For the last two weeks (I know, I know, two weeks is a long time, but as a mother of two who works two jobs, my allotted reading time is very limited, so cut me some slack) I've been reading Geraldine Brooks' The Secret Chord, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. I was a little apprehensive about reading a fictionalized account of the life of a Biblical personality (having advanced through the childhood Sunday School ranks and studied Biblical history extensively, I tend to look at things like this very skeptically), but as a fan of Brooks' other works, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and delved in wholeheartedly. And was not disappointed.
The Secret Chord is a richly-detailed, unapologetically open-minded interpretation of the story of David, the Israelite king "after God's own heart". Told in the words of Nathan the Prophet, the narrative moves backward and forward in time, so as to include all of David's life, from childhood until death, and chronicles his greatest accomplishments - and his biggest failures. At once both triumphant and heartbreaking, I found this story to be compelling and real.
Brooks avoids the trap of attempting to add too much detail to make the text sound authentic to the period; rather, she just did excellent research and wrote the story with confidence, knowing that her knowledge would carry the story. As a reader, I appreciated this. In fact, I found her story so realistic that, at times, I cringed with the truth of what was happening. Brooks does not shy away from setting a scene; there were several that, while I read them, made me admire her writing chops. David's life was not one free from horrors, and in her effort to tell the whole story, Brooks makes readers a party to those horrors, as well. There is nothing crass, nothing gratuitous, just reality. And I felt David's jubilation when he succeeds, and his grievous pain when he fails.
Brooks takes her time with the characters, developing several of them so deeply a reader begins to understand their desires, their motivations. Readers get to know them, and I found myself starting to side with one individual over another, or being suspicious of certain characters, piteous toward others. David, Nathan, Michel, Bathsheba, Joab, and even some of David's children, like Absalom and Solomon, all but leap off the page, because in telling David's story, Brooks inevitably also tells their stories.
The deeper I got into this book, the more I fell in love with it. I do not think it's for everyone - there are going to be some dyed-in-the-wool, conservative evangelicals who won't see it for what it is - a work of fiction. However, if someone is looking for an interpretation of the life and times of one of the (arguably) most interesting characters in the Bible, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book.
I press forward in my Reading Resolution to my next non-fiction title, which I hope will be a fun romp through the high seas. I will be setting sail with the Pirate Hunters by Robert Kurson. Arghhhh!
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