I really don't like it when I don't like a book. I feel like it has defeated me in some way, that I could not grasp material in some way. The author or Geraldine Brooks spent much time researching, travelling to places to research, writing, spending quite a bit of effort putting words in a specific order to create tone, pace and a story that you are suppose to sink into. And all I can do is be a little bitch and groan, and go, really? This book is well written, it's an interesting premise, the first king of Jerusalem, mixing myth, tradition, story telling and religion should be my wheel house. I just read 'The Fishermen', which kind of has a similar tone, and I am ready to pass it around like gospel. So I have to come to the conclusion, I for what ever reason, do not have the patience for biblical fiction, I am putting Satanic Verses as well as the Red Tent, I know two completely different books that shouldn't be compared, but there is a tone, an old testament - new testament, Gabriel coming down from the heavens have this heavily kind of ponderous tone, everything begets something, everything keeps on beginning again. 'The Secret Chord' kept felt it kept starting for about 60 pages. And I wasn't 100% sure if I was in Natan's story or David's, I think ultimately it was both, which didn't work for me . I knew the book wasn't working for me, when the story starts again with David's mother and David's conception - because it's old testament it's 'How I meet your Mother', and of course this is special, he is illegitimate and legitimate at the same time. And this isn't really a spoiler, its just a biblical tone that probably works within the reality of the book and fits in well with a biblical tone, because the bible loves an unusual conception. But it pulled me out of the book and I could not get back in. Me and the bible just doesn't mesh, for good or for ill.

Dixiane Hallaj is a particular good writer of social/historically placed, politically pointed, drama, both in her creative fiction and as in this case in the writing of Biography augmented with fictional reality. In fact, most biographies contain some invented content, and/or augmented interpretation. There are going to be gaps to fill in any knowledge that reports anything deeper than the bare historic/factual bones.
Hallaj writes, very-broadly speaking, women’s literature, in that central female figures and through them family, are her bread and butter. That shouldn’t deter any but the most misogynistic of male readers. There is plenty of the gritty content and adventure to balance the childcare and dressmaking. This is a lot on female, and male, sensitivities, but certainly very little sentimental. Lola had as psychologically tough a life as most male heroes, and survived an extraordinarily mixed bunch of husbands and other male figures. I may have lost count, but she had certainly buried at least two husbands and saw off another by the time she was thirty. Well, to be accurate, the exes were never conventionally buried.
Hallaj has preserved for history a very informative piece of family/social history. She literally saved important social history from a death bed. This is the history of a very ordinary daughter of gentry, turned extraordinary by the turmoil that swirled through and around her life. Lola saw plenty of the poverties and hardships as well as at least spells of grandeur living. We learn a very great deal about the life experiences of people in Latin America and further afield, between the end of the 19th century and the start of the Great Depression. We leave Lola’s life when she was still hardly middle-aged, by which time she had as much life experience as a half dozen others might achieve in half a dozen centuries. Hallaj has blended biography and real life fiction to create a wonderful memory of her grandmother from her mother’s own words.
The writing is of a very high quality, the script is captivating, and we learn as much about Lola’s times as we would from the very best of historical documentary. What is more, Hallaj seems to be able to paint incredibly detailed pictures without ever seeming to use more than the fewest of words to do so.

http://www.amazon.com/Its-Just-Lola-Dixiane-Hallaj-ebook/dp/B008SUUV7G