Review: THE EMPRESS OF ROME, Matthew Dennison

People who are familiar with the Roman Empress Livia will likely think first and foremost of Robert Graves's I, Claudius, in which she systematically moves to annihilate all the troublesome members of the Imperial family who stand between her son Tiberius and the succession to her husband Augustus's new dynasty. Matthew Dennison's book attempts to absolve Livia, to prove that she did not murder her stepdaughter's husbands, Marcellus and Agrippa, and children, Gaius, Lucius and Postumus, and all manner of wicked deeds that the character contrives and relishes within the hallowed texts of Graves's classic.

Yet there are two major flaws in this history that let it down completely. First is its cherry-picking of the ancient historical accounts, only accepting the ones that favour Livia and coldly beating down the accounts of those that do not favour her - the most obvious being Tacitus, upon whose accounts that Graves based his Livia. Second, is that while the book is very readable and pleasant to read, it says very little and is based primarily on assumptions rather than facts. Most annoying of all, and this is a problem with many non-fiction books, is that the writer attempts to use pointless sources that bear no resemblance to their topic matter to justify their arguments.

It is true that Dennison is faced with the problem that his subject matter is one that we know very little about. Women were rarely written about unless they were famed for murder or incest (or indeed both),  as with the infamous Clodia (who is mentioned several times by Dennison). Trying to get to the bare-knuckled truth about a woman in Rome is an impossible task and, credit to Dennison, he does his best to piece together an impression of what Livia's life would have entailed. However it is his constant attempts to examine Livia's 'psychology' that undermines all this hard work as textually it is assumptions, not facts, that takes up the whole book.

Ultimately, the book would have done better to be much shorter. Most of it feels more like a PhD student's final thesis, using quotations such as Tennyson's poem, 'He chopped down the family tree...' which is the most references of a backlog of irrelevant passages that prelude each chapter. I found myself reading ahead to avoid them as they bore little importance to understanding his arguments about Livia.

As already stated in making his arguments about Livia, he pushes away any negative statements about her and basks in the positive - what little there actually is. While Livia may or may not have poisoned half her second husband's relatives, his arguments are once again let down by the fact that he only cherry-picks with Livia and not with the other imperial women, such as Octavia and Julia. He repeatedly remarks upon Octavia's blind hatred of mothers, 'especially Livia', and his presumed jealousy of her, despite it having no point in his argument past the death of Marcellus. Probably more unfair is his judgement on Julia: at one point he questions the absurd statement that she prostituted herself in the Roman forum (considering her renown for being fairly haughty), but later states the account by Seneca as if it were fact.

The overall narrative is jumbled, darting back and forth in time only to repeat itself. I was especially disappointed by how little time he spent on the later years of her life, in which Livia was emboiled in several scandals. These are mentioned, but include none of the assumptions or hypotheses that are said and repeated over and over in defense of Livia. They are just mentioned and forgotten, as if Dennison either lost interest in the book as he got to the end. Finally, concludes his argument in one line in the manner of, once again, a student's essay. When questioning whether there is any evidence that Livia was responsible for the crimes for which Graves's novel accesses her, he states 'the answer, insofar as trustworthy evidence survives, is no and no again.' This statement is uninspired, yes, but it is also utterly denying Tactius who, while not alive at the time of Livia, is closer to her era than Mr. Dennison is. Moreover he himself points out that one of Tacitus's sources was from the writings of Agrippina, Claudius's Empress. 'If we are to assume', to use the author's favourite phrase, that Tacitus got these stories of Livia from this (and there is nothing to say either way he didn't), then she was close enough to the time to know it to be fact.

Whether Livia killed these people or not, this book is a nice read despite its faults. It is not the work of a trustworthy historian but is a nicely researched account of Livia's life that makes the best it can with the little information it has. It is only a pity that Dennison felt to strongly about denying the work of Tacitus. After all, far from the vilified figure he believes her to be cast as a murderer, it does make her more interesting.

5/10

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The Scarlett Spot Summer Reading List 2012

The summer has begun for the UK and television is dominated by the Olympics. For that reason I have decided to make a set reading list to try and escape from the world's sporting event. See here the 10 titles I have selected to read between 23th July 2012 to 17th September 2012.


Fiction

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Seth Graham-Smith

The Pleasures of Men
Kate Williams

11.22.63
Stephen King


Classics

Lady Audley's Secret
Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins

The Private Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg

I, Claudius
Robert Harris


Non-Fiction

In Defense of Dogs
John Bradshaw

The Quantum Universe
Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw

The Empress of Rome: Life of Livia
Matthew Dennison

Review: THE UNDERSTUDY, David Nicholls

Following the success of his 2010 novel One Day, which was then adapted into a (truly terrible) film starring Anne Hathaway (and her truly terrible fake British accent), a lot of David Nicholls’s previous novels have been re-published with the same types of front covers. One of these said novels is The Understudy, a comical look on the life of an unsuccessful actor still waiting for his “Big Break”. The Daily Mail called it, as the front cover boasts, ‘a laugh-out-loud’ novel and it is – to an extent.

Chronicling the misfortunes the ironically named Stephen C. McQueen, employing the C. so that there would be “no misunderstandings”, the book is an easy read while doesn’t require much of an attention span to get through. The characters have only a medium depth to them, but this is not really an issue considering that the aim is clearly to get laughs. Moreover, it is not the characters that a reader will pick up this book for, but the language, which is very cleverly employed. While there were some points that I thought would be better if it was done x, y and z way, David Nicholls ultimately knows best and ultimately holds the reader’s attention.

