Get Free Ebook Queenmaker: A Novel of King David's Queen (Recent Picador Highlights), by India Edghill
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The only woman in the Bible who is noted to have loved a man, Queen Michal was King David's childhood sweetheart, his first wife, and daughter of his great friend and greater enemy, King Saul. Married to and then abandoned by David at age 14, Michal is forced to marry him again and become his first queen ten years later. Thrown into transition and turmoil, Queen Michal resists the ambition and greed that have become integral to David's personality and kingship.
Acting nobly as his queen, but refusing to compromise her soul, Michal is drawn in friendship to the women in the king's court. Among his concubines and mistresses is Bathsheba, who becomes the mother of David's son, Solomon. In Queenmaker, Michal emerges as a wise and loving woman whose female family sustains her and establishes the spiritual foundation of the entire kingdom.
Queenmaker depicts in unforgettable detail the characters of one of the greatest periods in Biblical history-their public deed and private thoughts-and gives readers the court of the kings as only a woman could see it.
- Sales Rank: #775150 in eBooks
- Published on: 2003-01-01
- Released on: 2003-01-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Turning inside out the traditional view of David as a beloved king and gentle author of the Psalms, India Edghill's well-written debut novel Queenmaker paints a dark picture of the lauded biblical hero as seen through the eyes of his first wife, Michal. David's silver-tongued way with words captures Michal's heart, but her marriage to him is soon annulled by her half-mad father, King Saul. She's packed off to marry the widowed farmer Phaltiel, whom Michal soon learns to love. When David gains the throne of Israel and sends for Michal, she discovers that David has become a king who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Through courage and wit, Michal must carve out a new life as the queen and wife of a man she now despises. Edghill isn't afraid to change biblical narrative to suit her story, and paints David as a selfish, grasping leader whose feet of clay are all too evident in this tale. Those who like their biblical narrative served straight up and their heroes untarnished may be disturbed by this reassessment; those who like a good story and a new spin on biblical champions, however, will enjoy this unvarnished look at one of Judaism's and Christianity's most lauded personalities. --Cindy Crosby
From Publishers Weekly
Biblical history is rewritten once again in this imaginative if overheated retelling of King David's life as seen though the eyes of his unhappy first wife. Michal, the daughter of Saul, is married to golden boy David when she is only 13, but even before the wedding her father grows wary of David's power and plots to murder his daughter's about-to-be husband. Michal helps David escape and for her efforts is disowned by her father and married off a second time to a farmer, Phaltiel. In time, she learns to love Phaltiel, and when David comes to claim her 10 years later, she must be dragged away and secretly vows vengeance. For 40 years, she is the first among all of his wives and concubines, and witnesses the intrigues, tragedies and triumphs of his celebrated reign. Through it all, she waits for her chance and seems to find it when David woos beautiful young Bathsheba, the wife of one of his warriors, and makes her pregnant. But Michal, childless herself, finds she loves Bathsheba too much to betray her and devotes herself to grooming Bathsheba's son, Solomon, for the throne of Israel. The fabled slayer of Goliath comes off as a conceited, bloodthirsty womanizer in Edghill's breathless tale, with Michal the power behind the throne, planning and plotting quietly with the sweet demeanor of a submissive wife as her mask. The novel provides a tantalizing glimpse into the past, but fails to deliver full-blooded characterizations or sufficient period flavor, substituting emotion for detail and jarring images for true style ("I laughed until tears dropped off my cheeks to make holes in the dust").
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Almost everyone in the Western world has heard of David, slayer of Goliath, King of Israel, Lion of Judah, and beloved of Yahweh; however, his queen, Michal, is not as well known. Only a handful of Scriptures in Samuel I and II mention her, but from those few references, first novelist Edghill has created a memorable and powerful portrait. Daughter of King Saul, Michal marries David at 13 before he falls from Saul's favor. After David flees Saul's wrath into the desert, Michal remarries and for ten years lives away from the intrigue and politics of her father's court. Upon Saul's death in battle, Michal is returned to her estranged husband, and out of bitterness and resentment for being uprooted from her life, she is rumored to undermine the Israelis' admiration and respect for David. As the story is told from Michal's point of view, David is portrayed as less than heroic he is a vain, selfish, Machiavellian figure which may offend some readers who subscribe to a literal translation of Scripture. However, this is but a minor caveat. With its excellent writing, dynamic characters, and galloping pace, Edghill's work is highly recommended for all historical fiction collections. Jane Baird, Anchorage Municipal Libs., AK
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Another Compelling Page Turner---Different Take on Familiar Biblical Stories
By O. Merce Brown
*****
This book was another one of those page-turners that kept me up for most of 24 hours to read. It is a novel told from the point-of-view of Michal, David's first wife. It is about Michal, about Biblical times, and hugely about David---for David is "The Queenmaker". Michal became his Queen. Although it takes place in Biblical times, it is not a Christian novel; it is rather a revealing novel, an alternative novel, and a novel that empowers women.
To those readers who are unfamiliar with Michal and David---they are written about in the Bible in the books of I Samuel, II Samuel, and I Kings primarily, but elsewhere too. It is really fun to read the Biblical stories and then read "The Queenmaker". Our American culture has taught us that David is a huge hero and "a man after God's own heart"...however, when you read India Edghill's version of Bible events, it gives you an alternative take on King David. Her view actually makes more sense than does the Biblical view, and probably was more likely to have really occurred. It's sort of what you might come to if you really thought about the Bible before you were taught what was true about it and what you HAD to believe (if you've been raised in a church).
