With Skilful Hand: The Story of King David (review)

King David has long been a source of fascination in Western culture. Poets and novelists, painters and musicians have all made him the object of artistic reflection. Nor has he been ignored by scholars, as the recent spate of studies devoted to him indicates. Now along comes the appropriately named David T. Barnard, the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Regina, who combines the approach of the scholar with the style of the novelist in this epistolary novel about the 'sweet singer of Israel' (2 Samuel 23:1).

The body of the novel is presented as a series of documents, consisting in the main of letters contemporaneous with the life of David (reigned ca 1004–965 bce), gathered according to a frame narrative by a scribe named Zadok (known from one brief mention in Nehemiah 13:13), who has found and edited them some five to six hundred years later. These alleged primary sources are arranged around five major themes: 'preparation for rule, the founding of the kingdom, [David's] reign ... the establishment of his dynasty ... [and] a series of addresses given by David in old age.' The individual documents are interspersed with selections from Psalms ascribed to David that have bearing on the subject matter of the narrative. In this manner Zadok becomes Barnard's alter ego, a scholar presenting and analysing primary sources. Indeed the book concludes with a series of appendices (no longer ascribed to Zadok), which provide the reader with lists and brief descriptions of names of people (and peoples) mentioned in the novel, a similar list of place names, a list of the biblical sources employed in writing the fictional letters, a list of the letters arranged according to supposed author, and finally suggestions for further reading on the subject of David, including both scholarly and literary works.

This novel in essence retells the biblical story of David. Although the claim is made that the letters will provide new information, Barnard hews very closely to his biblical sources, except in inventing new voices to augment the biblical 'cast of thousands.' There are instances in which one has to be an astute reader of the Hebrew Bible in order to notice the veiled allusions to biblical texts, which Barnard very nicely integrates into his narrative (cf the subtle allusion to Psalm 23 in letter 2.11). It is nonetheless surprising that there remains one significant character from the biblical narrative missing in this book, namely Abishag the Shunammite, who was brought to 'warm' David in his old age. Generally, however, innovation comes in the form of subjective interpretations of events; perhaps none more dramatic than Tamar's anguished expression of hatred for all who failed to protect her from – or who abandoned her after – being raped by her half-brother Amnon.

An epistolary novel is by its very nature static. Past and passing events are commented on rather than experienced in 'real time.' The success of such a novel lies to a great extent in the author's ability to give convincing voice to the putative letter writers. And it is here, in spite of some impressive insights into the psychology of the various protagonists, that Barnard's novel is weakest. Notwithstanding his attempts to differentiate between his literary creations, there is a sameness of style that is not obviated by recourse to varied opening and closing formulas depending on the letter writer and the emotions to be conveyed. Indeed, sometimes the language used can be somewhat irritating, as in the case of the abbreviations 'Ash' and 'Ish' for the names 'Ashhur' and 'Ishbaal' (two of the few examples of colloquialisms in the book), in the case of occasionally interspersed didactic comments, or in the case of trite turns of phrase such as 'When I am with him I feel truly alive.' Barnard's emphasis on confession rather than repentance is also problematic in reference to David.

It is a given that David was a significant...