Counting the Stars - Hardcover

Dunmore, Helen

3.18

325 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670914541 ISBN 13: 9780670914548

Publisher: Fig Tree, 2008

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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.

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Review:

Praise for House of Orphans:

'An extraordinary novel' Guardian

'Part love story, part tragedy ... Dunmore on dazzling form' Independent on Sunday

'Outstanding, a sheer pleasure to read. Dunmore is a remarkable storyteller' Daily Mail

From the Back Cover:

Surely Rome is enough to fill a life, if he can just get free of this obsession that has robbed everything of meaning except itself.

But she'll always be there. He won't be able to escape her. Even if he can stop meeting her he'll never be able to avoid hearing about her. Their circle is too small an island in the sea of Rome. Her name will follow him everywhere. She's in his blood...

Clodia, I'm talking to you. Listen. Love and hate, that's what I feel for you, love and hate so fused together that I can't drag one from the arms of the other. You want to know how that's possible? You say it doesn't make sense? You're right. There is no sense left in me: only sensation. Feeling tears me apart.

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