Elizabeth Finch - Julian Barnes

In a desperate effort to read recent books, I borrow the latest novel by Julian Barnes. 

At first I thought it was a notion-filled hodgepodge of notes that Barnes had lying around and decided to put together in a book (similar to how I felt about Paul Auster's Baugmartner). 

By the end I actually found it a pathetic novel, somehow obsessed with the legacy of Julian the Apostate yet not even coming remotely close to the level of Gore Vidal's Julian (which - despite a literary review spanning centuries and including pretty much anyone who ever thought of Julian - is briefly hinted at and then completely overlooked). 

On the plus side, I finished it in a day (though it's a day-worth of reading that I won't get back). 

The Emperor's Babe - Bernardine Evaristo

Well, if you want to (re)write history, might as well go all the way. Seriously. 

I'm still not a major fan of Evaristo, but it is undeniable that she does breathe fresh air in contemporary literature. It's obviously not just the way in which she tackles race (in this case with a plot that is ultimately not so hard to believe as I initially envisaged), but also the panache and style (pulling off a verse novel is not exactly easy, I'd assume). 

So while she might not be my favourite contemporary British writer, I will most likely keep on reading her books as and when they become available at the Southwark library. 

I, Claudius - Robert Graves

  

This is a book that I got out of LSE's Shaw Library - that foreign land where students go to take lunchtime naps and nobody but me has borrowed a book since 1895 - at a time of very limited reading options for me. 

It's safe to say it's my third favourite (out of three) fictional accounts of Roman emperors after Julian (Gore Vidal) and most of all Memoirs of Hadrian (Yourcenar). It's a thick, slow read that is ever so dated, no matter how much the English seem to swear by Graves and his talent. And I'll leave it at that.

Julian – Gore Vidal

It’s not like I haven’t read a book in three weeks (I wouldn’t dare!), I just didn’t update the blog because we had an action-packed few days in Italy collecting second-hand baby stuff and taking my wife’s growing belly on tour for one last time.

Julian is a book that my mom gave me some 15 years ago and that, like all good sons, I kindly ignored for as long as I could (that is until I realized that having loved Memoirs of Hadrian so much I would have at least “liked” Julian). And, much to everyone’s surprise, I did like it.

Despite the fact that the reader can perceive Gore Vidal’s massive ego even through pages that are meant to have been written almost 2000 years ago, the book has a number of things going for it: the triple narrator makes it more dynamic than Memoirs of Hadrian, the frequent digs at early Christianity are just so much more fun than the ones at contemporary Christianity (seriously, too easy and boring!), and the historical descriptions and not-so-obvious-yet-obvious facts (like that one at that point could become Roman emperor without ever having been to Rome) make it a very interesting read.

Yet, I like a time when man was at the centre of things, between the disappearance of the gods and the appearance of God, better than a time after the appearance of God during which the gods tried to regain their lost territory. So, ultimately, Julian is no match for Hadrian, at least for me. 

Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar

Yourcenar’s academic research in her early 20s led to the writing of one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. Mine led to a Ph.D. thesis that brilliantly passed, but that even I wouldn’t want to re-read. Something went wrong somewhere.

I have never been a fan of Roman history, with my hatred for Latin and all that, but reading of this time between paganism and Christianity when man stood alone and at the centre of everything was a breathtaking experience for me. Of all the books I’ve ever read about the antiquity, I always laughed at how staged and implausible the prose and the dialogues looked, but it’s not the case here – where there is no dialogue and the prose is lyric but flawless.

And reading through Yourcenar’s notes in the appendix made me jealous of her passion for her research, something that I am not quite sure I’ve ever had.