Pompeii

This really is rather good although it loses a star for perhaps fiddling the reality of the effects of a pyroclastic flow in order to come out with a crowd-pleasing result that really should not have been allowed. However, this is a small quibble.

What we have here is a startlingly good evocation of the Roman Empire in the Bay of Naples in the first century AD - so good and so well researched that it would do no harm to have it on the syllabus of anyone studying the classics (if anyone does nowadays) at secondary school.

It is also a solid thriller but the skill lies in the almost cinematic writing and clarity of style, the sign of an educated man trained as a journalist and abandoning any attempt to be self-consciously literary for a show more market of introverts.

This is excellent writing for the educated element in the masses as we might have expected a hundred years ago from the likes of Rider Haggard or Conan Doyle. The set piece of the Roman fleet under a rain of pumice is a tour de force of imagination and tight writing.

The characterisation is superb as well. He pulls off the difficult trick of presenting us with real human beings who do not know anything outside their era and who share the assumptions of that era but who have all the emotions that we might have.

With only one romantic lapse, these are people who accept the social conditions of their era much as we do ours. There is no didacticism or moralising from a twenty-first century perspective - a rare pleasure nowadays. Harris imagines what it must have been like to be Roman brilliantly.

Harris seems to specialise in fine popular writing set in history without allowing his stories to slip into the standard tropes of the historical novel. Most of his story-telling is set in the twentieth century and he has no problem with alternative history - most famously in 'Fatherland'.

To have moved from territory he clearly knows well back in time two thousand years and come up with this book shows more than just the novelist and the journalist - it shows an author who could also have been, had he chosen, a very fine historian. A very good read. show less

Great description and detail, a real immersion in the varied strata and characters of the gloriously purposeful Roman society. Harris recreates that advanced and connected world and the self-assured worldview of the Romans through interesting, believable portrayals. There’s tension throughout the story from the plot lines that connect those characters, but also the looming sense of what we the readers well know became of Pompeii. Regarding which, Harris draws a parallel (I only notice now, looking at the epigraphs) with our own world and its American pre-eminence as if this too is or was (when the book came out, 20 years ago) on the brink of collapse.

An historical novel about Pompeii? How could I go wrong? The answer - easily!

Somehow this novel managed to make the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the burial of both Pompeii and Herculaneum downright boring. Probably because the first 3/4ths of the book happen BEFORE the eruption.

In fact, most of the story is about an engineer trying to figure out how to fix an aqueduct and prevent a severe water shortage — when all the time, the actual problem results from early geological changes that signal the volcano is about to erupt.

I wound up skipping large sections of the narrative, which might make my review a bit unfair. But that’s the way it goes.

Having recently read "Conclave" by the same author and loving it, I was rather disappointed with "Pompeii." The characters were too underdeveloped and cliche - the hero noble and handsome, the villain really evil and the love interest stunning - and the romance was unbelievable. After just a few encounters the reader was supposed to believe that Attilius and Corelia fell madly in love. Sorry, but this reader is too cynical for that. I never connected with any of the characters and the plot lacked the tension and sense of urgency it should have had.

The second-half of "Pompeii" was definitely better than the first but, overall, I found this book lacking.

Pompeii is forever associated with a catastrophic eruption from Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the city, but at the same time managed to preserve a lot of artefacts and even actual citizens. Robert Harris's book covers the day or so leading up to the actual eruption and the immediate aftermath through the eyes of four people: an engineer in charge of repairing the aqueduct, noted scholar and scientist Pliny the Elder, wealthy landowner (and former slave) Ampliatus, and Ampliatus's daughter Corelia.

Overall this was a very good book. It is historical fiction with a deft touch. Details about Roman life (the different types of gladiators, for example) and actual Latin words and phrases are woven into the narration and sometimes the dialogue show more in a way that makes them easy to digest. In other words, this isn't an info-dump. I also liked the use of Pliny the Elder's actual accounts of the eruption, and presumably other quotes from his Natural History, in translation, and the chapter introductions that describe the eruption in some technical detail.

The description of the eruption in the book is truly awesome: imagining the great column of smoke and ash and rock spewing many miles into the sky is both thrilling and terrifying. As I read I could vividly imagine the sudden darkness in the middle of the day and the resulting panic and bewilderment among the citizens. (Also, how ironic that it happened the day after celebrations honouring Vulcan, whose area of expertise includes volcanoes.) I even found myself ducking slightly as I read, as though experiencing an onslaught of pumice, and sometimes I would be squinting as though trying to read through the clouds of ash.

