Alphabet Challenge: C
★★★
“A terrible idea came into my head... What if we were wrong and they were right?”
Camilla by Caroline Lawrence
For the letter “C” of my Alphabet Challenge, I was trying to decide between two Classical mythology-based fiction novels: Clytemnestra or Camilla. Both are and author’s interpretation by filling in the gaps from bits and pieces of Greco-Roman myths. Honestly, I think I could have gotten through most of the alphabet just focusing on Classical retellings because so many of them are titled with the main character’s name!
For “C”, I picked Camilla by Caroline Lawrence. As someone who has translated and loved Vergil’s Aeneid, this title stood out to me. Camilla is only mentioned in literature in the Aeneid’s later books!
Vergil’s Aeneid is the ancient Roman tale of what happened to the Trojans after the Trojan War and the Fall of Troy (spoiler alert!!). After the Greeks invaded via the Trojan horse, Aeneas and a band of survivors regrouped and set off on an epic (pun intended!) adventure to find a new homeland, which ends up being Italy. However, once the Trojans arrive after about seven years of wandering, not all of the locals are excited to welcome them.
This is where Camilla picks up its plot. Camilla is from a native Italian town of which she is the princess. The book opens with Camilla’s father fleeing that town with her as an infant. As they are running for their lives, they come up on a large river that would be impossible for the king to swim across while carrying a baby. So the king cries out to Diana, who is Artemis (the virgin goddess of the hunt, young maidens, and the moon) for those more familiar with Greek mythology. He pleads for her to protect his daughter as he hurls her across the river secured in some cloth tied up to a spear.
The POV of Camilla comes from Acca, a young girl from another local Latin town called Laurentum. Her town is automatically antagonistic to Aeneas, because their princess, Princess Lavinia, who was intended to marry a local is now being intended for Aeneas in order to secure an alliance with the outsiders. Acca and her friends begin training to defend their princess. What ensues involves deep friendship forged in the sweat of training, the shared experience of girlhood, and the heat of battle.
The writing of Camilla felt a little “middle grade” to me so I am not sure who the intended audience is. `The sentences are short with short paragraphs and lots of space on each page. Lawrence is maybe best known for her authorship of The Roman Mysteries, a middle-grade series later turned into a BBC show. Since this is a separate endeavor, I assumed this would be not follow the tone of her previous writing. Maybe the writing felt so young because the narrator/first-person POV comes from a young girl??
It was a fast, easy read focused on plot, which kept my interest. On the flip-side, it was difficult to the feel as attached to the characters and the story like I would in a voluminous fantasy novel where I am spending 500 pages with the protagonist. As mentioned, I loved returning to the world of the Aeneid with a deeper look at a character briefly mentioned so that she could come even more to life! It was also interesting hearing the events unfolding from the perspective of the Latins instead of the Trojans. If you have not previously experienced Vergil’s Aeneid, then you may not enjoy it as much, but Caroline Lawrence does incorporate backstory well to help familiarize readers along the way.
