I like historical fiction but don’t often venture as far back in time as the first millennium, preferring to stay within my 18th/19th century comfort zone. Theodora by Stella Duffy was an interesting departure for me, not just as a reader, but also as a would be historical writer (my still-struggling-with-it novel is set in the 19th Century). I should make it clear that what follows is more a note to myself on issues around writing rather than a full review of the book. Perhaps reading as a writer has taken over from reading as a reader. I have never read solely for plot but it seems that nowadays I can’t overlook less than excellent writing (even though I can’t produce it myself!)
Theodora is set in Constantinople around 500 CE and there is no attempt to re-create period speech or style, the book is unashamedly modern in its narrative tone and dialogue. So here, for example, is Theodora is speaking to her maid: ‘Yeah, right, because you’ve got so much time between screwing the captain and flirting with that fat merchant..’ Or to her friend Sophia: ‘We could go somewhere else, just the two of us, for a meal?’ I admit I find this modern speech somewhat jarring but I accept that it probably represents the modern equivalent, the spirit, of how Theodora spoke in her own time and her own language.
I was less happy with the colloquial narrative style. I seem to have developed a thin skin so far as ugly sentences are concerned. These were really quite painful:
‘A presumably barren ex-dancer, who’d slept with far too many men, not all of them for money, but not many for free, who had found a new life as an anti-Chalcedonian believer at a time when there were even more attacks on that group than before, and who now couldn’t make up her mind if she was hungry for the City or terrified of that hunger, didn’t seem to have a lot going for her in terms of greatness as far as she could see.’
‘As Justin faded from bad to worse health, Justinian needed to immediately step up in every area of governing the Empire.’
In places it feels like something written at speed and not fully edited. So for example on page 160 we have Severus ‘speaking in many languages and not just the Greek of the church or the Latin of state, using whatever words he could find to make sense to his disparate group.’ Then just four pages later, in her retreat in the mountains Theodora recalls Severus ‘speaking in Syriac as often as any other language, proudly using whatever words were most appropriate to express universal truths, refusing to stick to the Latin the Roman west loved, the Greek the church preferred, choosing instead to use whichever languages his followers understood to make his point clear to them.’ Repetitious? A little.
And I lay a bet that Ms Duffy writes a daily quota of 500 or 1,000 words. How do I guess this? On pages 250 to 253 we get three separate sections of background: a day’s work each (after they have been edited down) interesting, connected in content but plunked down without linkage. I do this sort of thing in my first drafts too but I am surprised to see them turn up in a published novel.
The novel follows Theodora’s life chronologically and large amounts of history and theology are neatly summarised and slipped in without causing indigestion in the reader, but Theodora packed a lot into her life: dancer, mistress to a Governor in Africa, religious convert undergoing visions in the desert, adviser to the Emperor’s heir apparent back in Constantinople, then wife and in the final pages Empress. I wished for longer with each stage, more expansiveness rather than the hurrying on to the next stage. The material is so interesting that it could easily take a longer treatment; plus in the shortening, so much is summarised that cries out for dramatisation.
In terms of structure, the chronological approach can seem episodic - just one thing after another and I found myself wondering whether the narrative could have been tighter, more coherent if we hadn’t followed her every where but had been more selective. The progression of events is like life, but then life is arbitrary and meaningless. I want novels to seem like life but to give me a sense of meaning of purpose and for that we need selection and some sort of narrative theme or coherence and I felt Theodora lacked this.
I felt cheated of the engagement I wanted with the character of Theodora. Her life was amazingly interesting but there is a certain cartoonish flattening and summarizing of emotions in the narrative that shut me out. So when she is complaining about the boredom of her convent life and is then told that the henchmen of her powerful ex-lover are searching for her and that her life is in danger we don’t see her responses, instead we get the glib ‘Suddenly, boring looked very attractive.’ There is a barrier between me and the living woman at this point.
Similarly when she starts sleeping with the woman whose house she is sent to lodge in, we are simply presented with this development, there is no consideration of the different emotional quality of the relationship or its physicality, which one might expect to occur to Theodora who has spent a large portion of her earlier life sleeping with men for money. The moment does not get enough space in the text to draw us in to Theodora, we are off on the next stage of her adventures. On the eve of her coronation as Empress she experiences a moment of doubt but quickly shrugs it off ‘And then, not entirely sure if she was making this connection herself because she wanted to see it or because it was truly there, Theodora decided she did have the right to assume the crown.’ This is a pivotal moment: from prostitute to Empress and yet the author gives the impression that she can’t be bothered to explore it fully and darts off to the next scene.
All of this gives unfair precedence to the negative aspects: let me point out that this is a great story, that there are some really delightful scenes (especially Theodora’s first night with Justinian, the death of Justin and the ending as Theodora comes full circle and re-enters the Hippodrome) and I will most certainly read the sequel. But I hope that it will be both longer and more tightly edited.