Choosing an engineer as the primary character was also interesting. For all the reading I've done about Rome (admittedly, not that much), I've never really read that much about the aqueduct system, so the technical aspects that are brought up in the context of the story are a nice treat.

Some may object to Corelia's rather limited role in the proceedings -- indeed, when I wrote my first draft of this review I was able to come up with a fair description of each of the three male characters, but could not conjure up a brief summary of Corelia. She does manage to be rebellious and headstrong without really seeming too modern (at least not to me), but her limited role in society, and the greater freedom the men have, mean that she does not feature as prominently.

I must also confess to being somewhat disoriented during the final sequence, when Attilius is trying to track down Corelia, but of course a volcanic eruption is not exactly the most ordered of events, and I was reading really fast so that can probably be chalked up to reader error.

This book is recommended for students of Roman history, those looking for exciting retellings of historical events, and geology nerds. show less

3 ½ stars

I have wanted to read this book for a decade

I’ve loved science, and particularly geology, from a very early age, and chose a science class in 5th grade that focused on volcanoes, so my interest is long standing.

I think a non-fiction book about this eruption, if it contained all the known information and conjectures, might have been an even better choice for me.

I got used the fictional story and it did provide a fairly good backdrop for the setting and happenings in that time and place. There is a very long build up though. At times the story had me rolling my eyes and laughing in places where I’m sure it wasn’t meant for the reader to laugh, which surprised me given the author. It read very much like a cheesy soap opera show more at times. Particularly at the end there were things I both loved and hated in the historical fiction story. I was left conflicted about whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars. I suspect that I might be upping it a star because I’m so fascinated with the events, and perhaps it should be the other way around and I should downgrade it. I did like the characters and events that seemed to be based on history, and was touched a few parts at the end, but overall the whole narrative seemed like something I had to get through to find out exactly what happened at Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. I’d already read some accounts so I had an idea of what to expect. For me the story did drag at times, and that shouldn’t happen with this subject matter! For all my complaints, the fictional story was a good vehicle to tell the geological story and its toll on the area and its inhabitants.

I was impressed by the Romans’ accomplishments, and learned quite a bit about their culture.

Of course, I loved the map (I frequently referred to it) and the description/names of time keeping and calendar in that era Rome, and really appreciated the informative quotes from non-fiction books that are at the beginning of every chapter.

I was dismayed that in the last few pages the author’s words/musings has me suspecting that he might be a denier of human caused climate change.

I am still eager to read his book Fatherland. show less

Never saw the Kit Harrington movie adaptation of this movie and I'm glad I didn't. Reading about that doomed city at the base of Mount Vesuvius and the events in and around those eighteen hours before eruption in a fictional capacity has been exhilarating.

Maybe it's because I had just watched Blood of Zeus, the Netflix anime that has so much potential but is shackled by the streamer's indecisiveness. Anyway, for some reason Attilius reminds me of Heron. Not Heron the demigod, son of Zeus and gifted with lightning but the Heron who is in mourning, headstrong, determined and righteous in his science. Attilius has other qualities that would have made him the demigod of aqueducts - he is an engineer of insanely high intellect and a keen and show more fine tuned sense of intuition.

I'm convinced that just before a natural, catastrophic disaster takes place - >the earth holds a séance with the soon to be departed souls of the inhabitants within the impact radius. The unsettling atmosphere leading up to the event tells me that the spirit almost knows something is about to happen. More often than not, some sort of tension, unrest - even riots occur just before the event. But then there's The Great Tsunami (Bali and surrounds)of our century and how everyone was just in utter shock and of course the Great earthquakes of Hatay in Turkiye - so yeah, maybe the earth is just shrewd and picks and chooses when to give warning before unleashing hell.

In a race against a volcano that he didn't even know he was racing, Attilius is steadfast, focused and in the zone trying to repair the part that is blocking the flow to several towns along the route of the aqueduct. There is love, there is corruption (seriously, corruption is probably the oldest vice on earth right?), there are slaves, there are free men, desperation, ridiculous wealth and an archivist willing to give his life to document the eruption for all in the future to behold.

Mount Vesuvius is the real protagonist here. And what a might and frightening one at that. show less