Caesar's Women (Masters of Rome Series)
by Colleen McCullough
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Book Summary Information
Author: Colleen McCulloughEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-02-01
ISBN: 0380710846
Number of pages: 960
Publisher: Avon
Book Reviews of Caesar's Women (Masters of Rome Series)
Book Review: Nulle prosequi
Summary: 2 Stars
I've now read all of the books in McCullough's series on Rome except "October Horse", and I'm reading it now. This one was a big disappointment, even considering that I was aware of McCullough's flaw beforehand. McCullough's faults as a writer are at their very worst in this book, at least as bad as in "Fortune's Favorites." In a nutshell, they are:
1. Terrible style. And I do mean terrible. McCullough has several nervous tics as a writer that she's apparently incapable of controlling. Certain phrases pop up again and again. She strings verbs onto the end of sentences. "Lucius shuddered, shivered, grimaced." Other tics: "Caesar spoke so loud that everyone jumped." "Go to Syria, do!" Or "Sit down and listen, do!" Or "Have some wine, do!" "A pearl beyond price." And my all-time non-favorite, "I am fortune's favorite!" Her characters make silent soliloquies that are grandiose and silly. She obsesses over minor details of physical appearance, harping on them across every character she introduces until they lose all meaning. As one reads this stuff, "the reader shuddered, shivered, grimaced." Either McCullough has no sense of how to write serious fiction, or she, perhaps correctly, assumes that her audience needs to be spoon-fed a constant stream of information on exactly what every character is doing, saying, thinking and feeling.
2. Idolization of Caesar. There's a tendency in any fiction about Caesar to treat him as something other than human, but I've never seen a worse example than in this book. Caesar isn't a person, he isn't a god; he's a cartoon. And a bad one at that. Many of the silent soliloquies in this book are clumsy, artificial expositions on how no one can know or understand Caesar. If no one can know or understand him, it begs the question of why anyone would write about him.
3. Sex. Ye gods. This author continues to harp on sex, and she's one of the worst authors ever to tackle the subject. A single example: Caesar, we are told, becomes infatuated with Servilia because--I am not making this up--she has a hairy back. (I came very near to ripping the book in two at that point.) He uses godawful language like "Becuase you're plump, juicy and sweet." Caesar, man of reason and logic and insight and purpose and planning, comes up with the most idiotic of all possible explanations for hitching himself to his polar opposite for a decades-long liaison. And we are told repeatedly--too many times to count--that Caesar neither loves nor likes Servilia; in fact he loathes her. Another example of writing about a subject that can't be fathomed.
4. Stock characters. Every single time Cato appears, he speaks with a "harsh, unmusical voice." We're told this so many times that the reader can only conclude that McCullough thinks all of her readers have Alzheimer's and can't remember even the most fundamental things for more than a paragraph. Magnus is vain. Labienus is wicked. Antony is depraved. Brutus is pimply. Julia is a sweet tender goddess. At times this book reads more like a religious allegory than a novel.
5. Lack of consistent, authoritative tone. No doubt, McCullough learned a lot about Rome while researching these books, but it does her little good. She harps on the word "dignitas" endlessly, but she never develops any of her own. The overall effect of this book, like the others, becomes that of a 7-year-old playing with her dolls and conducting imaginary, stilted dialogue between them. At no point do I feel that I've become drawn into the story. There's never a point where even a few pages slip by without some kind of grating flaw that brings me back to reality and makes me wonder yet again how a book was published in its current form.
Having said all of that, I do have to give McCullough some credit. She covers a vast amount of fact and conjecture in these books, and one of the reasons I've continued to read them, apart from a perverse will to finish what I've started, no matter what, is that they build a historical framework on which to hang my previous knowledge about the times, which was spotty at best. I can't speak to her accuracy on matters of detail, but I certainly have a much better idea of the overall flow of events from the time of Marius through the murder of Caesar. Her account of the war in Gaul in "Caesar" was actually pretty good. I'm not as satisfied, as a reader seeking entertainment, with her account of events in this book, but still there's no question that I have a much better idea of the scope and sequence of events than I had before.
Nevertheless, if I could send a message back to myself before I started this series, it would be, "Pass."
Summary of Caesar's Women (Masters of Rome Series)
His victories were legend -- in battle and bedchamber alike. Love was a political weapon he wielded cunningly and ruthlessly in his private war against enemies in the forum. Genius, general, patrician, Gaius Julius Caesar was history. His wives bought him influence. He sacrificed his beloved daughter on the alter of ambition. He burned for the cold-hearted mistress he could never dare trust. Caesar's women all knew -- and feared -- his power. He adored them, used them, destroyed them on his irresistible rise to prominence. And one of them would seal his fate.
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