The Secret Chord & Silence

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I’ve noted before that I write few true book reviews. I am more interested in the connections between stories. As they simmer in my brain, I’m often struck by similarities that are less obvious at first glance. Of course, my own lens affects what I see—colored by the ideas meandering through my soul at that moment. So, for what it’s worth, here’s where these two recent reads converge for me.

Shared Themes:

The Secret Chord, by Geraldine Brooks, traces the life of King David in the 10^th century BC. Silence, by Shusaku Endo, follows the odyssey of a Portuguese Jesuit missionary in 17^th-century Japan. Brooks and Endo’s characters inhabit grim and gritty worlds, unsparing in their brutality and subjugation. Their stories examine the raw humanity, trials, and obsessions of men whom we might, from our tidy armchairs, judge as abject moral or spiritual failures. The distance in time and geography is bridged by questions of grace—that unmerited favor—and how we experience it while still walking in the consequences of our fallenness: when there are no answers, when Providence feels absent, and when God has seemingly nothing to say while we endure the day-in-day-out doubt and uncertainty.

The Secret Chord:

Most of us know the story of David, at least as far as Goliath is concerned, and possibly something of his faithfulness and resistance to King Saul as Saul descended into madness. But once made king, David’s story is blighted by a crisis of character. His unbridled lust leads to adultery (rape, if we consider whether Bathsheba had any choice in the matter) and murder.

The resulting generational chaos and strife drive David’s family into rebellion, incestuous rape, and fratricide.

In The Secret Chord, we see all of this through the efforts of Natan, as he compiles a biography of David, at the king’s request. Natan, the prophet of God, strives to advise and direct the king, making it clear that David must reap the consequences for his sin for decades to come. Natan provides a compassionate yet objective narrative of David’s victories and failings, contrasting the horrors with the beauty of David’s repentance and longing for God and the bright light of grace and redemption implied in the rise of young Solomon.

Silence:

In Silence, Portuguese Jesuit Sebastião Rodrigues arrives in 17^th-century Japan driven to understand the rumored apostasy of his previous mentor, Cristóvão Ferreira. Cristóvão has disappeared, leaving a trail of clues—a mystery that Sebastião must solve. Through journal-like letters chronicling his tale, we witness Sebastião’s inner turmoil and gradual understanding of the one who has gone before him, while contending for his own faith under brutal persecution.

I’ll withhold any more of the plot as it is an edge-of-your-seat spiritual suspense that could be too easily spoiled. However, it follows a similar theme of failure and judgment and questions of grace when God seemingly withholds all presence, guidance, and relief.

Shared Structure:

We walk through these stories with Natan and Sebastião, uncovering the lives of David and Cristóvão. Natan interviews those who have known David since childhood to understand the king’s beginnings. Sebastião searches for answers about Cristóvão’s fate, seeking any and all who might help him grasp the circumstances and causes of the unimaginable. The narrative forms of biography and letters add layers of telling that provide distance from the immediate events. This structure introduces an element of observation and interiority that is presented and interpreted about another and for another. As such, these stories demonstrate the complexities of understanding and portraying God’s work in others as well as ourselves. They resonate without providing superficial answers to our experience of grace.

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This narrative distance, this one-step-removed filter, is a structure I am planning for a difficult book I have outlined. In mine, the driving character, like David, is a shadowy historical figure so complex that I feel the need to tell her story through the eyes of an observer rather than from her direct point of view.

As with Natan and Sebastião, my point-of-view character will need her own story interlaced with the true main character’s. I hope by doing so to explore this multi-layered approach to how we perceive and affect the outworking of grace in each other.

Before attempting this level of storytelling, I need to absorb more successful tales using this structure.

Have you read other novels that use this narrative distance? How were the main character and point-of-view characters’ stories woven together? Why might the writer have chosen to do so?