Title: The Memoirs of Cleopatra Author: Margaret George
Published: May 15, 1998
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 964
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Bestselling novelist Margaret George brings to life the glittering kingdom of Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, in this lush, sweeping, and richly detailed saga. Told in Cleopatra's own voice, this is a mesmerizing tale of ambition, passion, and betrayal, which begins when the twenty-year-old queen seeks out the most powerful man in the world, Julius Caesar, and does not end until, having survived the assassination of Caesar and the defeat of the second man she loves, Marc Antony, she plots her own death rather than be paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome.
Most of all, in its richness and authenticity, it is an irresistible story that reveals why Margaret George's work has been widely acclaimed as "the best kind of historical novel, one the reader can't wait to get lost in."
Weighing in at just under 1000 pages, The Memoirs of Cleopatra is not exactly light reading. It’s an involved, dense, slow novel that requires patience and attention. I think it’s ultimately rewarding, though at some points I had to stop and wonder if it was all worth it.
The book is presented as the musings of Cleopatra as she lays dying. Now, considering that Margaret George goes with the traditional self-inflicted asp bite scenario, I’m going to have to wonder how realistic it is to suppose that Cleopatra wrote 1000 pages while suffering from severe drowsiness and disorientation. And in the epilogue, one of the characters remarks that it took him about a month to read these memoirs, they were so long. Hmm. Yeah, I don’t buy that situation, but whatever—it’s fiction.
Cleopatra’s story isn’t really new material. I can’t say that reading The Memoirs of Cleopatra gave me any new insights into her life or into history, so that was a tad bit disappointing. One would have hoped that if you’re going to dedicate 1000 pages’ worth of time, you’d learn something new. I didn’t, but thankfully George had obviously done her homework and didn’t commit any grievous inaccuracies just for the sake of making the story better.
I say that Margaret George apparently devoted a great deal of research time prior to writing this novel, which I believe is true. In fact, at times she is so enthusiastic in imparting historical knowledge that the book reads something like a very dry textbook. If you consider the context provided—that Cleopatra is writing this book for a close friend—then some of the lengthy explanations don’t fit. In many places, The Memoirs of Cleopatra is certainly overwritten, and because of that, it took me a long time to get into the swing of the story or to really care about what I was reading.
In the end, this book was only so-so. I didn’t find it a waste of my time, but neither did I feel that this was anything special. Cleopatra the person was hardly present, even though this is narrated in first person. Really, the characters I cared most about were Cleopatra’s four children, who were intelligent and kind. I think that The Memoirs of Cleopatra might work better for a reader who’s not as familiar with the story as I already was (having read several fictional and nonfictional books beforehand). I don’t think this is a bad book, really, but it hardly knocked my socks off.
