Harris employs that same propulsive prose and whip-smart dialogue to imagine what Agrippa’s lost memoir might have revealed about his career as Rome’s great survivor ... Offers a forensically accurate account of Roman politics in the Late Republic spliced with an imaginative portrait of one of the period’s great, if flawed, heroes. The result is more than just a thrilling read; it is also a call to moral arms.
Imaginative ... Thrilling ... A swift-paced romp through a few crucial decades of Roman history, breathing life into a figure who played a central role in the story of the late republic.
Has the strengths of most Harris novels: a strong sense of the story’s time, place, and culture, many historical insights, and sure-footed storytelling. Unfortunately for this reader, however, his protagonist turns out to be a bit dull.
It is a sign of Harris’s discipline as a novelist that he has Agrippa tell his tale in almost comically unambitious prose ... From all this elegantly drab stuff emerges a more subtle portrait of the man and the age than you might expect. You get a persuasive portrait of a Rome exhausted by civil strife, and of the serpentine manoeuvrings of its rulers.
Deft ... The great strength of this novel is also a weakness. Harris’s ventriloquising of Agrippa is utterly convincing ... This strong narrative voice also means that Agrippa is not given to introspection, or to interrogating the mission he and Augustus set themselves.
Suffers from the problems of the Cicero trilogy, without demonstrating its strengths. Because its protagonist dies at the end, making this a single-volume effort, the novel barely has space to cram in all the events, let alone take the reader inside Agrippa’s head ... Please, Mr Harris, give your next Roman subject enough room to live. A three-volume account of this novel’s breakout star, the piratical Sextus Pompey, would be a treat.
Although Agrippa was responsible for all kinds of slaughter and skulduggery, I found myself rooting for him. That is due in no small part to a delicious fictional twist Harris introduces at the centre of Agrippa’s life ... If I have one criticism, it is that Harris occasionally moves a little too quickly ... That said, when Harris does pause to let a scene breathe, the novel comes alive. You’re transported into the period, the room and the intrigue. I gobbled up its nearly 400 pages in no time.
Harris has done his research ... He then guides us through decades of Roman civil war and endlessly shifting alliances with his customary deftness. Along the way, we do get some wider thoughts on how power operates. But on the whole Agrippa has too much sheer incident to negotiate ... Feels essentially workmanlike. Granted, as workmen go, Harris is enough of a pro that he’s unlikely ever to produce a novel which doesn’t keep us turning the pages. Here, however, he comes pretty close.
I am delighted that Harris chose Agrippa as the subject of his latest novel ... Where I, as a historian, try to capture and interpret the past from known facts, the historical novelist has some licence for speculation, short cuts and rearrangements to make a compelling story. Applying his practised craft as storyteller, Harris brilliantly succeeds in bringing alive the man I recognise from the texts, statues and coins of Ancient Rome.
Intimate, tense and rich with historical detail, Agrippa: A Novel of Ancient Rome’s Descent Into Dictatorship is perhaps the ultimate story of the power behind the throne, mapping Rome’s dictatorial turn under Caesar Augustus in a clear-eyed and nuanced narrative ... The prose is rich and driving, the characters layered and memorable even outside of their historical context, and the lessons of Agrippa’s story both apparent and thoroughly entertaining. This is vintage Harris, great for longtime fans and new readers alike.
