The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret GeorgeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I signed up for a masterclass from author, Margaret George, on How to Turn a Real Person into a Fictional One at the upcoming biannual conference of the Historical Novel Society of North America. In preparation for the session, I listened to the audiobook of her novel, The Confessions of Young Nero. This has to have been a challenging book to write because so much is disputed about Nero’s life. Margaret George rose to the challenge admirably, with a fascinating look at how Nero’s childhood would have shaped his later behaviour.
Most of us know the story about Nero fiddling while Rome burned (which turns out not to be true). Beyond that, I had a general impression that he was a bad ruler: vain, self-absorbed, cruel (though not as bad as Caligula) and a massive over-spender. While there’s an element of truth to that view of him, there’s also another side. He seems to have cared much more about the common people than most Roman Emperors, and it is said that his death was genuinely mourned by many commoners, even though by that time he was pretty universally despised by the ruling class.
I found the first half of the book, about his childhood, particularly intriguing. The kid grew up with people all around him plotting, scheming, murdering and being murdered. He learned early that he could trust no-one, not even his own mother. (Perhaps especially not his own mother.) No wonder he turned into a messed-up adult!
The second half seemed to sag a bit, and his love affair with Poppaea — even when he sees how she is adopting many of his despised mother’s scheming ways — didn’t feel as credible as most other parts of the book. (I have some questions about that which I’m hoping to discuss with the author during the workshop.) Despite this, it was certainly good enough to keep me reading, and to inspire me to want to learn more about him and Roman politics of the day. (I always consider it a sign of a well-written historical novel if I want to learn more after having read it.)
I’m looking forward to reading the second part of his story, in her book The Splendor Before the Dark: A Novel of the Emperor Nero, and other novels she’s written. Her range is extraordinary: Cleopatra, Henry VIII, Mary Magdalene, Helen of Troy, Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scots…. I guess I’ll be busy for a while!
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