'Eromenos' improved a bit on persevering ~ I object to the 'clinical'! ~ too much information, perhaps?! ~ but some of the quasi-metaphysical meditations are more poetic, albeit there are too many 'famous' people the young Antinous meets up with, which can & does verge on bathos. A bit of a curate's egg, tho' ~ the writer's made a stab at a literary novel, but the language, style and content aren't up to it. I'm also beginning to suspect that 'Memoirs of H.' was sitting on the author's writing desk, & there are a few minor factual slip-ups. For instance, the Pantheon: 'pan~', all; 'theon' ~ gods (p. 99) ... But Pan himself, solo? Nah. I think she confused 'Paneion' & 'Pantheon'. Pan had a cave, not a temple: he usually was accorded a grotto, which was left in a natural state (Wilson, 2004:2ff.) However, I may be doing Melanie McD. a wrong ... Altho' the Pantheon we have now is neither Agrippa's original nor in fact substantially altered by Hadrian: more than likely it was Trajan's architect, Apollodorus.
And the portrait of Hadrian doesn't depict a likeable man. Perhaps this was deliberate; and, so far, no authorial explanations on just why he stayed so long away from Rome.
(Cease nit-picking! It's a novel, not a reference book!) ( )