Counting the Stars
By Helen Dunmore
Fig Tree £16.99, 288 pages
FT bookshop price: £13.59

Catullus was the bad boy of Roman poetry. One of an avant-garde group called the Neoteric, or “new’’ poets, he lived a short, libidinous life in the first century BC. A poet herself – as well as a much-lauded children’s author and award-winning novelist – Helen Dunmore has now fictionalised Catullus’s greatest love affair in her 10th novel, Counting the Stars.