Angela Hunt comes at the story of David and Bathsheba from a perspective that is difficult to consider and even harder to come to terms with.And she does so beautifully, with engaging passion.
Bathsheba's character is stunning, enticing, engaging, and everything I could have hoped for. Hunt follows the story line from the Bible, and then she elaborates on ideas and assumptions and vague hints. Because, just like with her rendition of Esther, there are very few details given on these characters' intimate lives - what it was like for them at the time. The bony, skeletal structure of the story is there, but Hunt has to imagine a lot of the rest.
And what an imagination she has.
She starts with Bathsheba, young and pure, a beautiful young woman with a beautiful future ahead of her, and she jumps back and forth between her point of view and the point of view of Nathan the prophet. Both tied together from the start, their lives intersecting here and there. King David is not really introduced at all until about halfway through the book.
What really gets me about this Dangerous Beauty series is the raw emotion within. Hunt goes to such lengths to identify and describe the emotions and mental states of these characters. The series itself doesn't follow any particular order, but rather a theme: the power, and especially the danger, in the beauty of a woman. Not a power to be used as a weapon - though some might choose to do so - and not a danger to be seen as a curse - though some might have no other perspective.
Hunt's writing appeal lies not in what happened - the Bible covers as much - but in how it could have happened. The "what if?" to the unanswered questions; the hidden details. And she has a gripping perspective and a raw emotional grasp on these particular stories. She can drive a reader to want to read the Bible more, even more in-depth - that is her intention, and I know that she succeeded with me.
For more information on Bathsheba by Angela Hunt, visit our website here.
No comments:
Post a Comment