(no subject)

[skygiants]

It took me over two years, but I've finally read ALL TWENTY of Lindsey Davis' Marcus Didius Falco books AND the first three books in her NEW series about Falco's adopted British daughter, Flavia Albia. That is a LOT of pseudo-Roman faux-noir mystery novels of varying quality. And I still don't know if I actually think they're good?

There's a couple things about the Falco books that make them suitable comfort reading. For a start, the conscious not-quite-anachronism of the way Davis writes Roman daily life really works for me in a very specific way. When Falco and Helena Justina spend a whole book apartment hunting and complaining about not being able to find a decent one-bedroom in Vespasian Rome, you know it almost certainly wasn't like that, but you also have the feeling that quite possibly it was a little bit like that, because I find it quite easy to believe that if there's a throughline to what connects us as human beings through the ages, petty complaints and mundane exasperations are a big part of it. So the conscious anachronism feels, in a way, less false to me than when people are writing straight historical but everyone has bizarrely modern attitudes about things.

And for all the jokey anachronism, you can't really accuse Lindsey Davis of giving her characters bizarrely modern attitudes about many big social things. Like slavery, for example, which they're all pretty much fine with. This forms a big part of my very mixed feelings about the books -- I waffle wildly between thinking Lindsey Davis has made a bold choice to make her protagonist embrace highly unsympathetic attitudes and prejudices, and thinking that she just doesn't care about where her own attitudes and prejudices show up.

And, I mean, it's not that Falco's perspectives are not questioned, and I think -- I think -- they're meant to be questioned? Like, he also spends many, many books complaining about his annoying stuck-up sister and useless brother-in-law, and then at the end of one of the books the annoying stuck-up sister and useless brother-in-law adopt a deaf baby that Falco found in a trash bin over the course of his mystery case and turn out to be loving, devoted, considerate parents to an adopted disabled kid. And Falco still thinks they're incredibly annoying, but people have many sides to them, and his perspective is clearly not everything. (Which is good, because Falco's perspective is so frequently kind of terrible!)

I think Lindsey Davis is doing this on purpose, maybe? I think she wants to show that people contain multitudes? I mean, the thing you get in long-running mystery series with huge casts of peripheral characters like this that you don't really get in any other genre that I can think of is character development in the long, long, long term. Falco's nemesis Anacrites is awful, and then sort of decent for a while, and then they're almost friends, and then he's just terrible and terrible and terrible. Helena's charming and likable brother makes a series of poor choices and grows up to be kind of a asshole to his wife, while the stuck-up useless prig of a brother starts working with Falco and becomes moderately competent. And people's relationships frequently change offscreen -- Falco will complain about someone for a whole book and next book they'll be totally chill. Which sort of works for me! Interpersonal dynamics can be weirdly like that -- you think someone is the worst, and then you hang out with them in a less-stressed setting and see a little more of the, and you're like, "oh, OK, actually I guess they're not so bad." Especially when filtered through the perspective of an unreliable narrator, and I do think Falco is meant to be an unreliable narrator. Probably. OR MAYBE Lindsey Davis is just crap at continuity. I HONESTLY CAN'T TELL.

Anyway the more Falco rises in society, as he does over the course of the books, the less sympathetic he gets, so I was excited to see if the Flavia Albia books gave us a different and more challenging perspective on some of the stuff Falco takes for granted. Flavia Albia is a woman living on her own and working as a private informer! And a British 'barbarian' living in Rome! And lived on the streets for the first fifteen years of her life! FLAVIA ALBIA SHOULD HAVE SOME THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE STATUS QUO.

...Flavia Albia does not have as much to say about the status quo as I hoped she would. Flavia Albia also seems to think her adopted parents can do no wrong, which is extra disappointing because it sheds extra doubt on all my unreliable narrator hypotheses (and also, like, I read the books in which Flavia was adopted! They tried, but THEY DID WRONG.)

And the second Flavia Albia book is, like ... trying to be an examination of slavery in Rome? And sort of almost gets there? But it ends on a strange note of "isn't it weird that we have no sense of how unhappy slaves are, WHAT IF THEY RISE UP AND KILL US ALL," not "isn't it weird that we have no sense of how unhappy slaves are, MAYBE THIS INSTITUTION IS KIND OF A PROBLEM." Flavia Albia! Come on! It's not that big a leap!

