The Bearkeeper's Daughter

The Bearkeeper's Daughter, by historical novelist Gillian Bradshaw, is a fresh and wonderful look at 6th Century Byzantium. By this point in time Imperial Rome was gone; under the heel of conquering tribes. The basic government of Imperial Rome had moved to Byzantium, but had changed in ways that the Romans would never had understood. (One major change is that the main language of the upper classes is Greek---Latin and the Romans have faded into obscurity.) There is an Emperor: in this time period Justinian, and his wife, the Empress, the commoner Theordora, daughter of a circus bearkeeper. Imperial government is handled by a large complex bureocracy, with eunuchs among the main "powers behind the throne." Not to give away the plot: it is based loosely on an incident written about by a diarist of the times. More important than the actual plot, is the view we get of life in a powerful Empire, already Christian, but with constant feuds, often bloody, over minutae of religious doctrine. The story is seen through the eyes of John, a young man from a small town in what would now be one of the Arabic desert kingdoms. He sees the Imperial capitol with the same wide-eyed wonder of a small town boy in any time or place. His life and the events of his time in Byzantium are the basis of the story.

Gillian Bradshaw writes historical fiction that that nearly seamless. Her narrative is exciting and clear. The mis-en-scene of her historical novels is excellent. You know what it looks like and feels like in those ancient streets and you smell the markets and see the color of the air. Theodora was anything but a likely candidate to become empress of the Byzantines, but it happened. This story reveals the underworkings of such politics, the weaknesses of the men in high places, and the lack of restaint in those who aspire to power. Bradshaw does not write a bad book. Her work is exciting, edifying, and most worthwhile.

This novel should be entitled "The Grandson of the Bearkeeper" because the main character of the story is Juan, the bastard son of the Empress Theodora. It is a soft story about a young man who learned after the dead of his father the origin of his mother and went to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire where his mother is the omnipotent ruler of the empire and has to learn the habits and protocol of the court in order to pleased Theodora who has great plans for him. Through the pages of the novel, the extinguished empire get alive again and the reader can take a walk for the streets of Constantinople, once the center of the Byzantine art, culture and the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire later known as the Byzantine Empire.

Bradshaw is wonderful at writing interesting, fast, novels about likeable intelligent, sensible characters in interesting times and places, novels which are extremely readable and a pleasure from first to last page. Usually her novels are slices of life in a period, not directly about the movers and shakers though in this case our main character gets to be very closely involved with the main movers and shakers of the Byzantine Empire.This is one of my favorite Bradshaw novels. The novel is mostly about John, an alleged ... son Theodora had, and the glimpses of Theodora and Justinian are somehow more interesting than in other novels I had read about them. Wish I could do justice to the book with a good review ;) but it's a book whose charm is difficult to describe. If you like Bradshaw's novels, good luck at finding this one, it's very good. If you haven't read any of her novels, Island of Ghosts is another favorite and is much easily available, at least right now.

I originally read this book hoping it would shed more light on the life of Empress Theodora, who was a bearkeeper's daughter and circus actress/whore during the late Roman Empire (in Constantinople). Justinian, the emperor-to-be, fell in love with her, and shortly after they were married they were crowned emperor and empress (in the same arena where she once performed her circus tricks). Although Bradshaw's novel is a well-written piece of historical fiction, her story focuses on Theodora's alleged bastard son, John. The reader, along with John, meets a much older Theodora near the end of her reign. The book follows John's rise from scribe to army commander to consul of the palace guard, describing in rich detail the quality of life in the Roman Empire circa 530 A.D. However, it offers few glimpses into Theodora's childhood or her rise to power. So while it was a good read, the book's title is deceptive.