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Counting the Stars
Counting the Stars is a captivating tale of forbidden love and bestselling author Helen Dunmore's tenth novel. In the heat of Rome's long summer, the poet Catullus and his older married lover, Clodia Metelli, meet in secret. Living at the heart of sophisticated, brittle and brutal Roman society at the time of Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, Catullus is obsessed with Clodia, the Lesbia of his most passionate poems. He is jealous of her husband, of her maid, even of her pet sparrow. And Clodia? Catullus is 'her dear poet', but possibly not her only interest . . . Their Rome is a city of extremes. Tenants are packed into ramshackle apartment blocks while palatial villas house the magnificence of the families who control Rome. Armed street gangs clash in struggles for political power. Slaves are the eyes and ears of everything that goes on, while civilization and violence are equals, murder is the easy option and poison the weapon of choice. Catallus' relationship with Clodia is one of the most intense, passionate, tormented and candid in history. In love and in hate, their story exposes the beauty and terrors of Roman life in the late Republic. 'She reels you in . . . Dunmore has a gift for turning every genre she touches to gold' Telegraph `Dunmore at her most innovative and daring . . . a powerful and convincing study of fame and notoriety . . . captivating and compelling' Time Out 'Dunmore's strengths as a novelist have always included her skill in sensuous description and her ability to convey the promises and the dangers of erotic love. The Rome she has so vividly realised in Counting the Stars provides a new stage on which to display those strengths' Sunday Times Helen Dunmore is the author of twelve Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby; House of Orphans; Counting the Stars; The Betrayal, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010, and The Greatcoat. She is also a poet, children's novelist and short-story writer.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
21 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Helen Dunmore
90 books969 followersI was born in December 1952, in Yorkshire, the second of four children. My father was the eldest of twelve, and this extended family has no doubt had a strong influence on my life, as have my own children. In a large family you hear a great many stories. You also come to understand very early that stories hold quite different meanings for different listeners, and can be recast from many viewpoints.
Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later.
I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.
At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.
During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. I began to travel a great deal within the UK and around the world, for poetry tours and writing residences. This experience of working in many different countries and cultures has been very important to my work. I reviewed poetry for Stand and Poetry Review and later for The Observer, and subsequently reviewed fiction for The Observer, The Times and The Guardian. My critical work includes introductions to the poems of Emily Brontë, the short stories of D H Lawrence and F Scott Fitzgerald, a study of Virginia Woolf’s relationships with women and Introductions to the Folio Society's edition of Anna Karenina and to the new Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy's My Confession.
During the 1980s and early 1990s I taught poetry and creative writing, tutored residential writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and took part in the Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme, as well as giving readings and workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons and every other kind of place where a poem could conceivably be welcome. I also taught at the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts.
In the late 1980s I began to publish short stories, and these were the beginning of a breakthrough into fiction. What I had learned of prose technique through the short story gave me the impetus to start writing novels. My first novel for children was Going to Egypt, published in 1992, and my first novel for adults was Zennor in Darkness, published in 1993, which won the McKitterick Prize. This was also my first researched novel, set in the First World War and dealing with the period when D H Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in Zennor in Cornwall, and came under suspicion as German spies.
My third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and since then I have published a number of novels, short story collections and books for children. Full details of all these books are available on this website. The last of The Ingo Quartet, The Crossing of Ingo, was published in paperback in Spring 2009.
My seventh novel, The Siege (2001) was shortlisted both for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. This was another researched novel, which grew from a lifelong love of Russian history, culture and literature. It is is set in Leningrad during the first year of the siege of the city by German forces, which lasted for 880 days from the fall of Mga on 30th August 1941. The Siege has been translated into Russian by Tatyana Averchina, and extracts have been broadcast on radio in St Petersburg. House of Orphans was published in 2006, and in 2008 Counting the Stars. Its central characters are the Roman poet Catullus, who lived during the last years of the Republic,
Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later.
I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.
At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.
During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. I began to travel a great deal within the UK and around the world, for poetry tours and writing residences. This experience of working in many different countries and cultures has been very important to my work. I reviewed poetry for Stand and Poetry Review and later for The Observer, and subsequently reviewed fiction for The Observer, The Times and The Guardian. My critical work includes introductions to the poems of Emily Brontë, the short stories of D H Lawrence and F Scott Fitzgerald, a study of Virginia Woolf’s relationships with women and Introductions to the Folio Society's edition of Anna Karenina and to the new Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy's My Confession.
