Sontag, Susan. The Volcano Lover: A Romance. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.
Reason read: the Carnival of Ivrea happens in February every year. It is essentially a four-day food fight with oranges in the town of Ivrea in Northern Italy.
The Cavalier, an art dealer and British ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, is obsessed with three things: collecting beautiful and rare pieces of art, watching Vesuvius breathe and rumble, and having a relationship with his nephew’s former lover. I know, it’s an odd beginning. When the Cavalier’s nephew, Charles, grows tired of his mistress he simply sends her to live with his uncle once the Cavalier became a lonely widower. How do you learn to love a stranger? What do you do when that love matures into devotion and passion falls by the wayside? Beyond being a story about relationships and circumstances, The Volcano Lover is also the love story of art, war, and devotion to a life well lived with passion.
There is a cleverness to Sontag’s writing. Most of the story is told in the third person with touches of first person narrative sprinkled in. Is that Sontag offering personal tidbits about herself? Who is this off-camera speaker? In the very last section of Volcano Lover the Cavalier, his wife, his mother-in-law, and the Queen all offer first person perspectives on their lives with one another. Both the Cavalier and his mother-in-law are careful to never reveal the Cavalier’s wife real name (modeled after Emma Hamilton). No one mentions the hero’s name (Lord Nelson in real life), either.
As an aside: I listened to an interview with Sontag conducted by Muriel Murch. The whole time I kept thinking one of their voices sounded familiar. There is a professor (retired now) who sounds exactly like Sontag.
Lines I liked, “Sometimes it felt like exile, sometimes it felt like a home” (p 67), “Pleasure is haunted by the phantom of loss” (p 201) and “Nothing is more hateful than revenge” (p 313).
Author fact: While Sontag has written more than The Volcano Lover, it is the only book I am reading for the Challenge.
Book trivia: The Cavalier is based on Sir William Hamilton.
Playlist: Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), “God Save the King” and “Rule, Britannia”, Mozart, Haydn’s “The Battle of the Nile”, Vivaldi, Handel, and Couperin.
Nancy said: Pearl calls The Volcano Lover a historical romance for intellectuals. She’s not wrong.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the very simple chapter called “Naples” (p 146).
~*LunaSea*~ 