However, I do like that the narrative keeps presenting Flavia Albia with situations where she might be expected to take in a stray orphan/puppy/whatever and she consistently nopes out of it.

Anyway this was a very long entry about a very long series of books that in spite of all my increasing discomfort I will quite possibly keep reading. BUT FOR NOW I AM DONE.

Comments

[davidgillon]

I was a long time reader of these from when 'The Silver Pigs' first came out, but dropped out somewhere in the early teens. But I think what you're saying is very fair comment. And they are comfort reading, and maybe I need to get back to them.

[skygiants]

My favorite lack of continuity thing is when in the second book Falco is like "this auctioneer who MIGHT be my dad, I DON'T KNOW, I'D RATHER NOT KNOW TO BE HONEST, WHATEVER," and in the third book he's just like "yeah ugh my useless deadbeat dad, he's the worst." Way to come to terms with your emotions offscreen, Falco!

[meganbmoore]

I read the first few books back when they were newish and then college happened an leisure reading no longer existed for a couple years and I never got back to them. I do remember enjoying them a lot at the time, but also sideeyeing some things even then.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I read the first ... some number ... of books many years ago, when I was in middle/high school -- my local library had a bunch of them. I have no idea how many I actually read at that point but this time I decided I HAD TO READ THEM ALL if I wanted to get to the Flavia Albia books, because I have completionist urges and no sense of self-preservation.

[aella_irene]

I really enjoyed the earlier Falco books, and then the enjoyment sort of trailed off a bit. I recall reading somewhere that they get distinctly grimmer around the time her husband died, and that she found it much harder to write the Falco/Helena Justina bits after. I'm guessing that was when the cannibalism got introduced. was pleased to see Nemesis, because I knew it was the last, but I didn't really enjoy it.

I haven't managed to get into the Flavia Albia books yet, but they are On A List.

I have a shameless and shameful affection for Aulus Camillus Aelianus. I just want him to have a bit of the nice life with a nice spouse he so desperately deserves, because he keeps trying, and getting it wrong, and everything keeps turning up trumps for Quintus, even when you'd think it wouldn't.

[skygiants]

I hadn't heard that, but it does explain how grim some of the latest ones get! @__@ And how some characters who seem to be doing fine suddenly are doing MUCH LESS FINE. (Poor Larius, man. I was perfectly content with his happy ending off in book two!)

Aulus Camillus was my favorite for the longest time. He's so sulky, but he tries so hard! Then my affection dipped significantly after the thing with Flavia Albia, because flirting with your niece or whatever went down there: BAD FORM, SIR. (Three books in and we still don't know exactly what happened with Flavia and Aulus -- Flavia is thirty in the Albia books -- but either way it seems he behaved poorly to some degree although she is on good terms with both Aulus and Quintus by the time the books take place.)

[sovay]

I'm guessing that was when the cannibalism got introduced.

What.

[aella_irene]

See Delphi and Die, the 17th books, contains Unexpected Accidental Cannibalism.

As you do.

[legionseagle]

I confess I gave up (largely; I dipped into one or two of the later ones) at the book which I think of as "and Falco turns into a complete New Man, and there's an awful lot of olive oil."

So, for me, the problem really was the "bizarrely modern attitudes." I didn't mind jokey anachronisms against a relatively plausible Roman background (though I also kept getting twitchy because having read Tacitus at school, and being taught by my Latin teacher, "You can't understand Tacitus unless you realise as a senator who'd survived Domitian he had the biggest case of survivor's guilt ever" and so every time someone mentioned Domitian AND Falco keeps edging towards senatorial rank I kept going "No, no! RUN AWAY!") but I think I just got bored with Falco and Helena Justina.

[skygiants]

THERE'S SO MUCH OLIVE OIL. On the one hand, I get the narrative drive to have Falco continue to succeed, because you can't keep him at a standstill -- and it does allow for some fun character progression and nicely identifiable moments (like, again, "Falco and Helena go apartment-hunting!" which is a plot arc that I totally enjoyed.) On the other hand, the more he climbs, the further you get from some of the things that made the series relatively charming to begin with.

