Elegant Literary Fantasy

Seen largely from the point of view of his servant, Eustace, The Maker Of Swans is the story of Mr Crowe, a remarkable individual who seems to have existed for many centuries and who has secretly been the author of many of the world's greatest works of literature. Seen largely from the point of view of his servant, Eustace, The Maker Of Swans is the story of Mr Crowe, a remarkable individual who seems to have existed for many centuries and who has secretly been the author of many of the world's greatest works of literature.

It is also the story of Clara, a child in Crowe's charge. Clara's abilities will surpass her guardian's by as much as his own abilities outstrip those of ordinary mortals. Despite being mute, she will learn how to use written language to alter and to create reality and her developing talent will attract the attention of those who seek to use her as a gambit in a long-standing power game.

It is not a perfect fantasy. There are gaps in the backstory that left me slightly dissatisfied. We never learn much about Mr Crowe's origins, for example, or those of his young ward.

What makes this novel stand out, however, is the boldness of the language which richly compensates for the author's apparent disinterest in the finer details of his overarching mythos. Here, for example, is the appearance of one of the minor characters, materialising out of the Gothic twilight in which so much of the action seems to take place:

He appeared at the far end of the street, having rounded the corner, and stood for a moment in the gown of decaying light that hung beneath a street lamp.

Poetic and elegantly mannered, The Maker of Swans is an impressive piece of literary fantasy.

Trapped In A Political Carapace

When asked what he most feared in politics, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan replied, 'Events, dear boy, events.' In Allan Massie's fictional account of the life of Augustus there is a similar awareness of the way that political life is all about reacting to unpredictable realities.

Massie succeeds admirably in bringing to life the architect of Imperial Rome and the society that surrounded him. He does so far more effectively than all the hefty volumes of toga-lit with their obsessive detailing of military hardware. That's because his focus is on character and psychology, rather than blood on the floor of the arena.

He shows how the need to respond to inconvenient events shaped Augustus as much as it shaped his politics, constraining and hardening him until he became trapped within the political carapace he had created. He ends his life eaten up with regret, fearful for the security of the empire he has built and unable to communicate with those he loves most.

The decisions over which Augustus deliberated so long and hard resonated down through the centuries. Massie's achievement is to illuminate the forces behind those decisions. The result is a compelling study of the man, of the world that he was born into and of the way he transformed it.