ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Colleen McCullough
HarperCollins, hbk, $50
Review by Caoline Hunter
Antony and Cleopatra is an epic, make no mistake. At 606 pages, it's a marathon read, especially if Roman history isn't your thing.
It's a continuation of Colleen McCullough's Master of Rome series, picking up Mark Antony's life about 41BC when he was one of three triumvirs in charge of the Roman Empire, not long before he met Cleopatra of Egypt.
The course of their relationship and Antony's growing antagonism with Octavius (another of the triumvirs) form the core of the novel, but there is a lot more to it, as you can imagine given its size.
McCullough's research appears to be astonishingly detailed - I can't vouch for its accuracy as I am not a historian, but there is no lack of information. Quite the opposite - there is so much detail (especially about people and places) it is impossible to keep everything straight.
As a reader with very little grounding in Roman history, I lost the plot constantly. I kept going even so, settling for just holding on to the gist of things and clinging to the main characters I became familiar with.
Unless you know your Romans well, give up trying to keep a handle on who everybody is. A character list would have been helpful, but it would have run to pages.
I found the use of modern idiom (and obscenities) a bit bizarre in the mouths of Ancient Romans, but I guess there's no point having dialogue that alienates readers or renders the book dull. And, Latin was out of the question, obviously, but it is still sprinkled about liberally, requiring
use of the glossary, which I found annoying.
If the characters are going to speak English, then why throw in Latin words to make it seem authentic? It's like giving French characters in a film English dialogue with a French accent.
There were some vulgar sentiments expressed in modern terms that sounded ludicrous and out of place, but then the whole book was odd to me. Trying to transform a BC civilisation, its behaviour and values into something we can relate to in the third millennium is tricky and
it made for some surreal moments.
To be blunt, reading this book was a slog. I learnt a bit, and was interested enough to look up the protagonists on the Internet to find out more about them, but had I not been reviewing it I would have given up early in the piece.
I doubt Antony and Cleopatra would satisfy lovers of serious history, but if you are fond of historical novels, test your endurance with this novel.
It represents a mammoth piece of work, but the result is a peculiar blend of voluminous facts (much of them military), character extrapolation and racy relationship material.
I admire McCullough for her knowledge, for the effort involved writing this book and for trying to make it readable, but can't say I enjoyed it.
- Caroline Hunter is a Star subeditor.
