Susie Helme

Award-winning novelist and editorial consultant

Tag: history

  • Review: Bruria

    Review: Bruria

    David Kurz, Bruria (2025)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/236097816-bruria?ref=nav_sb_ss_2_6

    The story of Yohanan ben Zakkai through the eyes of a fictional ‘niece’


    Bruria spots suspicious campfire smoke. The Romans have destroyed Korazim, and refugees are flooding into Gamla.
    Old enough now, she accompanies her father to Tiberias, to sell wine and olive oil to Passover pilgrims. On the trip, they learn how divided is their land—zealots/pacifists, Hillelites/Shammaites, Jews/Gentiles—and they meet the lady Bereniki.
    Gamla is destroyed, and Bruria escapes to Jerusalem, where she becomes an ally to Yohanan ben Zakai. Everyone seems to expect her to ‘submit [her]self to the least obnoxious male around’, and she’s having none of it. She fights; she studies Torah; she tells grown men what to do; she orders her own beer.
    Yohanan ben Zakai was by and large THE individual responsible for the survival of rabbinic (Pharisaic) Judaism after the devastating Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE. Positing the protagonist within this movement makes for a fantastic story.
    This novel brings to life such heroes and anti-heroes of Jewish history as Mirta bat Boetus, Abba Sikra, Yehoshua ben Gamla and even Bereniki (the controversial mistress of Titus). The fictional characters like Bruria round out the story.
    The minor characters are numerous, which can be confusing, but that makes it realistic. As a novel, it would have worked better to put it mostly in Bruria’s point of view.
    I loved the invention of the Pathfinders, an organisation of leadership training for young people rather like the Scouts. The teenagers are full of energy, and active agents in the story. The plot is full of life.
    We get to hear up close and personal debates on the pros and cons of opposition to the Romans, as well as the religious ramifications. I loved: ‘every leader thinks he’s the greatest tactician since Judah the Maccabee’, ‘the “Just not Simon” camp’, ‘rebel Maccabees become power-hungry Hasmoneans’, ‘Pharisee Basics’.
    This lively, intimate story is a beautiful testament to some of the heroes of Judaism, a rare example of a fictional treatment of the Great Revolt and a historically accurate one, while accepting Josephus’ ‘it was all the Zealots’ fault’ analysis.
    The excitement of the war is well portrayed. I accepted Bereniki, but Bruria’s friendliness with Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem, stuck in my craw.
    It is too long—the final chapters in Yavne especially could have been sped up—otherwise, it’s suitable for a YA readership. I would especially recommend it to Jewish young people, but all sorts will love this colourful portrayal of an ancient world and an important development in history.
    Contains killing and a rape, and some lesbian sex (not graphic).

  • Review: Death by Placebo

    Review: Death by Placebo

    Nelson K Foley, Death by Placebo (San San 2025)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/230821260-death-by-placebo?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_16


    The President needs a liver donor, live or dead
    The President (dictator) of (fictional near Eastern country) Balarutan, Viktor Rachmanil, needs a liver transplant. But the patient is a ‘self-destructive denier’ and an ‘entitled demander’. Drs Rybak and Romanchuk steel themselves for dropping the bombshell with a vodka.
    Going abroad for the op might have been an option, but Rachmanil is cautious about the power vacuum he’d leave behind. The only person he listens to is his press secretary Natasha, and his ferret Snowflake, is a constant companion.
    The search is on—for a live donor or a brain-dead donor. The hospital checks out his three children as possible donors, but there is a ‘problem’ with Danica. To find a dead donor, Rachmanil contemplates ‘seeking out a suitable donor in advance’. Marcus Trubila, a member of his security service, knows what he means.
    There is an international conference of liver specialists in Vienna, and the hospital hopes to recruit foreign talent for the surgery. Danica goes along and spends time with Dr Andea Mancini.
    I do like it when plot intricacies are spelled out a bit, but the fact that the President is looking for a liver donor is repeated too, too many times.
    There’s a great twist at the end.

  • Review: Nunc

    Review: Nunc

    Quentin Letts, Nunc! (Constable 2025)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221179105-nunc

    This is a fictionalised retelling of ‘Nunc Dimittis’, ten verses in Luke’s Gospel about the elderly prophet Simeon who waited for the baby Jesus in the Temple. After declaring ‘mine eyes have seen thy salvation’, he can finally die in peace.
    2000 years ago, in Jerusalem, old Simeon’s wheelchair collides with a rubbish heap, providing entertainment for the occupants of Deuteronomy Square.
    It’s not plot-driven. Instead, we have a series of short stories, incidents in the lives of the inhabitants of the square, as Benjamin’s mule-cart takes us from place to place. The tone is not so much humorous as affectionate. The bits about Jesus are refreshingly devoid of the usual obligatory reverence (the magi following the star are ‘three blundering eejits’; the hiding of Joseph and Mary from Herod’s persecution is almost slapstick).
    I get the impression journalist-turned-novelist Quentin Letts, let off the leash from journalistic style constraints, is now free to use puns, emotive dialogue, juicy adjectives, colourful description, characterisation. The result is a flowering of creative expression. The characters are quirky and delicious. The settings are colourful, illuminated by almond blossoms, pistachio trees and bougainvillea. Artisans sell their aromatic wares, and merchants ply their trade.
    The blend of modern anachronisms and ancient Palestine is cute (‘Thanks, Mum, said Caleb in the voice teenagers have used since Noah’s flood’). We’re tantalised by first century intimacies (the ‘different types of Pharisee’; the problem of cleaning the Holy of Holies—‘when the high priest enters, you don’t want him smothered by cobwebs. The dust might set off his allergy’) and glimpses of people we will meet in the Gospels (that little boy next to Aretas’ verandah will grow up to crucify Jesus).
    Would also suit a YA readership. Non-Christians will love it, too.
    An adorable book, 6 stars, a real pleasure to read.
    This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