What would we think of a man who married a woman, slept with her on her wedding night, took off in fear for his life the next morning, not to be seen from or heard from again by her for 10 years. Michal is forced to marry a farmer husband who she comes to love and they live happily together for almost 10 years. Then David returns, with other wives and concubines, and decides he wants Michal too. So he rips her from her environment and brings her to be his wife along with all of his other women. This is only the beginning. It gets worse. David's acts are mostly incredibly selfish, often cruel, frequently against Jewish law, and yet because he simply professes his love for Yahweh albeit with very little outward evidence of this love, he was revered as a hero, and is still looked up to today as a hero by many.
"The Queenmaker" brings all of this to life, as well as the time and country, the Jewish culture, and more. Michal grows wiser and learns how to survive by her wits and how to find love.
If you are open to different takes on Biblical stories, you'll like this book. It's not a Christian novel in the typical sense at all. However, I think that open-minded Christians would love it because it would make them think, and think hard about why they believe what they do.
*****
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting premise lost in the telling
By J. A Magill
Ms. Edghill's goal in Queenmaker, "liberating" King David from the biblical text in order to give a more complete character study is a worthy one. The Samuel text is filled with hints, just bellow the surface, indicating that the author is effectively an apologist for David's sins. Indeed, several times, the reader gets the feeling that the text "doth protest too much." Unfortunately, Edghill ultimately fails in this goal.
The first third of the book, is both novel and interesting, in particular the idea of telling it from the perspective of King Saul's daughter. However, as she integrates the David character into the text, the reader realizes that, rather than creating a fuller image of the character exposing his flaws, she has gone too far in the other direction. Far from a complex and flawed character, in Queenmaker, David is little more than an egocentric power hungry monster.
Had the author shown a willingness to make the character even the least bit likeable, or seek to explain his motivations beyond a rather shallow greed, the book would have been a far better read. While reasonably well written, the poorly developed characters fail to carry the book. If you are interested in such texts, however, I highly recommend Rizpah by Charles Israel, a more interesting and nuanced novel. Though out of print, many copies are available.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A Splendid Reinterpretation of an Ancient Tale
By Stuart W. Mirsky
Here is an historical novel with a difference, a reimagining of an old story and its hero, a king we knew from Sunday School, winner of a thousand battles, founder of an empire and a dynasty, beloved of his people and of his deity, King David of "David and Goliath" fame, as seen through eyes which the old biblical text tried mightily to conceal. In truth, though the David we have from the bible is the fair-haired child of the people of ancient Israel and their Lord, a careful reading of that tale reveals a very different man: a man who cleverly turns every situation to his advantage, who consistently says one thing but does another, who plays both sides of every conflict and who collects women as he does kingdoms. That we idolize this man today is a testimony to the spin his biblical handlers put on his tale. And to the fact we will forgive certain folks almost anything. In fact we seem to do that even today as recent political events have shown, forgiving some men the greatest excesses while yet condemning others for far less. I suppose it has to do with who we want to like and who we don't. Well, India Edghill has given us that other David, the one who lurks just below the surface for those of us willing to scrape away the heroic gloss and read the old tale for what it is. Edghill's is the story of David as seen through the eyes of Michal, the woman he made queen of his kingdom, much against her will, the daughter of his predecessor Saul, who David hounded out of his kingdom by cajolery and trickery and then had the tale turned on its head so posterity would remember David himself as the aggrieved party. It's not politically correct in the religious sense but it's the real story lying there, just below the surface. It's the story of David the soldier who betrayed his king and best friend, who dickered with and served their enemies, who took Michal against her will and installed her in his palace as a symbol of his right to rule from a usurped throne, who killed most of the surviving male members of her family and took one, a hopeless cripple, to live a prisoner at his court. A man who kept his word when the appearance of that suited him but who found ways to get around every obstacle his own words created when he needed to do that. No, this is not the David we remember from bible class. But it is the David which the biblical tales preserve. And Inda Edghill has dug him out. Hers is the tale of David as seen through Michal's eyes, the daughter of the usurped king, reluctant wife to a dazzling dissembler, watching as the great hero of his people turns every event to his advantage and claims divine support for each maneuver. The tale effectively evokes the "feel" of biblical times and Ms. Edghill has a remarkable sense of dialogue. Her words ring true and yet rarely sound too modern or inconsistent with the language of the original material. I did, however, miss a certain sense of the larger world around them but this was the result, no doubt, of the female point of view Ms Edghill used since Michal spends much of the story cooped up in one king's house or another, the lot of royal women in those days. And I was a trifle disappointed by the rather one-sided view of David which is offered. For all his clever self-interest, the beauty of the original biblical story is how human David seems to be, heroic yet manipulative, honorable yet not above self-interested violations of honor. Yes, the biblical tale subsumes all the bad stuff beneath the gloss of piety and good-heartedness and Ms. Edghill offers us a welcome antidote to this based on the actual events themselves. But I think she missed an opportunity to give us a more rounded picture of this man. If he wasn't the fair-haired hero of purest spirit which the biblical writers preserved for us, I suspect he also wasn't the totally unpleasant and false charmer Ms. Edghill gives us either. Her tale is a fine one, a woman's eye view of the Bill Clinton of his day. And yet I think she was not entirely fair to her David in the end for if he was not all good, as the biblical writers tried to make him out to be, he was probably not all bad either. But Ms. Edghill's tale, welcome as it is, loses that dimension of the man and gives us an image of a womanizing manipulator who gets good press despite ill-doings. But this is a small quibble in the end, for she has reimagined the David story in a way which resonates and enlarges the old tales, creating a novel of real heart out of some very old P.R. Read this one if you want to know how it probably was . . . in spite of the old scribes.
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