The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks review portrait of a humanised King David

Publish date: 2022-04-01
FictionReview

A decade after wining the Pulitzer prize, the Australian-American author has retold the story of history’s most famous harpist and warrior king

In 2005, Geraldine Brooks’s son began learning the harp. Neither of them then realised his decision would inspire the Pulitzer-winning author to pick up the Bible and read again of history’s most famous harpist and singular warrior king, David.

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In her latest historical novel, The Secret Chord, Brooks has chosen Natan the prophet to narrate David’s tale. Natan, the son of a vintner, joins David and his band of outlaws after David slays his father and uncle for refusing them supplies. By rights, David should have slain Natan as well, to allay any risk the boy would grow to manhood and seek blood vengeance.

However, Natan turns out to be of unexpected value when he has a vision. His oracle promises David the throne, an empire, and a line that will not fail throughout the generations. Given that, at this point, David is being pursued by King Saul, relying on robbery and threats to survive, Natan’s oracle is a tantalising (and life-saving) prospect.

As Natan predicts, David does soar to great heights. Victorious through many tribal battles, David eventually establishes the seat of his kingdom at Ir David (Jerusalem) bringing peace and prosperity to the lands of Israel. He sires many sons with his various wives and one daughter, Tamar.

In Brooks’ portrait, David is brave, charismatic, just. He is a talented songwriter, singer and harpist. But this is also a man who rapes Batsheva, the wife of his best general Uriah, then orders the man be placed on the frontline to ensure his death. This loses him the loyalty of his narrator. As Natan says: “the visions of promised greatness had led him only to bloody deeds and a self-regard that made him think he was above the law.”

Just as Nathan had predicted David’s rise, he prophesies David’s downfall. For ordering that one death, David will pay with four lives, beginning with the death of the infant son conceived in the rape of Batsheva. But of the four fates David must endure, the most awful is the brutal rape of Tamar by her half-brother Amnon.

That David refuses to punish Amnon is wildly inappropriate. And this reveals David’s tragic flaw. Yes, he is arrogant, proud and vain but his real flaw, the one that threatens to undo him, is indulging his eldest sons. This blind spot almost costs David his life as one by one, by foul means and deeds, his progeny try to succeed their father on the throne.

All these ingredients are worthy of Shakespeare or Sophocles but The Secret Chord is not, in the end, a tragedy. There is no heartbreaking ending, no sense of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. One, because despite his sons’ best efforts, David lives to a ripe old age and dies peacefully. Two, cornered by Natan and Batsheva, David is forced to anoint his youngest son, Shlomo (Solomon) as his heir. And as history tells us, Solomon goes on to be a ruler whose very name evokes wisdom.

Of course, Brooks cannot change history – that The Secret Chord is an “almost” tragedy is no criticism. In writing The Secret Chord, Brooks has demonstrated her ambition: to uncover the story of this legendary man, with no real proof of his existence beyond religious texts, and to bring him richly alive.

The Secret Chord is powerful storytelling, its landscape and time evoked in lyrical prose. Using the disaffected Natan as both character and narrator allows Brooks to examine David’s life in critical detail. And while The Secret Chord is a historical novel, it also owes a huge debt to the tone of the Old Testament.

As king, David has been anointed by God and to defy God is to evoke his wrath. David is supposed to be beyond reproach but by succumbing to his weaker and viler instincts, he proves that he is mere mortal. Here is a man who is both great and flawed, just like those tragic heroes Oedipus and King Lear. But in making David so satisfyingly human, Brooks has crafted from The Secret Chord a compelling read, contemporary in its relevance.

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