A big shout-out to Aviva for sending this book my way during book exchange! This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Francesca Giordano is a woman who needs a job after her father is brutally murdered in the street (don’t worry, you find this out in the first chapter), and she gets herself employed with the very prestigious, inherently corrupt Borgia family. Her employment soon has her on a wild ride through the world of Rome’s political and theological corruption as she follows Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia […]
What’s old is new again.
I spent a large portion of my teenage life aspiring to be an artist, and I surrounded myself with art books. Hell, my screen name (which I’ve used since the mid-90s) comes from a French Neoclassical artist. For all that, however, I mostly only read the books for the pictures – not the text. So while I’ve memorized every line in some of Ingres’ sketches, or Michelangelo’s sculptures, I can give only quick outlines of Leonardo, or Michaelangelo, or Delacroix, or any number of other […]
Tumult in ancient Rome, you don’t say!
A few years ago I read and loved Kate Quinn’s Mistress of Rome, but it had taken me some time to pick up this prequel. I really enjoyed the central love story in Mistress, so the larger and more scattered cast left me feeling less invested in Daughters. Daughters of Rome takes place during the Year of Four Emperors, around 69 AD. Our main characters are the “four Cornelias”; four young women from a very prominent patrician family. Cornelia Prima is well- and happily married […]
For the glory of Rome!
John Williams was a professor of English literature whose previous novels dealt, In muted emotions, with the lives of very humble men. So it is with a little surprise that one picks up this book, his most critically successful novella, about the life of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, born Gaius Octavius Thurinus. Augustus (Ocatavian), a real historical figure, adopted by Julius Caesar as a young boy, who used the latter’s assassination as a galvanizing force to raise an army of his own and start […]