Sparrow

June 15, 2023
In his declining years, a man reflects upon, and relates, the brutal circumstances of his earliest life as a slave living in the Roman Empire. Sold into slavery as a child and unaware of any details about his background, Jacob, the narrator of Hynes' richly detailed historical novel, begins his story with a litany of the identities he may (or may not) have assumed or been forced into: Standing out on the list are "cinaedus," "eunuch," "pimp," "slave," and "whore," alerting readers that this rendition of ancient life casts an eye on Roman culture beyond amphitheaters and gladiators. Raised in a brothel, after having been mistakenly bought as a girl slave, Jacob (the name adopted later by the narrator referred to initially only as Pusus or "Little One") endures years of menial domestic labor and harsh treatment but falls into a quasi-familial relationship with several of the "wolves" (prostitutes) working there. The viscerally disturbing turns that his life takes during his preadolescent years force Jacob to create an alter ego for himself, and he becomes--via the escape hatch of his mind at least--the eponymous Sparrow. Pusus/Jacob/Sparrow (among his other acquired monikers) breaks the literary equivalent of the theater's fourth wall and occasionally addresses readers with foreshadowing or commentary on the fallibility of memory, providing some relief from the inexorable grimness of his existence. Extensively researched, Hynes' examination of an empire grappling with survival and the growing influence of the not entirely beneficent force of Christianity raises questions about trauma, identity, and the creation of intentional family in the context of the sympathetic narrator's growing awareness of the world he is locked away from. (Hobbes' oft-quoted observation that life is "nasty, brutish, and short" seems appropriate to Jacob's story.) A vivid portrait of a literal empire of pain.

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