The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Rating:
Summary: The Kite Runner
Review: In this engrossing book of fiction by Khaled Hosseini, the narrator tells the story of his youth in Afghanastan and his eventual emigration to the US. I learned so much about the Afghan people and customs, recent Afghan history, and the radical change in the government and the economy in the past 20 or so years. The incredible personal story of the author and his relationship with his servant is so real, touching and suspenseful, I just couldn't believe someone could have made it up. I kept checking the book jacket to check that it was indeed a book of fiction.
I listened to this book on tape, read by the author. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a great story. As a bonus, you will be better educated on Afghanistan in the process.

Rating:
Summary: Exhausting but fascinating
Review: As I remarked several times in the time it took to read Memoirs of Cleopatra, "I'm really enjoying the book, but lugging it around is starting to be a bitch." At well over 900 pages, this is a much longer novelized biography than, say, Colin Falconer's "When We Were Gods," so if you're not really, reeeeaaalllyy interested in Cleopatra, Caesar, and Antony, you might want to skip this one.

If you are interested, however, I don't see how you could do much better than this book. From the death of her mother as a young child to her own death 30 years later, "Memoirs" recounts Cleopatra's struggles to hold onto the crown of an independent Egypt. These struggles pit her against everyone from her own siblings to the might of the Roman Empire, which she carries on a tortured love/hate relationship with in the form of her affairs with Caesar and Antony and her mutual hatred with Augustus Caesar (Octavian). Cleopatra, through her son by Caesar, has a claim on Rome, yet she wants nothing more than to free the Eastern world from its influence. This conflict provides much of the plot of the second half of the book, culminating in Cleopatra and Antony's disastrous defeat at Actium and their subsequent double suicide.

The book is filled with captivating secondary characters, most of them historical: Cleopatra's four children, her physician, her servants, various political figures in Rome, King Herod of Judea. It's these characters that give the book its life apart from the well-known story of Cleopatra, and I was impressed by the care George has shown in not allowing her story to become sensational or pitiful.

Honestly, as heavy as the book was, I thought it was worth every page.