Arrrh, what better holiday reading than Robert Harris? Page-turning but intelligent and insightful. "Lustrum" is the second of Harris' Cicero trilogy (the first being "Imperium", the third yet to come), but it was the first I have read. This doesn't seem to matter too much, though it could have been helpful to have some prior acquaintance with the complex roll call of characters, I suppose.
The novel relates the eventful year of Cicero's consulship at the head of the Roman Republic, during which he saves the Republic from destruction, and the following four years, when it all falls apart. The story is seen through the eyes of his slave/secretary/amanuensis Tiro, whose role in life is to record in detail the life and deeds of the great man, and who may, as a loyal servant of Cicero, add a little narrative ambiguity along the way.
Arguably, Cicero aside, the characters in the book are somewhat one-dimensional, seen essentially as their public personas. This doesn't however matter too much, as this is a book about public life, the grind of politics. Cicero's victories in the Senate, where he sees off conspiracies great and small, are only ever provisional, and in the end it is endless layers of one damned thing after another, combined with an all-too-human inability to be on top of things all the time, that bring about his defeat.
Though Roman politics were undoubtedly brutal and openly corrupt, as deliciously described by Harris, it is impossible not to see them as standing for politics in general. Harris encourages this, it should be said, by dedicating the novel to Peter Mandelson, Britain's arch-political insider and wheeler-dealer, and the Cicero trilogy is said by some to be an allegorical treatment of the career of Tony Blair. Maybe, but, if so, it's not mechanically, obviously or distractingly so. Above all, this is great storytelling, a page-turning thriller, not the crime driven sort the opening scene teasingly leads us to expect, but a political thriller of endless twists and turns, conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, shifting alliances and the mixed motives of ambitious men on the make.
Recommendation: it's a cracking novel, and just the thing for holiday reading. If you're interested in, or in any way inhabit, the world of politics you cannot fail to love this. So that's a yes.
The novel relates the eventful year of Cicero's consulship at the head of the Roman Republic, during which he saves the Republic from destruction, and the following four years, when it all falls apart. The story is seen through the eyes of his slave/secretary/amanuensis Tiro, whose role in life is to record in detail the life and deeds of the great man, and who may, as a loyal servant of Cicero, add a little narrative ambiguity along the way.
Arguably, Cicero aside, the characters in the book are somewhat one-dimensional, seen essentially as their public personas. This doesn't however matter too much, as this is a book about public life, the grind of politics. Cicero's victories in the Senate, where he sees off conspiracies great and small, are only ever provisional, and in the end it is endless layers of one damned thing after another, combined with an all-too-human inability to be on top of things all the time, that bring about his defeat.
Though Roman politics were undoubtedly brutal and openly corrupt, as deliciously described by Harris, it is impossible not to see them as standing for politics in general. Harris encourages this, it should be said, by dedicating the novel to Peter Mandelson, Britain's arch-political insider and wheeler-dealer, and the Cicero trilogy is said by some to be an allegorical treatment of the career of Tony Blair. Maybe, but, if so, it's not mechanically, obviously or distractingly so. Above all, this is great storytelling, a page-turning thriller, not the crime driven sort the opening scene teasingly leads us to expect, but a political thriller of endless twists and turns, conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, shifting alliances and the mixed motives of ambitious men on the make.
Recommendation: it's a cracking novel, and just the thing for holiday reading. If you're interested in, or in any way inhabit, the world of politics you cannot fail to love this. So that's a yes.
The endlessly fascinating grind of one damned thing after another: "Lustrum" by Robert Harris
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