The plot is reasonably straightforward, if not a little predictable. Stephen is the anti-protagonist who spends most of his working days playing corpses in TV detective dramas or playing a squirrel in a children’s programme which enjoys more success aboard than at home. The most impressive gig that Stephen actually has is his job as the understudy to the lead in a five-star rated West End show about Lord Byron, unimaginatively named “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know”. The title role itself is being played by a top-British actor named Josh Harper, a name which immediately inspires the image of a posh, mindless, coke-stuffing playboy actor whose success is truly owed to his looks rather than his talent. Much like Stephen, the readers are left to cringe at an imagined gushing interview done with this fictional actor in a Sunday paper by a stereotypically brainless female interviewer (It embarrasses me and most of woman kind I think to realise that some interviews with vaguely good looking actors do follow this stereotype), and roll their eyes at his selfish and self-centred actions throughout the novel.

Stephen is an unusual character in the sense that on the one hand he is easy to sympathise with, especially when he is duped several times by Josh into several compromising situations. The first of many comes when Stephenn, thinking (and hoping) that he might have his chance to go on stage, is pimped to the post at the last minute when Josh turns up at just as he's getting into costume. This leads to a humiliating misunderstanding when he “invites” Stephen to his showbiz party, only for Stephen realise that he is actually being hired to waiter!

It is at this party that Stephen meets to object of his affections, Josh’s unremarkable American wife Nora. Although in the blurb she is characterised as being ‘clever’ and ‘funny’,  the words ‘blunt’ and ‘boring’ were my own words to describe her. While she does have her moments in the novel, or rather a few funny quips, she is ultimately not a very inspiring character. If anything she is a little bit too much of a stereotypical bolshie American girl from New York. Despite Stephen’s obsession with her, it is difficult to really find any sympathy in their relationship or really maintain any interest with it.

I feel this might come from the fact that when it comes to Nora, Stephen ceases to be sympathetic. When he happens upon Josh having sex with the show’s ‘exciting new talent’ Maxine Cole in his dressing room, the big-headed sex god talks Stephen into keeping his mouth shut by promising him to pull a sickie for two nights so that he can play the lead role in the show and, presumably, get his big break. Naturally, Stephen agrees, and thus goes through the book continuously lying to Nora in a bid to keep the deal with Josh. He fools himself into thinking it’s all right while Josh repeatedly finds himself falling into every woman who proves herself willing to let him in, and there are apparently plenty. Much like a bigoted husband trying to justify his philandering to his angry wife, Josh’s defence is that he has a ‘sickness’ – that he is a sex addict. This is bollocks, of course, and Stephen knows it. Yet he accepts it. Josh, needless to say, is not a very exciting or even compelling antagonist.

The trouble is that it is hard to really ‘feel’ for Stephen’s relationship with Nora and it’s hard to tell whether it’s because of him, her or both of them. It might even be because the reader agrees with Nora that acting is a ‘pointless’ job, not least because Stephen’s ex-wife and daughter feel this way. Of all the few females who appear in this novel, it is the ex-wife Alison who speaks the most sense. At one point when confronting her ex about his delusions about his career, about waiting for his break, she makes her thoughts plainly and brutally:

They sat in silence for a moment, looking at each other, eyes narrowed.

            ‘You don’t think I’m any good, do you?’ said Stephen, finally.

            ‘No.’

            ‘Well, that’s the impression you give, Alison. I mean, if you do think I’m good then why don’t you support me?’

            ‘Hold on, Stephen, sorry, but I don’t think you understood me. What I meant was – no, I don’t think you’re any good.’

            A moment passed.

            ‘You don’t?’

            ‘No. No, I don’t.’

            Again, a moment.

            ‘Since when?’

            Alison closed her eyes. ‘Never […] Sorry.’ (pp. 306-7)

All through the novel, the reader is indeed treated to the true extent of Stephen’s delusions and dreams about his career. Early on in the novel, Nicholls treats us to what he calls Stephen’s ‘Nearly CV’, the CV he would have had had he actually won the countless auditions he went to and didn’t get. His lack of success and foolish faith that his hour will come is not only to the distress of Alison but his eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, who feels frequently humiliated by her father’s antics. Admittedly, Sophie is something of a pretentious and annoying little brat, influenced by her equally pretentious stepfather Colin, who constantly undermines Stephen. When talking about Sophie’s Christmas present of a piano, Colin suggests that Stephen might want to contribute something, ‘the piano stool or some sheet-music or something.’ Stephen does deserve to be undermined in some ways, but the characters who do it to him are usually very annoying so you still side with him. In regards to Sophie, while she can be dismissed as a bit of a brat her feelings are understandable, as any girl who has ever had a waste-of-space for a father would tell you.

Ultimately the end of The Understudy is somewhat satisfying although the conclusion is predictable. You will put the book down knowing that Stephen has done right the thing and, more importantly, learned his lesson. I definitely would recommend it for a quick read, like a long train-ride or to read during lunch breaks. While not the most compelling of novels, it isn’t supposed to be. It is a just a piece of harmless fun where the baddies get what they deserve and the goodies end up with a reasonable, satisfying lot. While we don’t know whether Stephen will be getting his happy ending, and too be honest we don't really care.


6/10


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