  • Review: Julius Caesar

    Review: Julius Caesar

    William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar: The Amazing Play of The Great Roman General (Kindle 2023)

    Rereading a classic masterpiece screenplay

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203879797-julius-caesar


    I’m a big fan of Shakespeare—who isn’t? But not all of us loved learning it in school. I did, and Julius Caesar was always my favourite. I loved discovering the meaning behind antiquated language and appreciating the timeless plays on words.
    It’s based on real history, with which we are all familiar. It features rich interesting characters—Brutus in particular, who is conflicted, torn between his love and respect for Caesar and his devotion to the idea that Rome must have no king.
    And it’s chock full of great lines. We all know the ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him’ speech, but that’s not by any means the only memorable one. Immortal lines include: ‘the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves’, ‘cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once’, ‘cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’, ‘et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar’, ‘I am constant as the Northern Star’, ‘the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones’. And lesser known ones: ‘dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure?’, ‘let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood, up to the elbows’, ‘whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke’, oh, what a fall was there’, ‘this was the most unkindest cut of all’, ‘here was a Caesar, when comes such another?’, ‘mischief, thou art afoot’, there is a tide in the affairs of men’, ‘the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, this was a man’.
    This is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies—not a comedy—and yet it’s full of witty puns that are still as funny as they were in Elizabethan days and humorous turns of phrase so gorgeous in their wordiness as only Shakespeare can do. Antony’s funeral speech is a masterclass in oratory (‘sweet friends, let me not stir you up to such a sudden flood of mutiny’), the repetition of ‘and Brutus is an honourable man’ digs the cut over and over.
    I have never understood why this play is not much performed. In contrast, Romeo and Juliet, my second favourite, has a new performance every few years.
    One drawback to reading the play verbatim is that you don’t have the CliffNotes at the side explaining every little thing. I needed those when I was in primary school, but I’m educated enough and familiar enough with Shakespearean language not now to need them.
    The challenge to actors in learning their long lines of complex monologue is balanced by the prestige of playing Shakespeare.
    In conjunction with rereading this classic masterpiece, I watched the 2014 Theatre Classics film of the play on YouTube. Thus, I managed to catch every word and every nuance.

  • Review: Nero: Matricide, Music and Murder in Imperial Rome

    Review: Nero: Matricide, Music and Murder in Imperial Rome

    Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth, Nero: Matricide, Music and Murder in Imperial Rome, (Random House, 2022)

    A wonderful telling of the history

    The author goes chronologically through the history of imperial Rome up to and including Nero, pointing out events and genealogies and their significance, from time to time branching off to tell a juicy story, such as when Caligula sacrificed a flamingo, leading to his assassination. Even his genitals were stabbed. Decimus Valerius Asiaticus, whose wife Caligula had slept with, said he wished he had done it.

    The structure is roughly chronological, while taking time out now and again to examine certain themes in greater detail—Roman cultural practices, the emperors’ sexual behaviours—which I thought was the perfect way to do it.

    It leaves in all the ‘dirt’ in the stories, such as the gruesome suicide of Cato the Younger, pulling out his own intestines, and doesn’t omit any of Suetonius’ slanderous gossip, so that’s great fun. Pays great attention to the ancient sources, while pointing out the political and personal prejudices of the ancient writers.

    I particularly loved the famous quips people said about people. When Caligula asked Gaius Salustius Passienus Crispus whether he had, like Caligula, slept with his sister, Passienus fudged the question with ‘not yet’. Juvenal wrote that Claudius’ third wife Valeria Messalina prostituted herself in a brothel ‘reeking of ancient blankets’. After Claudius’ death, Seneca, whom the emperor had banished to Corsica, got revenge by writing a satirical play entitled The Pumpkinification of the Deified Claudius. When a soothsayer predicted baby Nero would be emperor and would kill his mother, Agrippina said: Occidat dum imperet (He can kill me but just let him rule.) As we all know, Nero’s famous last words were ‘God, what an artist in me is dying.’

    So, was Nero a bad guy, or what? By and large, he was loved by the plebs, hated by the senators. He may as well have slept with his mother, he was so under her thumb, and he admitted openly that he murdered her. No, he probably did not set fire to Rome, though he may well have fiddled (actually, played the cithara) as it burned—that was how he generally reacted to momentous news. The stories of burning Christians are iffy. As an artist, he was monomaniacal but mediocre. As a ruler, he was no worse than many.

    See review on Goodreads.