Review: Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet

Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet by Daisy Dunn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I think the author misjudged her audience. This book is not a "vivid narrative" it claims to be. It is very well researched, interesting, somewhat controversial, but definitely not vivid. Paragraphs feel disjointed from one another. The narrative behaves more like a solid than a liquid, and a living solid at that: it jumps like a cricket from one paragraph to the next, instead of flowing seamlessly as I would expect it. The whole biography resembles a workbook, with a lot of extensive notes. And there is also a decisive lack of original Latin poems. I know, the interested reader is supposed to go out there and find them. But it would be really nice to at least have a few examples, even if only to see first-hand the rhythm the author talks about.

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