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THE SECRET CHORD

Geraldine Brooks

A vivid, enthralling novel about the life of King David, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March.
With more than two million copies of her novels sold, New York Times bestselling author Geraldine Brooks has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. Now, 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.

The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected. We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans.

Geraldine Brooks is the author of four novels, the Pulitzer Prize–winning March and the international bestsellers Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders. She has also written the acclaimed nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Born and raised in Australia, she lives on Martha’s Vineyard with her husband, the author Tony Horwitz, and their two sons.
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Book

Published 2015-09-22 by Viking

Book

Published 2015-09-22 by Viking

Comments

Thanks to Brooks, David is as compelling as he is contradictory, with the writing in THE SECRET CHORD as lyrical as the lyre that David plays…This new novel is rich and imaginative. It also brings a little-known person and place — ancient Judah in Israel — to vivid life… Brooks crafts a person with fears and conflicts no different from those experienced by many of us today. We feel his desires and understand his mistakes… The Bible’s Book of Samuel says that when David played the harp, those around him would forget their troubles and feel happiness. Brooks has written a book to do the same. Read more...

British: Little Brown UK, Australia & New Zealand: Hachette Australia, Brazilian: Globo Livros, Italian: Neri Pozza ; Romanian: Grup Media Litera s.r.l.

Two kinds of readers might exult over Geraldine Brooks's biblical epic about the life of King David, The Secret Chord. The first can cite chapter and verse of the Good Book. The second craves the resonance of the best historical fiction. Both will relish this new novel, which brings alive the Old Testament world of a thousand years before the Christian era… It's a tall order to breathe life into such a human being, and Geraldine Brooks manages it admirably. Read more...

A skillful reimagining. . .gracefully and intelligently told. Read more...

In her gorgeously written novel of ambition, courage, retribution, and triumph, Brooks imagines the life and character of King David in all his complexity. . .The language, clear and precise throughout, turns soaringly poetic when describing music or the glory of David’s city. . .taken as a whole, the novel feels simultaneously ancient, accessible, and timeless.

There's something bordering on the supernatural about Geraldine Brooks…she seems able to transport herself back to earlier periods, to time travel. Sometimes, reading her work, she draws you so thoroughly into another era that you swear she's actually lived in it...Brooks's vision of the biblical world is enrapturing. Read more...

This is the original Game of Thrones…[Brooks provides] vivid characterizations…each of the members of [David’s] court comes into sharp relief as they play a part in David’s rise and fall.

The David that bursts off the page in this chronicle is a larger-than-life commixture of virtues and flaws…THE SECRET CHORD won me over. Its storytelling magic is as timeless as the tale it tells. Read more...

David is spiritually bereft, undone by lust and compulsively talky—an avatar of contemporary American neurosis. Read more...

[I]nsightful and impeccably researched.

[A] deeply imaginative exploration of the life of this once powerful but deeply flawed ruler…Brooks is a gifted, engrossing storyteller… Read more...

It’s this David — gifted artist, vainglorious alpha male, conflicted husband and father — that we meet in The Secret Chord, the beautiful, subtle, grave new novel by Geraldine Brooks. For Brooks, a former journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for March (2005), David is interesting not for his status as the most beautiful man in art history but, rather, for his matrix of contradictions, his prodigious talents at least balanced, if not nullified, by his instinct for self-gratification. Read more...

THE SECRET CHORD debuts at #12 on the New York Times Bestseller list for hardcover fiction!

With the verve of an adroit storyteller. . .Brooks evokes times and place with keenly drawn detail. . .Ambitious and psychologically astute. Read more...

Geraldine Brooks is a master at bringing the past alive… In many ways, “The Secret Chord” reads like a prose poem, with battle after battle recounted in detail, but it’s a page turner of a poem. We want to know how David manages to stave off his rivals and enemies, just as we want to know what love means to him and who, if anyone, will cause him to be faithful. If there is a secret chord the Lord can hear, and if David the harpist and poet is favored to be king, then how does he becomes the man who unites a people? In the final analysis, a king who becomes a legend must see himself as we do: a mystery, complex and fascinating, a man as much caught up in sin as he is in faith and in song. Alice Hoffman Read more...

In Brooks’s hands David feels both timeless and fully alive, as charismatic and dangerous as any of our modern Chosen Ones…