During the 1980s and early 1990s I taught poetry and creative writing, tutored residential writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and took part in the Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme, as well as giving readings and workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons and every other kind of place where a poem could conceivably be welcome. I also taught at the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts.
In the late 1980s I began to publish short stories, and these were the beginning of a breakthrough into fiction. What I had learned of prose technique through the short story gave me the impetus to start writing novels. My first novel for children was Going to Egypt, published in 1992, and my first novel for adults was Zennor in Darkness, published in 1993, which won the McKitterick Prize. This was also my first researched novel, set in the First World War and dealing with the period when D H Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in Zennor in Cornwall, and came under suspicion as German spies.
My third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and since then I have published a number of novels, short story collections and books for children. Full details of all these books are available on this website. The last of The Ingo Quartet, The Crossing of Ingo, was published in paperback in Spring 2009.
My seventh novel, The Siege (2001) was shortlisted both for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. This was another researched novel, which grew from a lifelong love of Russian history, culture and literature. It is is set in Leningrad during the first year of the siege of the city by German forces, which lasted for 880 days from the fall of Mga on 30th August 1941. The Siege has been translated into Russian by Tatyana Averchina, and extracts have been broadcast on radio in St Petersburg. House of Orphans was published in 2006, and in 2008 Counting the Stars. Its central characters are the Roman poet Catullus, who lived during the last years of the Republic,
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
September 12, 2016
This book follows the historical characters of the poet Catullus and his lover Clodia, during the Rome of Julius Caesar.
Catullus is involved with his scandalous lover, who also happens to be married, and he's a tortured artist, writing poems about her, and suffering the agony of not being able to marry her and be with her always.
I enjoyed the descriptions of ancient Rome and its surrounds and the details of what life was like for the citizens and slaves of the day. The inclusion of verses of Catullus' actual poems was a nice touch, sprinkled throughout the book, as the events that supposedly brought those poems about unfolded.
The story was enjoyable, but I felt like it never really fully gripped me, and it kind of just tapered off at the end.
Catullus is involved with his scandalous lover, who also happens to be married, and he's a tortured artist, writing poems about her, and suffering the agony of not being able to marry her and be with her always.
I enjoyed the descriptions of ancient Rome and its surrounds and the details of what life was like for the citizens and slaves of the day. The inclusion of verses of Catullus' actual poems was a nice touch, sprinkled throughout the book, as the events that supposedly brought those poems about unfolded.
The story was enjoyable, but I felt like it never really fully gripped me, and it kind of just tapered off at the end.
September 21, 2016
"Odi et amo" [I hate and I love] -- Catullus's ambivalent feelings towards
"mea puella" [my girl]
, Clodia, poured out in his "Lesbia" poems. This novel is the author's imagining of the course of their passionate affair. Catullus is absolutely besotted and obsessed with the woman and she a brutal tease, leading him on into the abyss. There were a couple of subplots: one involving the death of Clodia's husband due to a possible poisoning and Catullus's search to find what poison was used and who might have committed the murder; also a section involving Catullus and his loyal freedman Lucius and a possible return to Catullus's home town to manage the family's property after the death of his brother.
I felt the course of the love affair has been overdone in literature. The most interesting part to me was the investigation. Even after discovering what kind of woman Clodia is, Catullus STILL believes her lies. Dunmore portrayed her as femme fatale, practically as a psychopath, at least completely amoral, selfish, manipulative, and narcissistic and Catullus, a dupe fooling himself, caught in her toils. I hadn't time for either of them. Lucius and Aemilia, the slave, gained some sympathy. The story just flowed, with Dunmore's elegant writing.
I felt the course of the love affair has been overdone in literature. The most interesting part to me was the investigation. Even after discovering what kind of woman Clodia is, Catullus STILL believes her lies. Dunmore portrayed her as femme fatale, practically as a psychopath, at least completely amoral, selfish, manipulative, and narcissistic and Catullus, a dupe fooling himself, caught in her toils. I hadn't time for either of them. Lucius and Aemilia, the slave, gained some sympathy. The story just flowed, with Dunmore's elegant writing.
March 19, 2017
Fictional take on the historic love affair between the poet Catullus and Clodia (scandal followed sister of rabble rousing and equally notorious Clodius). Written in a similar style to The Siege in a third party present tense (mainly around one narrator – here Catullus) which lends a sense of immediacy and oppression – which here is initially the heat of summer but increasingly the oppression of love.