Another reason I was very curious to read the Flavia Albia books is to see how she'd handle the Domitian times. So far, it's a lot of environmental setup about how everyone's extremely paranoid and twitchy and oppressed without very much actual payoff. (And Falco, who never does make senator, spends most of his time hiding in the country in case Domitian remembers he exists. Helena's brothers, on the other hand, who are senators, are clearly riding for a major fall.)

[sovay]

But it ends on a strange note of "isn't it weird that we have no sense of how unhappy slaves are, WHAT IF THEY RISE UP AND KILL US ALL," not "isn't it weird that we have no sense of how unhappy slaves are, MAYBE THIS INSTITUTION IS KIND OF A PROBLEM."

The former does feel convincingly Roman to me, though.

I read Silver Pigs in college and can remember enjoying it, but I never read the second novel and I'm not sure why, especially when I had been following Steven Saylor (whose writing style and integration of fictional characters into real history is a hell of a lot more clunky, especially in the early novels) since high school and I picked up—and stuck to—John Maddox Roberts around the same time. I wonder if it was the anachronism that did it. My father loves the books, at least the Falco ones.

[edit] I mean, I know for a fact that I enjoyed John Maddox Roberts because Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger is a historically accurate upper-class ne'er-do-well of the late Roman Republic, meaning that he's much cleverer than his reputation but just about as much of a self-centered asshole, but your description makes it sound as though I could have found characters within similar parameters in Lindsey Davis. Maybe the time period wasn't my thing, either. When I bounce off a book, I usually remember why.

[skygiants]

TRUE, though I would be more willing to roll with it if, again, Flavia Albia hadn't come to Rome in her late teens. If an author's going to give themselves such a golden opportunity to have an outsider perspective, I feel like they probably ought to make use of it.

(Also, Flavia Albia's love interest has a teenaged slave who continues to be played merely as "now we gotta be responsible for this sulky teenaged boy" for the rest of and the entire subsequent book, which seems like a tonal misstep and played a lot better when it was Falco's sulky nephews.)

You could absolutely find characters of that description in the Falco books, though not as much in the first one -- which, admittedly, as the author's first book, has entirely separate issues of its own.

[leecetheartist]

I'm finding this all very interesting as I'm just coming to the end of Colleen McCulloch's First Man in Rome series which is really well researched.

Might have to have a look.

[skygiants]

I never read any McCulloch, but I've heard of her stuff and been vaguely intrigued by it.

[ceitfianna]

I was first introduced to these books when I was living in New Zealand and every once in a while, I go I should read them again. I know I haven't read all of them but you've put down a lot of the reasons I like and kind of headtilt at them.

As a Classicist, I appreciate her take on look, this is true in some ways and not in others, its a good way to approach writing in another time. It reminds me a little of what Ellis Peters did with Cadfael but Peters took on more of the social issues as that's who Cadfael is.

[skygiants]

There's definitely the parallels, though I feel like Ellis Peters put more effort into appropriate historical atmosphere than Lindsey Davis does. (She's also, admittedly, just less funny.)

[ceitfianna]

Oh yes, they're writing very different types of books. I read somewhere that Davis wanted to write a noir but also an Italian so big family and I loved that.

To me they're more comfort reading that I forgot while I know the Cadfael books closely as everyone felt more real and ended up influencing a lot of how I created Will's world for Milliways. She was going for messy which I enjoyed but in terms of historical feeling, Peters does it better. Have you read any of Peters' other mysteries, I think you'd like them? She gets into some fascinating post war issues and are well written.

[oracne]

I made it maybe 6? into this series, and enjoyed it, but it's been years and I haven't been back to it. Hmm.

[skygiants]

I feel like six is prooobably about as far as I made it too, the first time around, but it might have been more -- it was long enough ago that I've totally lost track.

[enleve]

I've started to read Lindsey Davis' books set in ancient Rome a few times, but didn't get into them.

However I did get into Steven Saylor's series of mysteries set in ancient Rome, starring a private detective named Gordianus. I like those a lot better.

Though, when I reread one of them recently, some of Gordianus' decisions seemed a lot shittier than what I'd realized when reading them the first time. But I think part of that was because Saylor is pretty careful to make things historically accurate or plausible, and treating a certain character well would have resulted in a different result than what historically happened.

Anyway, that's my recommendation for books set in ancient Rome, Steven Saylor's series about Gordianus. The first one is Roman Blood.