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Dec. 3rd, 2015 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIt 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.
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.
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Date: 2015-12-05 06:21 pm (UTC)