The book does give a good take on Roman life in this late Republican period – the growing decadence of Baiae; the increasing menace in Suburbia and general rise in violence from Clodius and his gangs; the growing wealth of the old families fuelled by corruption in overseas territories; the increasing irrelevance of the Senate and brilliant orators such as Cicero at exactly the time their work is at a peak
Here it seems heavily influenced by (or at least drawing on similar sources and interpretation of those sources) by the brilliant Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic.
In some of the more striking characterisation (e.g. Catullus’s simultaneous love and hate fuelled obsession) Dunmore appears to draw heavily on the poetry so it is unclear how original she is being.
The book’s reading is helped by a knowledge of the events and characters of the period and would be enhanced by a knowledge of Latin (and even more by a familiarity with Catullus’s verse).
The book does give a good take on Roman life in this late Republican period – the growing decadence of Baiae; the increasing menace in Suburbia and general rise in violence from Clodius and his gangs; the growing wealth of the old families fuelled by corruption in overseas territories; the increasing irrelevance of the Senate and brilliant orators such as Cicero at exactly the time their work is at a peak
Here it seems heavily influenced by (or at least drawing on similar sources and interpretation of those sources) by the brilliant Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic.
In some of the more striking characterisation (e.g. Catullus’s simultaneous love and hate fuelled obsession) Dunmore appears to draw heavily on the poetry so it is unclear how original she is being.
The book’s reading is helped by a knowledge of the events and characters of the period and would be enhanced by a knowledge of Latin (and even more by a familiarity with Catullus’s verse).
February 13, 2024
Did Catullus not love her as much as I thought? Just because she murdered her husband and him now knowing clearly it was her shouldn’t really hinder his love. But I guess disappointment builds up over time, with Rufus, Clodius, her various other lovers, and the horrible way her husband died.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 2, 2017
Very little is known about the life of the Roman poet Catullus, but several of his poems have survived. A little more is known about the most likely original for his lover 'Lesbia', patrician wife Clodia Metelli, but much of that is rumour and speculation. The author has taken the poems, the rumours and the few facts, and built a very human story of a love affair amid the politics and machinations of late-republican Rome, the most populous city of the time.
It is a very enjoyable book.
It is a very enjoyable book.
January 7, 2018
This is a love story launched with sensuality and seduction, with infidelity close at hand,
‘You find a little beach, and slip off your clothes, and walk in to the water. Water feels quite different night, did you know that? But of course you must have a friend with you because it’s dangerous to bathe alone. And your friend walks into the water too, and you reach out your arms and find him.’
This is no passing amorous fancy, our young poet, Catallus, is smitten by Cupid’s arrow, and Helen Dunmore’s novel captures his obsession as it is written from ‘the inside out' and through the eyes of the poet the beguiling, sensuous and wilful, Clodia Metelli flits into view. Admired by all for her beauty and ravishing looks, and famed for her singing, dancing and poetry, Clodia is delightfully coquettish and the centre of attention amongst Rome’s social elite “as the breeze blows her silk dress over her body and mounds it to her breast and thighs.”
As always with such women of outstanding beauty, so with the charm and sensual looks comes a tantalising whiff of notoriety: all the men in her circle gain greater currency by exaggerating the degree of their friendship, or indeed even greater intimacy, with the notoriously beautiful Roman celebrity. Such is the fate of the infamous Clodia and not without good cause, as she runs her many lovers quite a dance, and poor Catallus is driven by a fiery and unquenchable desire.
Helen Dunmore sets up the story with seductive opening chapters in which we have the whiff of incest, betrayal and forbidden love, and the promise of much more to come. We have exotic gardens vibrant with the fragrant scent of lavender and verbena, and feasting with tables loaded with sumptuous spreads of lobster and prawns, and fine chilled wines. And with sleepy villas at siesta time, and lascivious glances, and lecherous thoughts and teasing temptation, and sentences soaked with insinuation. Debauchery and scandal are seldom far away.
Helen Dunmore is a wonderful writer of historical fiction, masterful at evoking the past, and has wonderful control over events and gives the story a wonderful sense of drama and immediacy,
‘The rooms had been sprinkled with fresh water and swept, but they still smell of distant lives that weren’t being lived here anymore.’ And with great imaginative power she recreates the sites, sounds and smells of distant Rome with its celebrity poets and devious Machiavellian senators, and slave girls attentive to their mistresses’ needs.
