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Pompeii (Paperback)

by Robert Harris (Author)

3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Arrow (Nov 2 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099282615
ISBN-13: 978-0099282617
Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11.2 x 3.6 cm
Shipping Weight: 250 g

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #83,283 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

From Amazon.co.uk

Certain thriller writers burst upon the scene with considerable impact: Forsyth with The Day of the Jackal, Cruz Smith with Gorky Park and Robert Harris with the masterly Fatherland. Interestingly, of these three authors, by far the most consistent has been Harris, and his new novel, Pompeii is in some ways his most audacious offering yet, a brilliantly orchestrated thriller-cum-historical recreation that plays outrageous tricks with the reader's expectations.

As in the equally adroit Enigma, Harris takes a familiar historical event (there, the celebrated code-breakers at Bletchley Park, here the volcanic obliteration of an Italian city in AD79) and seamlessly weaves a characteristically labyrinthine plot in and around the existing facts. But that's not all he does here: few novelists who (unlike Harris) make a speciality of ancient history for their setting pull off the sense of period quite as impressively as the author does here. As the famous catastrophe approaches, we are pleasurably immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the Ancient World, each detail conjured with jaw-dropping verisimilitude.

Harris's protagonist is the engineer Marcus Attilius, placed in charge of the massive aqueduct that services the teeming masses living in and around the Bay of Naples. Despite the pride he takes in his job, Marcus has pressing concerns: his predecessor in the job has mysteriously vanished, and another task is handed to Marcus by the scholar Pliny: he is to undertake crucial repairs to the aqueduct near Pompeii, the city in the shadow of the restless Mount Vesuvius. And as Marcus faces several problems--all life threatening--an event approaches that will make all his concerns seem petty.

Other writers have placed narratives in the shadow of this most famous of volcanic cataclysms, but Harris triumphantly ensures that his characters' individual dramas are not dwarfed by implacable nature; Marcus is a vividly drawn hero: complex, conflicted and a canny synthesis of modern and ancient mindsets. Some may wish that Harris might return to something closer to our time in his next novel, but few who take this trip into a dangerous past will be able to resist Harris's spellbinding historical saga. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In this fine historical by British novelist Harris (Archangel; Enigma; Fatherland), an upstanding Roman engineer rushes to repair an aqueduct in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, which, in A.D. 79, is getting ready to blow its top. Young Marcus Attilius Primus becomes the aquarius of the great Aqua Augusta when its former chief engineer disappears after 20 years on the job. When water flow to the coastal town of Misenum is interrupted, Attilius convinces the admiral of the Roman fleet-the scholar Pliny the Elder-to give him a fast ship to Pompeii, where he finds the source of the problem in a burst sluiceway. Lively writing, convincing but economical period details and plenty of intrigue keep the pace quick, as Attilius meets Corelia, the defiant daughter of a vile real estate speculator, who supplies him with documents implicating her father and Attilius's predecessor in a water embezzlement scheme. Attilius has bigger worries, though: a climb up Vesuvius reveals that an eruption is imminent. Before he can warn anyone, he's ambushed by the double-crossing foreman of his team, Corvax, and a furious chase ensues. As the volcano spews hot ash, Attilius fights his way back to Pompeii in an attempt to rescue Corelia. Attilius, while possessed of certain modern attitudes and a respect for empirical observation, is no anachronism. He even sends Corelia back to her cruel father at one point, advising her to accept her fate as a woman. Harris's volcanology is well researched, and the plot, while decidedly secondary to the expertly rendered historic spectacle, keeps this impressive novel moving along toward its exciting finale.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews

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3.9 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A natural history page-turning thriller!, Oct 14 2005

By	Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Dateline, August 79 AD: Marcus Attilius Primus, a young, savvy aquarius, or water engineer, has been sent from Rome as replacement for the AWOL Exomnius to ensure the proper maintenance of Aqua Augusta, the aqueduct that supplies Pompeii, Herculaneum and the towns on the Bay of Naples. Investigation into the problem of the aqueduct drying up and its failure to deliver its critical liquid payload uncovers not only municipal theft of water and graft of epic proportions but natural problems and concerns relating to Vesuvius and its pending eruption - tremors, pollution of the water with sulphur emissions, rockfalls, and shifts and bulges in the earth's surface, not to mention breakages and blockages in the aqueduct itself.

