Holiday reading: Empire I
One of the delights of Pompeii by Robert Harris is his description of a wealthy vulgarian's banquet. Lucrum gaudium! ("Profit is joy!") is the motto of Numerius Popidius Ampliatus and the menu is meant to reflects his affluence: mice rolled in honey, wild boar filled with live thrushes, nightingale-liver stew and sow's udder stuffed with kidneys, with its vulva served as a side dish. After you've read this, you'll never again consider a three-bottle, four-course meal a test of stamina.
Harris's three previous thrillers — Fatherland (1993), Enigma (1995) and Archangel (1998) — were set in chilly northern climates, Pompeii, on the other hand, throbs with humid Mediterranean tension. The author's fascination with dictators (Hitler in Fatherland and Stalin in Archangel) remains, though, and this novel's villain is a tyrant who thinks nothing of having slaves thrown into pools filled with razor-toothed moray eels. Nasty.
From the first sentence, the book is heading towards Vesuvius's fiery eruption in AD79, but along the way there are the achievements of Rome's hydraulic architecture to be wondered at, and the profundities of the ailing but intellectually sharp admiral of the imperial navy, Pliny, to be studied. The historical setting never feels remote, as echoes of our days can be discerned between the lines. The books opening epigraphs hint at affinities between Rome's power and America's superpower, and Harris’s emphasis on civilisation's dependence on water is timely as well.
Divided into four parts, with chapters taking their titles from Roman hours of the day and watches of the night, Pompeii pulses with action and suspense. You won't read a more enjoyable, satisfying thriller this year.
Note: The Rainy Day team is travelling. However, Movable Type has been primed and the Rainy Day sister in Limerick has the role of blog director. This combination of nepotism and world-class nano-publishing system will ensure that the site is updated regularly.
Diarist of the day: Denton Welch, 13 September 1946"Do not worry too much about the indiscretions, foolishness or banality of what your write. Leave Time to take care of it all — either to kill it and hide for ever, or else to change it in its magical way into something strange and rare and not silly at all. This diary, if is read at all, will make no one blush two hundred years from now. Some might blush a little in a hundred years, just as I have squirmed after reading some of Keats' earliest poems this morning."
