Isca: The Fall of Roman Exeter - Derek Gore

There is something great about reading books set in your home town. It makes you feel like you live at the centre of the universe. For that reason, I may be very slightly biased towards Isca. Bias may be increased by the fact that the author works in the Archaeology department of Exeter University, my alma mater*.

Slightly disappointingly, Isca does not really fall so much as slowly fade away. The Roman governor is taking less and less interest in the south west, and the whole area has started to go a bit Mad Max. The local people are being pushed into choosing which of the local warlords they will work for in return for protection from the other local warlords and Irish raiders (confusingly called Scotts).

Against this backdrop our hero, the young Victoricus runs away from his feudal lord, Cynan and goes to Exeter to seek his fortune (slaps thigh). In the process he finds love, befriends an old man, and gets captured a hell of a lot. In fact, he could give any of Dr Who’s companions a run for their money in the getting captured stakes.

If I had to sum this book up in one word I would chose “sweet”. Nothing really horrible happens to any of the main characters, although the potential is definitely there in Dark Ages Britain. When some minor characters are cruelly done in by the villains, it all takes place off camera. At the end, events seem to be building up for a big, set-piece battle – then the bad guy’s troops mutiny and everyone goes home for tea instead. If I sound disparaging, I don’t really mean to; I actually find this innocent “Bumper Book of Stories for Boys” approach kind of charming. It makes me think that Derek is a gentleman.

Not only is the story very sweet, but as the author is an actual archaeologist, all the details of daily life and the construction of the fort and towns are accurate, thus enabling me to painlessly educate myself. Like an episode of "In Our Time" with a plot.



*Latin for “Place where you fret about grades, maths and problems classes while a bunch of rich kids drink themselves senseless”. Not that I’m bitter. If I was, a rugby tosser would have drunk me.

Maus – Art Spiegelman

By now anyone reading this blog is bound to be thinking, “God, are there any books you actually like, you moany old witch?” Well, yes, there are and this is one of them. I thought Maus was brilliant, even though it made me cry.

For those who have been living under a stone, or who have a policy of deliberately ignoring comics (foolish!), Maus is the story of the Holocaust, told in cartoon form with the Jews depicted as mice and the Nazis drawn as cats. Never have cartoon mice been so upsetting! It shows how Art’s parents, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman survived the Ghettos and the death camps. There is also a thread of the story set closer to the present day which deals with the author’s difficult relationship with his father.

Despite his victim status, Vladek is not portrayed very sympathetically, and we see that part of the reason for his survival is that he never shared anything if he could trade it instead. Harsh months of saving scraps of paper to swap for extra food or cigarettes to buy favours have left Vladek going through life as a mean, rubbish-hoarding Mr Trebus figure. Vladek’s miserliness and Anja’s suicide in 1968 show that despite emerging alive at the end of the war, both have been seriously damaged by the experience.

Maus: Read it and weep.

Holiday Reading Results

Well, true to my predictions, “Arthur and George” was all but reduced to papier mache after being in my rucksack the day my platypus leaked. I’ve read that and Isca, but Justina Robson didn’t even get a look in. She’ll have to go back on the shelf for another day…

I have some notes on books I did manage to read, so I should be able to come up with a post for each of them. In the mean time, I am back to re-reading The Sandman comics and thoroughly enjoying them. I know I am enjoying them as I’ve read 3 already and the only thing I can find to complain at is that the text says that Matthew is a raven, but he is clearly drawn as a crow. For that matter so are Odin’s ravens.

For the edification of the nation, here is my idiot’s guide to corvids:


Jackdaws: Relatively small and usually come in large packs. Make a really weird noise.

Rooks: Medium sized. Black with a pointy white beak. Say “Ark!”. Usually seen in large packs.

Crows: Almost identical to the Rook, but has a black beak and is usually seen in ones and twos. I like crows. They pair for life, you know. Like gothic, carrion-eating swans....

Ravens: Bloody enormous. Beak is hooked, not pointy. Say “Gronk!” not “Ark!”. Live on cliffs and crags so usually seen in mountainous areas rather than farmers’ fields. Like flying upside down to impress the lady ravens.

Arthur And George - Julian Barnes

The book is based on a real-life episode in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took up the case of George Edalji, a second-generation Indian Solicitor wrongly accused of mutilating livestock. Although Sir Arthur’s intervention succeeds in obtaining a full pardon for George, I found it very disappointing that we never find out who really did commit the crime. This is most unsatisfactory!

For me, the most interesting aspect of the book is the portrait it paints of Arthur Conan Doyle, which reminds us that the creator of Sherlock Holmes was nothing like so logical as his most famous character and believed in both spiritualism and cardboard fairies.

Conversely, I found the worst part of the book to be this sentence which occurs when Arthur is out in the Arctic shooting ducks: “Every bird you downed bore pebbles in its gizzard from a land the maps ignored.” Maybe I’m just too literal, but I found this needlessly opaque and pretentious. Still, that’s the sort of thing the booker judges seem to like...

I don’t think I would bother to read another book by Julian Barnes, but I might give his alter ego who writes detective novels, Dan Kavanagh a try. At least that way I might actually get to find out whodunit!