Review by Booklist Review
Larger-than-life stage actor David Wheaton has many regrets as he drifts toward death, but the one he can talk about most objectively is his disappointment in never having played King David. This is no idle dream. His favorite daughter, Emma, who inherited his talent and suffered the consequences of his mercurial life, married Nik, a playwright who spent many years tinkering with a drama about King David, intrigued by the parallels to his father-in-law's long, tangled, traumatic, yet grand and romantic life. Wheaton had eight wives and eleven children and now, 87 and ill with cancer, he's trying to see as many of his surviving spouses and offspring as he can before he dies. But it's Emma's story we're told, in flashbacks, as she and her father reminisce. Their memories are mirrored, rather clumsily, by the tale of King David as interpreted in Nik's unfinished play. L'Engle has attempted an epic, but her awkward, biblical tone and odd detachment from her characters prove too deadening. Marriages, affairs, births, deaths, murders, rape, and incest are all trotted out in scenes static with allusion and bland melodrama, but certain moments and personalities do manage to spark our interest and prompt us to believe that certain readers will find this to their taste. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1992)0374120250Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
``Marrying was a habit with me, a bad habit,'' David Wheaton declares from his deathbed in this disappointing novel by the Newbery Award-winning CK author of A Wrinkle in Time . As the 87-year-old actor's boat plies the waters of the Pacific Northwest, Wheaton looks back on his life with eight wives and 11 children. Also on board is his devoted daughter Emma, stunned by the imminence of her father's death and by the recent dissolution of her marriage to a playwright whose drama about King David and his wives provides the framework for L'Engle's relentless analogies between the Old Testament monarch and the modern-day actor. Recasting the biblical tale as a meditation on love and marriage, L'Engle piles on literary references: David met Emma's mother while making a film version of The Mill on the Floss , named their daughter after the heroine of Madame Bovary and calls his boat the Portia . But name-dropping does not a work of literature make. The epigraph from St. Luke--``Certain women made us astonished''--is not borne out by these two-dimensional characters, who don't astonish in the least as they speak and act by formula. The heavy-handed biblical subtext overwhelms rather than enhances the contemporary drama. ( Oct. ) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In Certain Women , terminally ill David Wheaton, a prominent and much-married American actor, obsessively recalls an unfinished play about King David, a role he coveted. L'Engle explores Christian faith, love, and the nature of God by framing the delayed-maturation story of Emma, Wheaton's daughter, within three subplots: the Wheaton family saga, the story of King David, and the history of the play's development. The characterizations of both Davids are compelling, but the primary interest here is the community of women that surrounds each man. L'Engle describes complex truths very simply, pointing out, for instance, that ``Life hurts'' and that if there's ``no agony, there's no joy.'' Because she also details the emotional cost of discovering and accepting such concepts, many readers will find these observations memorable rather than simplistic. Appropriate for all but the smallest general collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/92.-- Jane S. Bakerman, Indiana State Univ., Terre Haute (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In her latest foray into adult fiction (after A Severed Wasp, 1983, etc.), veteran author L'Engle recounts--with characteristic lucidity and wisdom--the tale of a dying actor paying tribute to the eight wives and eleven children he has loved. They not only share a name, they share a personal history: King David of the Bible and David Wheaton, well-known actor of stage and screen--each enjoyed many wives, saw their sons killed and their women martyred, but nevertheless managed to live long, deep, and fruitful lives. It makes sense, then, that when Wheaton's daughter, Emma, marries a rising young playwright committed to re- creating King David's life for the stage, Wheaton becomes obsessed with playing the leading role. Life hasn't worked out so neatly for the Wheatons, though: Niklaas Green, the playwright, has proved unable to complete the play; his marriage to Emma, herself now a successful stage actress, is disintegrating; and David has succumbed to cancer in his old age and wants only to bid those closest to him farewell. As the great actor rests aboard his comfortable boat, the Portia, tended by his most recent wife, Emma cooks meals, entertains her father, and reads through yellowed drafts of Nik's ``David'' play. Scenes of King David's life give rise to recollections of the Wheaton clan's own triumphs and tragedies: the loss of children in infancy, two sons' deaths during WW II, an assault on Emma by her older half-brother. As surviving ex-wives and grown children arrive for a final goodbye, they join David and Emma in meditating on the meaning of all their lives--and grope, even as the curtain lowers, toward what counts most. King David's life may prove less fascinating to the reader than it is to these characters. Nevertheless, the gentle, rhythmic quality of L'Engle's prose is perfectly attuned to this fictional aquatic cruise. A memorable work.
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