Rating: 
Summary: Elusive and enthralling.
Review: This fascinating novel may seem at first to be a well-written romance or frothy bit of historical fiction. Alison's style from the outset is sensuously heavy, filled with lush impressions from an exotic area "on the farthest coast of the Black Sea, in the corner of the maps where sea monsters coiled...." The Roman poet Ovid is in self-exile here, having offended the moralistic Emperor Augustus with his erotic book, The Art of Love, and we come to empathize with him through his interior monologues. The dense imagery so familiar in Ovid's poetry shines here, not only in his description of Pontus, but also of the beguiling Xenia, a priestess and practitioner of magic, who, if she resembles the cover photo in any way, is a most bewitching creature of seemingly supernatural power. She is much like the mythical witch Medea, the area's most renowned character and "heroine" of Euripedes' terrifying tragedy of the same name. When Xenia returns to Rome with Ovid, however, the exoticism and romanticism become less an end in themselves and more a part of the psychological atmosphere, and the author begins actively to solicit the reader's curiosity. Ovid, with Augustus's granddaughter Julia as his patroness and Xenia as his inspiration, begins work on his play Medea, from which only two lines have survived to the present day. Here the novel is less straightforward and less overtly romantic, acquiring a sense of great mystery, consistent with the mystery both of Ovid's tragic play and of the Medea legend itself. Love, jealousy, revenge, rage, the fear of rejection, and the desire for immortality, so vividly exemplified in the tragedy of the legendary Medea, find their parallels in life here, as Xenia, Ovid, and Julia play out the triangle of misunderstandings which leads to the inevitable conclusion--Ovid's banishment. Omitting all the usual authorial signals that clue the reader about what s/he is supposed to think and feel, Alison reveals instead what Xenia, Ovid, and Julia, are thinking and feeling, leaving it up to the reader to figure out what has happened to these characters that makes them feel and act the way they do. The drama of this remarkable novel comes fully to life, and the reader begins to feel that s/he is participating in the inexorable falling action of a real, classical tragedy. This startlingly original and intense novel is a pleasure to read slowly--it ultimately enthralls because even its conclusion is elusive. Note: Lovers of this novel may also be intrigued with David Malouf's equally unusual novel, An Imaginary Life, which begins where this novel ends, with Ovid's banishment.
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