“The Memoirs of Cleopatra”, by Margaret George

 

964 pages, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0312154301

The Memoirs of Cleopatra is the fourth historic novelization I have read by Margaret George, the others being The Autobiography of Henry VIII, With Notes By His Fool, Will Somers (reviewed on March 7^th, 2012), Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles (reviewed on April 10^th, 2012) and Elizabeth I (reviewed on May 8^th, 2020); all but the last were excellent, and so here I go again with The Memoirs of Cleopatra, which follows in the footsteps of George’s first book as purporting to having been written by the Father-Loving Goddess herself (I actually read this after having read Henry VIII and Mary, the order in which they were written; don’t know why it took me so long to review it). As with her prior books, Cleopatra is written with novelesque descriptions of a long-dead world in which life was short and death could come at a moment’s notice (or less); in which the status of the high and mighty did not protect them from the consequences of their actions; and in which beauty existed side-by-side with ugliness. In short: this is some Good Stuff, man.

It’s no wonder that Cleopatra has engrossed people over the many centuries after her death, being a powerful woman in the ancient world who ruled a rich and (sometimes) powerful nation surrounded by so many (male) jackals. Some said she was beautiful, although the consensus anymore seems to be that she was rather more exotic and fascinating; all agreed that she was intelligent, crafty and ruthless when she had to be – in other words, a ruler. With her novel, George also shows Cleopatra to be a woman: seductive, manipulative, fragile and not a little needy – y’know, human. As with her other books, her heroine is taken at face value and not given to many instances of self-recriminations or lack of inspired motivations; as Memoirs is written from the first-person, that person being Cleopatra, this is hardly surprising, but if you want a history of this most enigmatic and fascinating of queens, best find yourself a proper biography, instead (say, like Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, reviewed on March 18^th, 2013, or Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt by Joyce A. Tyldesley, reviewed on January 23^rd, 2014).

What we DO get with The Memoirs of Cleopatra are the usual suspects: Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Octavian, enigmatic Egyptians, brash Romans, royal barges, sacred asps, scheming eunuchs, chariot races, eye-watering riches and stultifying poverty…George, as usual, describes this dead world with the vim and vigor of one who seemingly walked its dusty streets and actually smelled the Alexandrian harbor, tasted the pomegranates, beheld the pyramids and heard the clash of swords. As with most tales in which I already know the ending, it was a fascinating read when it came to all of the details I knew little or nothing about; the Big Picture things I was familiar with – Caesar’s North African campaign, the Alexandrian War or the ill-fated struggle between Antony and Octavian for control of the world – were rather more difficult to get through, seeing as I had already seen the movie but, for all that, George does an admirable job keeping one abreast of the whys and the hows of the Roman conquest of the Med and the consequences thereof. Not a proper history, by no stretch, but still well-researched and described.

As with most historical figures who have lived extraordinary lives, if Cleopatra VII Philopator had never existed and an enterprising screenwriter invented her story out of whole-cloth and presented it to some producer or whatever the script would have been tossed into the trash without a second thought as being hopelessly fantastic and unrealistic. But live she did – and love and rule and conquer and fall. While a novelization of her life (and incredibly forgiving of its subject), The Memoirs of Cleopatra succeeds in bringing this most immortal of women back to life.