Here I confess my ignorance. I didn’t know of the Catullus’ corpus of 116 poems (only one copy of his collection of poems survived the ages, apparently, hidden under a bushel or used as a bung in a barrel in a Verona monastery !) nor that classical scholars view him as a small-time, provincial poet from Verona who lived among the great at Rome but never, himself, attained greatness, although his poems have assumed considerable notoriety for their eroticism and sexual excess, teeming as they are with anuses, penises, and stinking armpits.
Born about 84BC Gaius Valerius Catullus moved to Rome and apparently fell in love with the older, Clodia Metelli, a scion of the ancient influential Claudii family, and already the wife of a prominent senator and mother of a daughter. Catallus wrote a corpus of works dedicated to Labia, and from this premise Helen Dunmore recreates a work of historical fiction, assuming the poems were describing his love for Clodia Metelli. She weaves a tale of illicit and possessive love, betrayal and jealousy, desire, incest and lust.
Catallus was so completely consumed by his own passion and desire that he never doubted Clodia’s constancy but he soon discovers the anguish of obsessive love. She has other lovers and so demands discretion. Their meetings, necessarily secret for the most part, on account of Clodia’s social position, took place in a love-nest, loaned by a friend, and so the story carries a tension that the lovers might be discovered at any moment.
The first half of the story held me and excited my curiosity but the denouement is less than enthralling. But the author clearly found great scope in the poems to pen her portrait of Catallus as his Lesbia poems are suffused with lust and anguish, and contain great rage and infamy. He was outspoken and shameless in his obscene public attacks on his enemies, even revered public figures, as in Paedicabo ego vos et irrumabo his colourful reply to two companions, Furius and Aurelius, who had criticised the indecency of his writings: “I shall fuck you in the ass and I shall fuck you in the mouth.”
The reanimation of the past contains a great deal of speculation and some scholars will view the work as trivialising a great man and celebrated poet. But full marks for trying to bring the past to life and for me the novel succeeds. The candour of her characterisation and vivid description of time and place is peerless. But the story is seen from only one point of view, sadly, and so we learn little of Clodia’s real feelings. Certainly she had no intention of confining herself to Catullus alone, but only of numbering him as one of her lovers. Her story would be an interesting tale as she is much more than a femme-fatale.
‘That’s the trouble with you poets. It’s all very well being brilliant but you end up miserable’
‘You find a little beach, and slip off your clothes, and walk in to the water. Water feels quite different night, did you know that? But of course you must have a friend with you because it’s dangerous to bathe alone. And your friend walks into the water too, and you reach out your arms and find him.’
This is no passing amorous fancy, our young poet, Catallus, is smitten by Cupid’s arrow, and Helen Dunmore’s novel captures his obsession as it is written from ‘the inside out' and through the eyes of the poet the beguiling, sensuous and wilful, Clodia Metelli flits into view. Admired by all for her beauty and ravishing looks, and famed for her singing, dancing and poetry, Clodia is delightfully coquettish and the centre of attention amongst Rome’s social elite “as the breeze blows her silk dress over her body and mounds it to her breast and thighs.”
As always with such women of outstanding beauty, so with the charm and sensual looks comes a tantalising whiff of notoriety: all the men in her circle gain greater currency by exaggerating the degree of their friendship, or indeed even greater intimacy, with the notoriously beautiful Roman celebrity. Such is the fate of the infamous Clodia and not without good cause, as she runs her many lovers quite a dance, and poor Catallus is driven by a fiery and unquenchable desire.
Helen Dunmore sets up the story with seductive opening chapters in which we have the whiff of incest, betrayal and forbidden love, and the promise of much more to come. We have exotic gardens vibrant with the fragrant scent of lavender and verbena, and feasting with tables loaded with sumptuous spreads of lobster and prawns, and fine chilled wines. And with sleepy villas at siesta time, and lascivious glances, and lecherous thoughts and teasing temptation, and sentences soaked with insinuation. Debauchery and scandal are seldom far away.
Helen Dunmore is a wonderful writer of historical fiction, masterful at evoking the past, and has wonderful control over events and gives the story a wonderful sense of drama and immediacy,
‘The rooms had been sprinkled with fresh water and swept, but they still smell of distant lives that weren’t being lived here anymore.’ And with great imaginative power she recreates the sites, sounds and smells of distant Rome with its celebrity poets and devious Machiavellian senators, and slave girls attentive to their mistresses’ needs.
