Claudia: Daughter of Rome - Antoinette May

[bookwormmum]

I picked up this book as I was interested to see how little know life of Pontius Pilate's wife would be told. I'm glad I did and it was a emotive & thought-provoking read.

 

Framed by the known history, Claudia story is spilt out through times of tragedy, joy and helplessness, and you can feel the luxury and well as the suffocation that she feels in her chosen live. You do not always feel sympathetic to Claudia, her lack of youth and fickleness comes across, but this makes her all the more human and not just a person in history. Still at times, it does stray sometimes too much into some kind of Roman chick lit and she becomes a little too 'woe is me' at times.

 

The book really picks up pace when the couple are appointed to Judaea and some well-known characters come to the fore. This is where the real power of the book lies and could quite easily spent a few more chapters there and disappointed that we couldn't.

 

All in all I found this a good roller coaster of a read.

 

Edited October 5, 2008 by bookwormmum

[Kate]

This sounds really good

[Child.of.God.1989]

Nice one going with your intuition and making a good selection, Bookwormmum! Other ancient Rome books I can think of are Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, and the contemporary Mark of the Lion trilogy. Well, the last one concentrates more on the characters than what took place for the general population of Rome in that time... but it was still pretty easy to imagine the life of those central characters.

 

Have you any other recommendations for this time? Or was this your first fiction taking place in Ancient Rome?