it, and people believe in it because they need something to have faith in. Eventually, though, everyone gets tired of Heaven and chooses to cease to exist. The narrator spends several centuries in Heaven, until one day, he “wakes up.”
