Rating: 
Summary: Worth Your Time!
Review: This novel, a retelling of the life story of King David in the first person, is vintage Joseph Heller. With the wit and precision of "Catch-22" and "Something Happened," it attacks the knotty problems of identity and responsibility, flips all the Bible stories you've ever heard on their heads, and draws an intricate portrait of a Jewish king with a strut.
Heller mixes the biblical with the modern with a swooping, natural style. It's staggering, and it's hilarious. I'm sure that, had he chosen to stick with the Biblical and depict the ancient setting as--well--ancient, this would be a much different novel, one that would speak to the timelessness of human emotion and all that. As it stands, what we have is a neurotic, almost postmodern look at the life of a king who's fought to gain and to keep his position. It's steamy (Bathsheba, the love of David's life, is drawn intimately and intensely, as is his newest wife, who attends to him in the illness that prompts him to record his memoir), loving (the relationships of David to his assorted wives and progeny sprawl across the pages in a way that suggests a much larger book, but somehow fits perfectly into this novel of modest size), and honest (David is proud and vain beyond tolerance, but somehow the reader comes away loving him anyway, particularly since his thoughts ring true).
Lest you worry that this is simply an adaptation, interesting only in relationship to the original story, it's not necessary that the reader be familiar with the Bible to appreciate this book. I recognized many of the stories and characters, but far from all of them--Heller's knowledge of the Bible and of the conventional telling of the stories is, as far as I can see, impeccable.
This novel is, more or less, a riot (if nothing else, there's a lot of smiting, and that's a funny word), but it runs deep, approaching many of the themes that are so relevant and present today. The ideas of connection versus alienation, of love, of intimacy and frustration, are all worked over by the narrative, which runs far afield at times but always comes back leaving the reader happier for having followed the tangent. Although this work is more obscure than the ever-popular (and rightly so) "Catch-22," it's no less intelligent and engaging. Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Heller, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.
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