Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson: war hero and butcher, the toast of London and the scourge of Naples. Lady Emma Hamilton: model and muse and wife and mistress, the toast of Naples and the scandal of London. Lord William Hamilton: English ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, collector of vases, lover of volcanoes, husband to Emma and friend to Horatio, a power in Naples and a joke in London. A famous love triangle: brave, tragic hero falls in love with the young, enchantingly beautiful wife of an elderly collector and civil servant who is all too happy to turn his head the other way and let things proceed as they may. And who does Susan Sontag decide to focus on in this historical saga of famous events and powerful people and troubled times? The elderly intellectual, the cuckold who wags mocked in the London papers. But of course that would be her focus. She was herself an intellectual above all things, supreme in her field. I love that "the romance" in The Volcano Lover's title is between elderly collector Lord Hamilton and the volcano Vesuvius. I'm glad he's the focus, the titular character. There have been enough tales told already about the little war hero and his larger-than-life paramour.
This is my kind of historical saga. It is precise, disinterested in generalizations, steeped in irony, has the occasional meta flourish, always avoids sentiment, and comes complete with a chilly, vaguely disinterested narrator who may as well be Sontag herself. Other readers appear to dislike this sort of story, the way it is told, the careful distance from its subjects, its ability to empathize in its own way while never forgetting to chart all of its characters' traits - including their flaws. And not the heroic flaws. The small, mean ones, the petty ones, the traits that make a person human rather than a larger-than-life hero.
If you are a film lover, and beyond that, a person who loves historical sagas, then ask yourself: which do you prefer, the sweepingly emotional films of David Lean or the icy anti-saga that is Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon? If it is the former, stay clear of this book! If it is the latter, then this is your Barry Lyndon, on the page.
Unlike the films of David Lean (who I also love), this book does not want you to cheer the heroes and heroines, to cry and laugh and swoon at the terrible tragedies and awesome majesty of life's rich pageant, to have a cinematic experience. This book wants you to understand what makes people tick, whether they are famous or not. This book wants you to understand its characters within their personal and historical context, every bit of them especially their weak points, their various villainies and heroics small and large but always human, it wants you to know them as you (supposedly) know yourself. This book doesn't even particularly care if you like it. It does not want to be liked, it wants to be contemplated, discussed, and considered as a probing dissection of how humans think of themselves and how the image of themselves rarely matches what is seen by others. Others who are not in automatic sympathy with you, no matter your title or standing or lineage.
Unless those others actually love you, of course! A person who loves you will love you despite or even because of your flaws. One of the delights of this novel is how much its three players actually like each other. They understand each other and they are fine with what they see.
Just as poor Lord Hamilton loved his dangerous monster, Vesuvius. It was the true love of his life. The poor man should never have left Naples.
Sontag has a reputation as a cold intellectual, and she certainly was one. That's a big part of why I love her. But this novel is also a humane one. And often funny, in its sardonic and at times sneaky-cheeky way. A humor that does not call attention to itself; an author who is amusing herself. My favorite amusement: Sontag's inclusion of characters from the opera Tosca as if they were real people, a real part of this history. The fact that they are straight from an opera and never existed goes unremarked. A snobby sort of in-joke, I suppose. Which I love.
This odd, brilliant novel would have been a 5 star experience for me, except for its very last sequence. The end of the book is as brilliant as everything that preceded it, but it goes a different direction in style. Gone is the omniscient narrator, in her place is a series of first person narratives from various characters' perspectives. Starting with Lord Hamilton's dying thoughts (incredibly moving to me), then on to those of Lord Hamilton's deceased and very loving first wife Catherine (quite a sympathetic character), then to Lady Hamilton's silent mother Mrs. Cadigan (quite full of opinions, despite her silence), next the scandalous Emma Hamilton herself, and finally ending with a very minor character, the revolutionary Eleonora Pimentel on her way to the guillotine. All of these parts are beautifully written, including the sequence of Eleonara's last thoughts.
But my God, don't end a book that is literally all about a bunch of entitled rich people by sharing the understandably contemptuous thoughts of a progressive revolutionary about to die. You can't pretend you are down with the revolution and despise the entitled after you've written a whole book that completely humanizes those wealthy, tragic twits. That's like making a big, fancy cake and then throwing it out with a sneer because you want to prove some kind of point about cakes being bourgeois. That last sequence certainly doesn't ruin the book, but it does completely betray it. Tsk tsk, Susan Sontag! Don't front, it's not a good look.
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