Review Pharaoh, by Karen Essex
 Pharaoh By Karen Essex |
by Karen Essex
| Guide Rating - | *** |
The story is told in two alternating time periods which merge near the end of Pharaoh. The first, indicated by italic type, begins when Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius) is despondent and Cleopatra must decide whether or not to betray him. The second timeline contains the main story of the book -- the year by year reign of Queen Cleopatra -- which, of course, eventually catches up with the italic timeline. This stylistic element was not present in the first book, but serves as a constant reminder that there will be a tragic end, separates scenes and provides a perspective on the main actions. Occasional short chapters show the mental workings of Cleopatra's nemesis Augustus.
As in Greek tragedy, it is as a result of their choices that the main characters, Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra, all die, but Karen Essex says Pharaoh is modeled more after opera than Greek tragedy. While the italic time jump isn't really confusing -- because like the audience of a Greek tragedy, the reader can be assumed to know the end -- the opening italic scene is over the top. Indicating exactly how close the novel is to a staged performance, Essex says that the screenplay will begin with the opening italic scene from the book, although it will not show the phalanx of hookers.
At the end of Kleopatra, the reader knows the Egyptian queen will come back, regain her power, and live and love in grand style. At the melancholic conclusion of Pharaoh, almost everyone the reader has grown to care about has died. Cleopatra dies most nobly with servants who so loved her they took their own lives even though no one was there to make sure that they did so. Only the youngest children of Cleopatra and Mark Antony survive to be raised by the household of Augustus or to be married off and hastened into obscurity.
Pharaoh is exceedingly rich in cultural and historic detail, so much so that an occasional over-simplification serves to remind the reader that it is a work of fiction. While the victor usually writes the history, in the case of Karen Essex' novels Kleopatra and Pharaoh, the vanquished gets a voice. Thus, Essex makes some points that Roman historians might dismiss as the less probable reading of the ancient historians. Essex accepts as fact that Caesar had an affair with the King of Bithynia and that Clodius Pulcher had an affair with Caesar's wife. Essex also accepts as literal the reading from Dio Cassius that Augustus Caesar killed 300 knights and senators at the Battle of Perugia. Her point is not, however, to paint the Romans in the resplendent hues of imperial sycophants, but with the same tarnishing brush once taken to her personal favorite, Cleopatra.
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