Here I confess my ignorance. I didn’t know of the Catullus’ corpus of 116 poems (only one copy of his collection of poems survived the ages, apparently, hidden under a bushel or used as a bung in a barrel in a Verona monastery !) nor that classical scholars view him as a small-time, provincial poet from Verona who lived among the great at Rome but never, himself, attained greatness, although his poems have assumed considerable notoriety for their eroticism and sexual excess, teeming as they are with anuses, penises, and stinking armpits.
Born about 84BC Gaius Valerius Catullus moved to Rome and apparently fell in love with the older, Clodia Metelli, a scion of the ancient influential Claudii family, and already the wife of a prominent senator and mother of a daughter. Catallus wrote a corpus of works dedicated to Labia, and from this premise Helen Dunmore recreates a work of historical fiction, assuming the poems were describing his love for Clodia Metelli. She weaves a tale of illicit and possessive love, betrayal and jealousy, desire, incest and lust.
Catallus was so completely consumed by his own passion and desire that he never doubted Clodia’s constancy but he soon discovers the anguish of obsessive love. She has other lovers and so demands discretion. Their meetings, necessarily secret for the most part, on account of Clodia’s social position, took place in a love-nest, loaned by a friend, and so the story carries a tension that the lovers might be discovered at any moment.
The first half of the story held me and excited my curiosity but the denouement is less than enthralling. But the author clearly found great scope in the poems to pen her portrait of Catallus as his Lesbia poems are suffused with lust and anguish, and contain great rage and infamy. He was outspoken and shameless in his obscene public attacks on his enemies, even revered public figures, as in Paedicabo ego vos et irrumabo his colourful reply to two companions, Furius and Aurelius, who had criticised the indecency of his writings: “I shall fuck you in the ass and I shall fuck you in the mouth.”
The reanimation of the past contains a great deal of speculation and some scholars will view the work as trivialising a great man and celebrated poet. But full marks for trying to bring the past to life and for me the novel succeeds. The candour of her characterisation and vivid description of time and place is peerless. But the story is seen from only one point of view, sadly, and so we learn little of Clodia’s real feelings. Certainly she had no intention of confining herself to Catullus alone, but only of numbering him as one of her lovers. Her story would be an interesting tale as she is much more than a femme-fatale.
‘That’s the trouble with you poets. It’s all very well being brilliant but you end up miserable’
January 23, 2021
In Ancient Rome the poet Catullus was entangled with an older married woman. This novel is inspired by the romance of Catullus and Clodia. As you would expect from a book about a poet, the prose was almost lyrical. Nothing seemed to really happen though so this wasn't a fast paced book.
May 16, 2019
Not for me, ended up skipping quite a lot and didn't feel I'd missed much.
August 19, 2017
Not that keen on this one. Didn't care for the characters and had an unfinished feel to the ending.
May 6, 2013
At first when I started reading this novel I wondered why Helen Dunmore didn’t tell the story from Clodia’s point of view. After all Clodia is a famed woman of the Roman elite born 94 or 95 BC. Why not grab at such a chance for us girls? Put the record straight!
Dunmore is an accomplished writer across a wide expanse of history. Her speciality seems to be to choose an interesting moment in time and then write a book about it - whether it be D.H. Lawrence in Cornwall, Finland in 1902 or Leningrad in 1941. Ancient Rome? No problem! I thought I would finally get into this mysterious woman’s head.
At first I was disappointed that the book was from Catullus’s point of view but gradually as the story unfolded and particularly by the end of the book, I realised the wisdom of Dunmore’s decision. This was the only way it could be told. With Catullus as narrator there is not just his affair with this contradictory woman, but there is so much more! There is a mystery that the young poet is driven to investigate; I loved his interviews with the aging prostitute Cynthia and the mesmerising Gorgo - she is a sort of sere living in the slums of Rome. Also his dealings with Clodia’s faithful servant Aemilia, the last encounter at the end of the book, is particularly powerful.
Someone so self-obsessed as Clodia would probably not be very observant whereas a poet misses nothing. There are descriptions of the lake retreat at Baiae, political squabbling in the streets of Rome and also glimpses of Catullus’s childhood in Sermio. There are also Catullus’s memories of his mother and his dealings with important people in the Rome of his day. My favourite passages are the poet’s relationships with his brother and his faithful servant Lucius.I know these will stay with me long after Clodia ,and his love for her, are forgotten. And that is as it should be, I think.
