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sutcliff_space[Crossposted from my journal.
I remembered this book all these years for its ending. The ending turned out to be even more of a thump over the heart than I remembered.
This is actually a series of connected short stories that originated as radio scripts for BBC Scotland. The connecting element is the eponymous bracelet, which serves the same purpose as the Dolphin Ring in Sutcliff's related series: to tie together the fortunes of a family over the centuries.
In this case, the protagonists in the family are Roman soldiers. The book shows the rise and fall of Rome in Britain, mainly through stories set at Hadrian's Wall. It's a fascinating book to read if you've already read Sutcliff's "Frontier Wolf," because it's clearly the inspiration for that later novel. If you haven't read "Frontier Wolf," you'll enjoy seeing the shifting nature of Rome's occupation of Britain.
As always, the characters and setting are well drawn, the prose rich. What sets this book apart from most of Sutcliff's other books is that most of it is in conversational first-person - and so well done that I wonder she didn't write more conversational first-person stories. Here's the beginning:
"They tell me that Londinium is rebuilt, fine and grand so that anyone who knew it in the old days would hardly know it again. But I shan't go back to see. Isca Silurum is my city now; headquarters of the Second Augustan Legion. And anyway, looking back, it seems to me that Londinium in the old days was as fine as any city needs to be—oh, not as I saw it last, fire-blackened and stinking of death, but in the time before the Killer Queen came down on us; the time when I was a boy."
The Capricorn Bracelet at Goodreads.
I remembered this book all these years for its ending. The ending turned out to be even more of a thump over the heart than I remembered.
This is actually a series of connected short stories that originated as radio scripts for BBC Scotland. The connecting element is the eponymous bracelet, which serves the same purpose as the Dolphin Ring in Sutcliff's related series: to tie together the fortunes of a family over the centuries.
In this case, the protagonists in the family are Roman soldiers. The book shows the rise and fall of Rome in Britain, mainly through stories set at Hadrian's Wall. It's a fascinating book to read if you've already read Sutcliff's "Frontier Wolf," because it's clearly the inspiration for that later novel. If you haven't read "Frontier Wolf," you'll enjoy seeing the shifting nature of Rome's occupation of Britain.
As always, the characters and setting are well drawn, the prose rich. What sets this book apart from most of Sutcliff's other books is that most of it is in conversational first-person - and so well done that I wonder she didn't write more conversational first-person stories. Here's the beginning:
"They tell me that Londinium is rebuilt, fine and grand so that anyone who knew it in the old days would hardly know it again. But I shan't go back to see. Isca Silurum is my city now; headquarters of the Second Augustan Legion. And anyway, looking back, it seems to me that Londinium in the old days was as fine as any city needs to be—oh, not as I saw it last, fire-blackened and stinking of death, but in the time before the Killer Queen came down on us; the time when I was a boy."
The Capricorn Bracelet at Goodreads.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 08:45 pm (UTC)I'm having the hardest time trying to figure out how to characterize the ending. Gut-wrenching doesn't seem quite right. It's more like, "Damn, I should have bought more Kleenexes. Let me read it again."