Roman Correspondence

[mtvessel]

Dec 2024
Augustus - John Williams – Vantage, 2003
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Multi-viewpoint novels have somewhat gone out of fashion of late in favour of extreme first person or third person narratives focusing on one or two characters, which is a shame because I much prefer the opportunities for nuanced story-telling and examination of themes that they offer. Granted, they can be difficult to write - readers may become frustrated if a viewpoint character whom they particularly like has to take their turn with other characters with whom they have less sympathy - but when done well (as here) they provide a satisfying richness that single-viewpoint novels cannot manage.

In this case the theme is a person; Augustus, the Roman Emperor who succeeded Julius Caesar, whose life and times are explicated in fictional letters written by his family, friends and enemies. What’s great about this is that the characters can speak directly for themselves without needing to be introduced or commented upon, and the text has a freshness and immediacy that would be unachievable if it had been forced into a more conventional first person or third person narrative. Although we do not hear from the man himself until right at the end of the book, the insights of his friends and the baffled remarks of his enemies build up a very effective portrait of a man forced into a public persona that is sometimes at odds with his private wants, not least in his treatment of his daughter Julia, whom he exiles for breaking adultery laws that he himself had enacted. We do get Julia's viewpoint in the second half through excerpts from her journal, and there are letters from Cleopatra, Augustus' wife Livia, and his sister Octavia, but it has to be said that the majority of the novel is somewhat male-dominated, as might be expected from the sources on which it is based. Other than that, though, this is a fine and compelling read.