Insofar as the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum are concerned, we all know how the story ends. So it fell to Harris' skill as a writer to build and maintain momentum and suspense in spite of that. With the clever device of a brief excerpt from a scientific treatise on volcanism serving as a preface to every chapter plus absolutely scintillating descriptive writing, what might have been a monumentally boring exposition of the final few hours leading up to Vesuvius' cataclysmic eruption becomes rather a thrilling natural history page turner that actually had my stomach twisted up into knots as I felt the clock ticking toward the inevitable catastrophe!

The resolution of Exomnius' disappearance and the discovery of the theft of water by Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, an ex-slave and now Pompeii's wealthiest citizen, serve as a springboard for Harris' outstanding description of an extraordinary cross section of daily life in the ancient Roman provinces - slaves vs freemen, men vs women, and children, the luxury and indolence of the wealthy vs the difficulties and squalid conditions of the poor, politicians vs their constituency, the use of the "games" as a means of distracting and buying off the general population, the baths, and the Roman diet. His charming portrayal of Pliny the Elder and the discussions surrounding the aqueduct problem will amaze and delight readers with the surprising level of sophistication of Roman science and engineering.

Sadly, the denouement after the eruption and Harris' winding down of the romantic involvement of Marcus Attilius with Cordelia Ampliata, who is promised under a contract of marriage to one of Pompeii's leading politicos, just doesn't come anywhere close to the standards of the first three-quarters of the book! What might have been a five-star book that I was tempted to place in my "Top Ten All-Time" list became merely good as I closed the covers on the final few chapters! Too bad, for sure, but 4-star recommendations are nothing to sniff at! Pompeii was well worth my time and I enjoyed it immensely.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well done page-turner, Aug 16 2007

By	Tommy Tom Tom (toronto canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Pompeii isn't great literature, let's admit that, but if you are looking for a good page-turner and have an interest in history, this is a really good choice.

The plot and the characters are mostly secondary devices. The important thing is that Harris paints a nice portrait of Roman life just before the eruption of Vesuvius, and makes us curious about what kind of havoc the volcano will wreck on the Roman towns and people that we've been reading about.

Even more interesting is the fact that Harris has obviously read all the Roman accounts he could of the eruption, and many of the little details about what happened, especially regarding Pliny, are taken from contemporary descriptions of the disaster.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Harris starts to return to form after the disaster that was "Archangel", Aug 19 2006

By	David Ljunggren (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Pompeii marks the partial return to form of Robert Harris, who burst onto the scene a few years ago with the magnificent "Fatherland". He followed that with "Enigma", another thriller set in World War Two which was interesting but flawed, and then produced the absolutely appalling "Archangel". I've had "Pompeii" on my shelves for a while now, not daring to read the book in case it also turned out to be a stinker. I finally read it a few days ago and am glad that I did.
If you're going to set a book in the few days before Vesuvius explodes, the main challenge is to produce a narrative which can engage the reader who knows perfectly well that the volcano is about to extinguish Pompeii, Herculaneum and other nearby towns, ending life in the region. "Pompeii" tells the story of the young water engineer Marcus Attilius, who is given his job after his veteran predecessor disappears. Soon there is a break in the Aqua Augusta, the immense viaduct which brings water to several towns near Vesuvius. Attilius is charged with first finding and then fixing the disruption but runs into big and potentially fatal problems when it becomes clear his investigations will pose all sorts of embarrassing problems for the local elite.
As ever, Harris writes exceedingly well. He has done his research and you can feel the sweat running down the backs of the overworked labourers in the shadows of the volcano, hear the insects buzzing all around and smell the ancient and exceedingly expensive wine offered to pompeii's luminaries. The main problem with the book is that Attilius never really comes to life. He is an honest young man pitched into a sea of corruption, someone trying to forget the recent death of his young wife, yet he stays largely on the page, rarely engaging the reader. That said, "Pompeii" is worth reading for the description of the volcanic blast alone.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
A very enjoyable read. This book takes you out of the modern world and plops you smack dab in the center of 79AD. Read more

Published on Feb 17 2006 by Ashley Brunt

4.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling thriller
This book is really a thriller--a page turner, if you will, in the traditional sense. Don't be put off by the premise of reading about a volcano. Read more

Published on Oct 20 2004 by Andy Wolfe

4.0 out of 5 stars It's not about the volcano
Harris, the author of ENIGMA, FATHERLAND (another great book), and ARCHANGEL has come up with a great read. Read more

Published on Jul 24 2004

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting attempt....
Robert Harris' venture into the world of Imperial Rome provides a different slant on the usual historical method of fiction. Read more

Published on Nov 17 2003 by ilmk