Book Review – Caligula

Author: Douglas Jackson
Publisher: Corgi / Transworld
Publishing Date: February 2009
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Cover Artist: Larry Rostant

Douglas Jackson is a new Scottish writer who became a bit of a local sensation when he recently secured a six-figure deal with Transworld Publishers; a deal that includes his debut Caligula and a sequel titled Claudius. As the title suggests, the story of Caligula is set in Ancient Rome, more specifically in the 1st century AD. Jackson appears to have been heavily inspired by Hollywood’s sword-and-sandal movies such as Gladiator, which the novel bears a superficial resemblance to. It is certainly a connection that the marketing team has chosen to stress with the movie-like tagline: Can a slave decide the fate of an emperor?

The story itself is aptly described by the blurb on the back cover, which is why I will forego the customary summary:

Rufus, a young slave, grows up far from the corruption of the imperial court. He is a trainer of animals for the gladiatorial arena. But when Caligula wants a keeper for the emperor’s elephant, Rufus is bought from his master and taken to the palace.

Life at court is dictated by Caligula’s ever shifting moods. He is as generous as he is cruel – a megalomaniac who declares himself a living god and simultaneously lives in constant fear of the plots against his life. His paranoia is not misplaced however: intrigue permeates his court, and Rufus will find himself unwittingly placed at the centre of a conspiracy to assassinate the Emperor.

Let me stress that Caligula is decidedly not for those of more tender sensibilities. In the prologue Jackson presents us with a very young boy who deliberately forces sharp thorns into the eyes of baby blackbirds, and that incident pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the novel, which features a lot of cruelty and violence towards both people and animals. One particularly unpleasant scene involves the slow and tortuous killing of leopard in the gladiatorial arena and though the scene has a certain raison d’être within the context of the narrative, its graphic details are nonetheless very off-putting. The degree of violence is, however, only a minor quibble in comparison to the rest of the glaring flaws that beset this piece of historical fiction.

I have to admit that this has been a difficult review for me to write. I always strive to be fair in my reviews, especially when the book in question is less than stellar. However, in this case I must sadly admit that I cannot find any positive qualities in this novel. Caligula is, to put it bluntly, an appallingly bad piece of writing, so bad that I am exceedingly puzzled as to why has been deemed worthy of publication. It is by far one of the worst books that I have ever read which is impressive considering my reading habits – it is far worse than Dan Brown’s horrid The Da Vinci Code and Karen Essex’s abysmal Leonardo’s Swans. This is a harsh verdict but when sloppy writing is combined with shallow research the end result is rarely good and in this case the flaws are too obvious to ignore.

From the beginning Jackson has been given a lot of leeway when it comes to the historical figure of Caligula as the source material is extremely scarce. There exist very few sources contemporary with Caligula’s four-year reign and the principal sources (Suetonius and Cassius Dio) about the controversial emperor was written 80 and 180 years later respectively. Therefore the more outrageous charges such as Caligula’s incest with his sister must be approached with a healthy dose of scepticism, especially since claims of insanity and sexual perversion often were represented hand in hand with charges of poor government in Roman political culture.

In his portrayal of Caligula Jackson has chosen to single out the most lurid and sensationalistic aspects of Caligula’s image, portraying the emperor as a rather one-dimensional villain of almost operatic proportions, which quite frankly is supremely uninteresting. In Jackson’s interpretation Caligula is close to the textbook definition of what a psychopath is - intensely narcissistic, violent and completely amoral. However, for reasons I cannot fathom the author tries to make the character seem even more insane by endowing Caligula with auditory hallucinations, i.e. he hears voices in his head - a symptom that belongs to an entirely different pathology. It seems as if Douglas Jackson simply has confused psychopathy, which is an anti-social personality disorder, with a symptom typical of psychotic disorders. It is a common mistake but one that could have been remedied by a more thoroughgoing research. This is just one small factual mistake but it is indicative of some of the problems that beset this novel.

Generally speaking, Douglas Jackson’s debut is a moderately suspenseful story that is marred not only by insufficient research but also by a somewhat blundering style (the changes in voice are especially awkward) and some very poorly developed characters. I have already mentioned the problems with the character of Caligula but the rest of the characters aren’t much better. This is mainly due to the fact they continually act in a manner that is inconsistent with their place in Roman society and sometimes they are even internally inconsistent! Thus the protagonist Rufus is by turns completely naïve in regard to political intrigue only to be able to conduct in-depth conversations about convoluted court intrigues the next moment. The behaviour of Claudius, Caligula’s uncle and later emperor, is even more improbable. Claudius often acts in a manner that is completely at odds with the fearful atmosphere of a court dominated by an insane ruler. I suspect that the problems of Claudius’ character stems from the basic premises of the plot. Jackson clearly wanted to place a very lowly slave, who has no plausible place in the inner circle of the political elite, in the midst of political intrigue and in order to achieve this end, he clumsily inserts Claudius into Rufus’ personal space by having him make nightly “confessions” to the elephant in Rufus’ care and thus giving the protagonist an opportunity to be privy to his innermost thoughts. It is not a very convincing scenario, especially given the fact that Claudius is otherwise presented as a very cunning man who would be expected to behave with good deal more of common sense.

Finally, the author has chosen to completely disregard historical regard when it comes to the death of Caligula, who was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guard led by its captain Cassius Chaerea. Not only does Jackson blithely rewrite history, he does it in a manner that is so improbable that it is downright ludicrous! How on earth is the reader to accept that a man would be able to engage in a drawn-out swordfight after having had his neck pierced with a dagger! A penetrating neck trauma such as the one described would most likely cause serious damage to either the jugular vein or the carotid artery, the latter being the most common in these type of injuries. Realistically, the victim of such an injury would most likely experience a quick and significant blood loss that would send the body into shock with the risk of imminent death if the blood flow isn’t immediately checked. At this point the narrative therefore becomes so unrealistic and ludicrous that I found it completely impossible to suspend my disbelief, already severely taxed. This ridiculous end-play utterly transformed an otherwise mediocre and unremarkable effort into an appallingly bad one. I cannot in good conscience recommend this novel to anyone; it is simply a waste of money and time. Readers who are interested in historical fiction about Ancient Roman will be far better off with the novels of Colleen McCullough, Michael Curtis Ford and Steven Saylor.

Trine D. Paulsen

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