Dunmore is an accomplished writer across a wide expanse of history. Her speciality seems to be to choose an interesting moment in time and then write a book about it - whether it be D.H. Lawrence in Cornwall, Finland in 1902 or Leningrad in 1941. Ancient Rome? No problem! I thought I would finally get into this mysterious woman’s head.
At first I was disappointed that the book was from Catullus’s point of view but gradually as the story unfolded and particularly by the end of the book, I realised the wisdom of Dunmore’s decision. This was the only way it could be told. With Catullus as narrator there is not just his affair with this contradictory woman, but there is so much more! There is a mystery that the young poet is driven to investigate; I loved his interviews with the aging prostitute Cynthia and the mesmerising Gorgo - she is a sort of sere living in the slums of Rome. Also his dealings with Clodia’s faithful servant Aemilia, the last encounter at the end of the book, is particularly powerful.
Someone so self-obsessed as Clodia would probably not be very observant whereas a poet misses nothing. There are descriptions of the lake retreat at Baiae, political squabbling in the streets of Rome and also glimpses of Catullus’s childhood in Sermio. There are also Catullus’s memories of his mother and his dealings with important people in the Rome of his day. My favourite passages are the poet’s relationships with his brother and his faithful servant Lucius.I know these will stay with me long after Clodia ,and his love for her, are forgotten. And that is as it should be, I think.
October 6, 2015
Catullus was a controversial figure in the final, juiciest years of republican Rome, part of a group of new young poets who wrote plainly and scurrilously, openly slandering influential figures in their verse, such as Caeser himself.
The "Lesbia" of Catullus's poems is generally considered to be Clodia Metelli, daughter of a patrician family and wife to the conservative consul Metellus Celer. She was a notorious adulterer, believed to have poisoned her husband and suspected of incest with her brother, the populist tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher.
It sounds like an explosive affair, right?
Unfortunately you wouldn't know that from the drabness of Dunmore's narrative. This is obviously intended to represent a great love between a poet and his muse, a consuming passion "where you 'burn with an uncontrollable fire'", but Dunmore's lightweight rendering reduces it to the status of a mere fling, a childish, cloying indulgence between two empty-headed sensualists.
This period is so replete with towering historical figures, so rich in drama and intrigue, yet save for a second hand account of one of Cicero's most famous orations, Dunmore may just as well have presented an affair between a post-master and a vicar's daughter, set somewhere in the modern day home counties.
In addition, the constant proliferation of prurient, gossipy asides and interjections from a chorus of imaginary citizens really annoyed me, only serving to hinder an already exasperating narrative.
Dunmore is a successful poet as well as an Orange prize winning novelist, so she must have written better than this.
The "Lesbia" of Catullus's poems is generally considered to be Clodia Metelli, daughter of a patrician family and wife to the conservative consul Metellus Celer. She was a notorious adulterer, believed to have poisoned her husband and suspected of incest with her brother, the populist tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher.
It sounds like an explosive affair, right?
Unfortunately you wouldn't know that from the drabness of Dunmore's narrative. This is obviously intended to represent a great love between a poet and his muse, a consuming passion "where you 'burn with an uncontrollable fire'", but Dunmore's lightweight rendering reduces it to the status of a mere fling, a childish, cloying indulgence between two empty-headed sensualists.
This period is so replete with towering historical figures, so rich in drama and intrigue, yet save for a second hand account of one of Cicero's most famous orations, Dunmore may just as well have presented an affair between a post-master and a vicar's daughter, set somewhere in the modern day home counties.
In addition, the constant proliferation of prurient, gossipy asides and interjections from a chorus of imaginary citizens really annoyed me, only serving to hinder an already exasperating narrative.
Dunmore is a successful poet as well as an Orange prize winning novelist, so she must have written better than this.
October 25, 2009
I enjoyed this book fairly well, but there were often moments that jolted me out of the story. There are weird shifts in tense, perspective and time that I think are meant to be artistic, but more often than not they just end up being jarring. A lot of the poem translations are really nice, but some are just stupid. (Excrucior does not mean "I feel crucifiction"--come on now!) And all the while you sort of have to keep in mind that Catullus was a poet, not an autobiographer, and in Poem 16 he alludes to the fact that all the stuff he writes about may not be true, and we have very little evidence besides his poems that tells us anything about his life. But for anybody who has read his poems, particularly the Lesbia cycle, this story does a really nice job of fictionally fleshing out their story, of expanding upon the emotions expressed in the poems and situating them in true-to-life contexts. It's basically Catullus fan-fic, only not super-porny. Great fun for classics geeks, probably not of much interest to other people.
