Marianna Marsy Hovhannisyan Marsy Hovhannisyan itibaren Dalton NSW 2581, Australia
** spoiler alert ** I must admit that when I first opened the book my heart sank at the sight of the map before the beginning of Chapter One. To me a map at the beginning of a book is nearly as bad as a family tree as it seems to suggest that I’ll really need to stay on my toes if I’ve got a hope of following what’s about to happen. My feeling of unease stayed with me throughout the first chapter as there’s a lot of scene-setting historical detail in there which distracted me from getting to know the characters, however once the preliminaries were out of the way and the author started to concentrate on character and plot rather than on the details of her research, I started to enjoy the novel a lot more. I didn’t know anything about Theodora or much about Roman Constantinople before I started, but I didn’t need to and was happy to read the novel as an escapist piece of enjoyment rather than a historical interpretation of a real life. I really enjoyed the first third of book which covered Theodora’s background, her theatre training and her acting career. The eponymous heroine is an attractive character with whom the reader wants to spend time and the detail of her life is fascinating enough to keep interest going. All the characters, even relatively minor ones, are well-described and seem to have their own lives, rather than just being a foil for the protagonist. I wasn’t as keen on the middle section of the book, Theodora’s time in North Africa, as I felt I didn’t fully understand what each of the Christian sects mentioned stood for and what divided them – this made it difficult to care about which sect would come out on top. Once Theodora returned to Constantinople, however, I began to enjoy the book again. Theodora seems to be portrayed as quite a modern women in her attitude to life and her confidence (though we have to remember that she’s an actress), but at the same time can be seen to be dependent on men throughout her life though she is proficient in turning her wit and her appearance to her advantage. When reading anything with a historical setting I much prefer the focus to be on the lives of ordinary people, rather than a survey of the great and the good of the era – this novel manages to be both by focusing on someone who started in poverty and ended as one of the highest in the Roman Empire. And the end sets us up for a sequel. I enjoyed the book, though it isn’t something I would probably have chosen to read otherwise. In some ways it could be said to be similar to Helen Dunmore’s “Counting The Stars” which I also read recently – however, I think “Theodora” is by far the better and more successful novel of the two.