The Emperor's Babe - Reading It

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A couple weeks back, my friend, fellow poet, and lover of words, Rasta Mage posted this book, The Emperor's Babe on a FaceBook group page. Well, seeing I was online I decided to take a gander on Amazon and I was hooked. The concept was interesting and the whole book is in poem form!! I almost swooned from excitement.

Yes, excitement because it showed the possibilities that exist for poets who are interested in writing books. I'm planning on creating a book out of the Dark Warrior series and this is a push for me to do so.

The books description reads:

Bernardine Evaristo’s tale of forbidden love in bustling third-century London is an intoxicating cocktail of poetry, history, and fiction. Feisty, precocious Zuleika, daughter of Sudanese immigrants-made-good and restless teenage bride of a rich Roman businessman, craves passion and excitement. When she begins an affair with the emperor, Septimius Severus, she knows her life will never be the same. Streetwise, seductive, and lyrical, with a lively, affecting heroine, The Emperor's Babe is a strikingly imaginative historical novel-in-verse.

 About the writer/poet:

 Bernardine was born in Woolwich, south east London, the fourth of eight children, to an English mother and Nigerian father. Her father was a welder and local councillor and her mother a schoolteacher. She was educated at Eltham Hill Girls Grammar School and the Rose Bruford College of Speech & Drama, and spent her teenage years acting at Greenwich Young People’s Theatre.

To learn more visit her site, bevaristo.com.

So far The Emperor's Babe has me captivated. There is a pull/tug where as you are in the past, but the feel is so modern. I will be honest, I haven't read the whole book. It's like a fine wine that I want to savour. I hadn't seen the book when I told Rasta Mage to hold a copy for me at the bookstore where he works, but I was happy to see it was a good size book. I had already read about a fifth of the book in one sitting, and I am happy with the purchase.

I wouldn't say that the narrator, Zuleika, is related-able or someone you want as your best friend. I would more likely say she is real, she doesn't fit into one particular mold and doesn't try to. Even when she has been made into a "lady" she still clings to the life she knows and this is one of the things I like from an author. When they can show the muddy nature of being a person, a real person and can through the story give the reader a choice of loving or hating them. The most important thing is accepting them enough to keep reading.

Would I recommend The Emperor's Babe ? Yes and no.

Yes, if you are the type of person who can embrace reading a story in verse form, and see this is a novel and quirky idea of writing a novel.

No, if you rather read paragraphs and heavy chapters.

Yes, if you like to see history revisited in a funky, unusual way.

No, if you are a history buff and don't like anyone messing with history.


Hopefully this will be the first of many book reviews, I'm an avid reader and there are a few books that I really love and would like to share. If there are any books that you think I should read, leave a comment below and I will give it a go. Till then happy reading and writing.

The Next Big Thing

I had the pleasure of being tagged to talk about my eBook, Martine, by the acclaimed Antiguan/Caribbean writer Joanne C. Hillhouse, check out her interview here. Just to go the extra mile, here are two interviews by fellow Antiguans, Floree Williams and Bak2moi. Now to the interview:


TNBT:    Where did the idea come from for the book?
Like most of my writing, out of nowhere or a dream, or in that moment that I put pen to paper. I just had a story that wanted to be written and I just wrote it. Normally I could pinpoint the exact thing that triggered a piece but with this it just flowed.

TNBT: What genre does your book fall under?
Fiction, Race and Life, are the last two even genres. I guess I am a keyword/hash tag kind of person. But it is definitely fiction although part of me believes that people's life stories exist in a kind of ether and they flow through a writer in another time and space.

TNBT: What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Gosh! I never really thought about this becoming a movie or even a short film. Let me see... Viola Davis would make an interesting Martine.

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It would be lovely if Jesse Williams played Allain.

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Dennis Haysbert would make a great James.

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As for the girls, it would be great to have unknown actresses.

 

TNBT:  What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

When the past comes looking for a woman who had made a new beginning and was at last happy.

 

TNBT: How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The beginning took three days, but to complete it, it took me a couple hours about four months later. It's a short story and it just flowed.

 

TNBT: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The fact that race is an issue within a race.

 

TNBT: Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

This book is self-published, it is more of an issue that I don't see myself as a writer. I think of myself as a person who writes and puts things out there for people to enjoy. It's also for that reason that my future work will be self published, there is also the fact that I'm a control freak and I like things a particular way.

 

 

I would like to take a moment to thank Joanne for tagging me, definitely check out her book Oh Gad! It is a great book, had me hooked from the beginning and the twist and turns were so compelling.