August 19, 2008
Many years ago, I studied Catullus for Latin O-level, so I was intrigued by a novel about his life, especially as I like author Helen Dunmore and heard a talk by her about this novel a few weeks ago. I mainly enjoyed it - she is a poet herself and writes beautifully. It's a bit frustrating that Clodia is only seen through Catullus' eyes, as I'd like to know what she is thinking at times - and I found the use of modern slang in the dialogue a bit jarring at times, though I suppose that was the point, to make ancient Rome feel more modern.
December 11, 2014
I nearly put this book away as the first 40 or so pages did not particularly grip me, but I am glad I persevered. I am not familiar with the work of Catallus, but I have enjoyed other books by Helen Dunmore. I found I enjoyed it more as the story unfolded and got into her prose. The final scene was very gripping.
June 22, 2018
I found Counting The Stars a really hard book to get into, probably why it took me so long getting through it. The wasn't the same pull I've experienced with some of the other books Helen Dunmore has written (that I've read). Once I got about half way through it did get easier to read, though still a bit of a struggle.
This book does give an interesting look on the affairs of the ancient Roman world, the cold brutality, the heartbreak, the death. Poison was used a lot back then.
This book does give an interesting look on the affairs of the ancient Roman world, the cold brutality, the heartbreak, the death. Poison was used a lot back then.
July 2, 2018
A 3.5 star read. Whenever you open a Helen Dunmore novel you are assured of elegant, readable prose but beyond that you can be any place and any time. In Counting the Stars we're taken to the latter years of the Roman republic and a reimagining of the affair between the poet Catullus and Clodia Metelli whose husband died from poisoning in which Clodia is heavily implicated. A love story in which a young man is besotted by a hard, calculating but beautiful older woman.
May 27, 2020
It had the right plot, an exciting setting (Rome in the time of Caesar, the Forum, the ruins which I walked through is all alive and real), and characters who went down in history for their life that’s anything but mundane, and yet Helen Dunmore somehow makes it all slightly dull, not her usual way of writing! And did I find myself thinking at most times that the famous poet Catullus was whining and immature?! Oh dear..
I’m still loyal to her other books!
I’m still loyal to her other books!
June 14, 2017
i enjoyed Catullus' poems, and enjoyed Dunmore filling in a possible lifeline and characters behind them. I downloaded the Latin poems from Gutenberg.org to read alongside her translations in the story. While I don't like Catullus the character a whole lot or Clodia at all,(wow!) it opened up the poems in a different way.
September 1, 2018
A tale set in Ancient Rome full of intrigue, plots and murder. Catullus, a wet behind the ears poet, falls in love with Clodia Metelli, the wife of a wealthy man. Eventually the scales fall from his eyes but can he drag himself away to a safe and mundane life in the provinces? Quite a departure from other Helen Dunmore historical fiction but worth reading.
February 7, 2023
Ancient Rome was well written, but the 2 main characters were lacking substance, and I was bored by the endless repetition of Catullus and his burning desire for Clodia... Not enough character development
July 20, 2018
Didn’t enjoy this book, it was a real struggle to bother picking it and I was glad to get to the end of it! Oh dear!!!
December 13, 2018
To start with I wasn’t particularly impressed but it grew on me. By the end I could appreciate it’s subtleties. A better ending than I’d anticipated.
June 14, 2019
DNF. I don’t tend to review books I don’t finish, but this was dull. The premise was good but delivery was poor with a some irritating mistakes thrown in.
July 16, 2019
Disappointed in this book, it just didn’t grab me like the other books I’ve read by this author.
November 28, 2021
Halverwege gestopt. Te saai
April 28, 2024
Matilda’s April Recommendation:
May 13, 2024
[2017] I came to this as only my second Helen Dunmore book and following a trip to Rome I had high expectations, but all I can say is that I was disappointed with this one. It is an easy read and the story holds together, but never really engages. There are some good descriptions of Rome and Roman life, but the infrequent explicit language grated with me. It was not challenging, I could not really invest in it and not being an historian, even I questioned some things.
