The Secret Chord - Geraldine Brooks Audiobook

Written by Geraldine Brooks
Read by Paul Boehmer
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: October 6, 2015
Duration: 13:07:09

“A page turner. . .Brooks is a master at bringing the past alive. . .in her skillful hands the issues of the past echo our own deepest concerns: love and loss, drama and tragedy, chaos and brutality.”

A rich and utterly absorbing novel about the life of King David. Brooks takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.

A man of contradictory impulses, David was also a brutal and pitiless warrior living in “a culture of blood revenge.” In his younger years he was an outlaw and renegade, a raider and marauder. He was greedy, vain, intemperate, stubborn, and ruthlessly pragmatic. He loved his wives, however (at least most of them), and doted on his sons and daughter. His outstanding achievement was to unite the tribes of Judah and Israel to establish the first Hebrew kingdom.

Brooks develops David’s complex personality and the bloody events of his tumultuous times through the narration of his prophet, Natan, of whom there is a tantalizing mention in the Bible (Chronicles). This format allows Natan to speak with various members of David’s family, his generals and soldiers, and even his enemies. Central to the narrative are a prediction and a curse. Through Natan, God (always called “the Name”) first promises David a throne, an empire, and a line of descendants. Later Natan foretells tragedy; David “will be scalded by the consequences of his choices” and will pay for the deaths he has caused “four times over.”

These tragic events provide plenty of melodrama and considerable suspense. While most of the plot is fictional conjecture, Brooks evokes time and place with keenly drawn detail. Although her decision to use archaic language, including the Hebrew spelling of names (Solomon is Shlomo; Bethlehem is Beit Lethem; the Philistines are the Plishtim) sometimes slows the narrative, she compensates with the verve of an adroit storyteller.

Narrator Paul Boehmer delivers a superb performance of Geraldine Brooks’s reimagining of the life of King David. Boehmer’s characters live through his vocal magic. He creates David, his sons, his wives, his enemies, and Natan, the narrator of the tale. A prophecy foretells that David, the shepherd boy, is destined to be king of the Jews. Once David defeats Goliath, his star begins to rise. He’s a fierce soldier, a natural leader who is capable of Old Testament-worthy vindictiveness and uncontrollable rage, yet his music transfixes all who hear it. Boehmer captures every nuance as David overindulges his baseness and carnality. Further, Boehmer’s Hebrew pronunciations are splendid. Brooks offers a larger-than-life portrait of a charismatic David who was human yet capable of horrible deeds, and Boehmer captures all those qualities. © AudioFile 2015