Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff

Out of print, but buy it from abebooks.co.uk 

I requested a couple of Rosemary Sutcliff books from the library after reading an article in British Archaeology that explored historical fiction.

This story dating from 1955 had a freshness that was perhaps surprising, and the way that Beric’s identity shapes the narrative, born a Roman brought up a Celt and then in “exile” back into the Roman world where via various struggles he comes to a point of reconciliation with his past.

Within this I was particularly intrigued by the relationship between Beric and Jason, they are slaves on galley – for two years they have been side by side during which “It was very seldom that they could speak to each other. That brief, wordless contact of hand against hand on the oar-loom had to do instead; and it had come to do well enough.” - there is a real tenderness between them, and I found myself really wondering how much should I read into this. Could it be that Rosemary Sutcliff, writing in the mid-50s, was intentionally writing of an intimacy between two men that goes beyond the platonic or is it just my 21^st Century eyes seeing things?

This book certainly stands up to still being read and not just as a quaint historical example – a shame that although the library have a copy it is in storage so you have to proactively seek it and the causal browser (once COVID passes and they are allowed again) would never encounter it.