Not a bad read, but not a good one either.
Not a bad read, but not a good one either.
June 9, 2016
Catullus, a poet writing in C1st Rome BCE, the Rome of Cicero and Julius Caesar, is perhaps now best known for his searing poems written to `Lesbia', possibly the aristocratic married woman Clodia Metelli. Dunmore takes this scenario very literally and spins a story that fills out the gaps in Catullus' own poems. Love, death, obsessive erotic passion, poisoning, possible incest and political corruption: this ought to be a story boiling over with emotion, but somehow it feels emotionally flat, both too sensationalist and yet too mundane at the same time.
Dunmore writes in an odd kind of half-historical style: some of it is completely contemporary so that Catullus talks about his `career options', people imagine going to heaven (in pre-Christian Rome?), people talking to and about slaves as if they are social acquaintances. Yet, on the other hand, she stresses the alienness of Roman culture, particularly around a funeral scene. Sadly, for me, neither style worked, and the book ended up being un-atmospheric to an extreme.
I also found Dunmore's extremely literal reading of Catullus' poetry very limiting, as if the only source for poetry is always and unquestionably the autobiographical, with no room for creative imagination at all. Apart from being an unsophisticated reading, it made the whole book far too predictable to anyone familiar with the poetry itself.
There have been other attempts to novelise the Catullus/Lesbia story (Clodia, The Venus Throw, The Ides of March) but this is the first time it has been written by a woman. However Dunmore doesn't succeed, in my view, in making Clodia any more a `real' woman than any of her male writers.
So overall I found this a disappointingly slight book that gestures towards something deeply emotional but fails to deliver.
Dunmore writes in an odd kind of half-historical style: some of it is completely contemporary so that Catullus talks about his `career options', people imagine going to heaven (in pre-Christian Rome?), people talking to and about slaves as if they are social acquaintances. Yet, on the other hand, she stresses the alienness of Roman culture, particularly around a funeral scene. Sadly, for me, neither style worked, and the book ended up being un-atmospheric to an extreme.
I also found Dunmore's extremely literal reading of Catullus' poetry very limiting, as if the only source for poetry is always and unquestionably the autobiographical, with no room for creative imagination at all. Apart from being an unsophisticated reading, it made the whole book far too predictable to anyone familiar with the poetry itself.
There have been other attempts to novelise the Catullus/Lesbia story (Clodia, The Venus Throw, The Ides of March) but this is the first time it has been written by a woman. However Dunmore doesn't succeed, in my view, in making Clodia any more a `real' woman than any of her male writers.
So overall I found this a disappointingly slight book that gestures towards something deeply emotional but fails to deliver.
October 10, 2011
I admire Helen Dunmore's writing, having previously been very impressed by The Siege, so I was excited, when I discovered she'd written a novel about Catullus. I must say I was rather disappointed however, in particular by the portrayal of Clodia, Catullus' 'Lesbia'. The woman who dimly emerges seems to be constructed from misogynist tradition to the point that she is scarcely a recognisable or rational human being at all. Dunmore seems to have swallowed whole what Catullus and Cicero had to say about her, even removing her strength, wit and political sway.
This Clodia has a crazily obssessional, possibly unnatural relationship with her pet sparrow, she is a poet but admits herself, she is not much good, that she is better suited as an ornament. She probably had some part in her husband's death, for an unbelievably stupid reason. For all his complaints about her alleged infidelities, the poet Catullus claims to have loved Lesbia as a friend, appreciated her wit - it is hard to see why he would have loved this, not only wicked, but weak and seemingly witless woman. The long episode of the visit to the poisoner Gorgo has little point to it - it leads nowhere in terms of plot. I would have hoped for a more challengeing reading of tradition, it would have made for a more interesting book.
This Clodia has a crazily obssessional, possibly unnatural relationship with her pet sparrow, she is a poet but admits herself, she is not much good, that she is better suited as an ornament. She probably had some part in her husband's death, for an unbelievably stupid reason. For all his complaints about her alleged infidelities, the poet Catullus claims to have loved Lesbia as a friend, appreciated her wit - it is hard to see why he would have loved this, not only wicked, but weak and seemingly witless woman. The long episode of the visit to the poisoner Gorgo has little point to it - it leads nowhere in terms of plot. I would have hoped for a more challengeing reading of tradition, it would have made for a more interesting book.
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