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I suppose I should write a few words, because I’m typically such a Waugh fan. This book, though, has almost none of his usual wit evident in works like like Scoop, A Handful of Dust, or even dramatic stories like his famous Brideshead Revisited.

It, instead, has very thick, overwrought sentences. The story follows Helena � the woman who will become Saint Helena � through her life. It’s mostly fiction, tied together with the thin bits of fact they had in the 1940s. It’s marked by Waugh’s absolute conversion to Catholicism, yet unmarked by more than just a handful of memorable characters. The plot is episodic and largely unemotional until the last quarters. The language never quite captures Roman antiquity so much as it hearkens back to the overworked sentences of the Victorian romantics.

I did like how he explains the typical, constant violence of Rome. I am fascinated why conversion to Christianity doesn’t seem to deeply affect people’s character flaws. I wish Helena were more fully realized; skipping over thirty years of her life in a few pages does a lot of damage.