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 eld...

The dramatic love triangle between Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma, and her lover, Lord Nelson, of the late 18th-century Naples is the basis of Sontag's historical "romance". The Cavaliere is an obsessive collector and fascinated with Mount Vesuvius which becomes symbolic of each characters' emotions at one point or another. When his beloved Catherine dies he falls in love with his nephew's lover, Emma, who ultimately finds true love not in the Cavaliere, but in "the hero", Lord Nelson. The

I did alot of yawning while reading this, it was honestly very boring. I also did alot of that sound that I would imagine myself making if there was a hairball forming at the back of my throat. All these rich people problems, swimming in luxury and opulence and all these immaterial things surrounding them, the need to collect, to have, to own. Yak. Art is talked as if it's only something appreciated by the wealthy and some of the art pieces mentioned went right over my head so I have no understa...

The Volcano Lover is a powerful, intricate novel of ideas: frequently inflected with Sontag's feminism, it applies a modern lens to the Enlightenment's moral, social and aesthetic concerns. Yet it is also a tender inventory of desire: intricately mapping the modulation from the cold mania of the collector to the lover's passion.I don't know if it's the author's fault, but it's the second book I've read by her, and I didn't like it. So many people around here say they wanted more her essays than

The book is so close to great. . . I was reading Sontag's Paris Review interview afterward, which is fascinating, obviously--at 13, she was apparently reading the journals of Gide--and I think it opened me up to the flaw in the book, which is structural. She had in mind this balletic structure modeled on the four temperaments--melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, although the last two are more like epilogues. First, Sontag gives us an oddly sad story about this quiet aristocrat living in...

Deep research on scandals and art works of aristocratic late 18th-century Naples around the time of the French Revolution made into good story/character study of English aesthete and collector William Hamilton, his two wives, and Admiral Nelson. Hamilton profited from the excavations at Pompeii, had an intimate view of the scatalogical excesses and executions perpetrated by the Neapolitan court, and participated in a few menages a trois. His second wife Emma progresses as a Barry Lyndon-type rak...

I couldn't even finish this book. Not my cup of tea. If I don't like the style and what the author has to say, I don't waste my time on it.

Perhaps I should start with a comment by Evelyn Toynton in COMMENTARY, Nov. 1992, right after the book was published. This is just a short section of a well written critique:"But in the end, apart from some vivid images of street scenes in Naples, of a rampaging mob, of Sir William’s pathetic pet monkey, and of Emma dancing, the strongest impression one takes away from this book is of the suffocatingly humorless presence of Susan Son-tag. She has become by now a virtual icon of Mind, the ultimat...

This is an exhilarating read more for its encyclopedic if kaleidoscopically shifting views of a passionately intelligent and acquisitive Cavaliere. It matters little that the novel is based on the real-life triangle of Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma, and Lord Nelson. What counts is the formal yet lyrical beauty of the writing, the ever-changing impressions of a man in love with not just a woman but the world of objects and art. Almost mystical in the revelry of its cataloguing of things and...

Usually when I encounter a book I find terribly exhausting to read I just close it, return it to its shelf, and never attempt to read it again. Why waste my time reading boring novels, anyway? The Volcano Lover started out as boring and a debilitating read. It's historical fiction, perhaps that is why. I'm not much of a history buff and if I wanted to learn about it I would have just gotten myself a history book. It was a constant battle between wanting to give the book up or continue to follow

Det känns som att Susan hände mig. Tidigare har jag bara läst hennes On Photography, och hennes essäistiska bakgrund är tydlig här.Denna bok är väldigt, väldigt bra. Väldigt bra, alltså.

Every pleasure […] becomes an experience of anticipated loss. *They belong to different generations, have had such different lives. Yet they have so many of the same tastes, the same disappointments. From stories they passed to confidences, each unwrapping a package of grief and yearning.* To be unaccompanied. To be alone. To lower yourself into your own feelings.There to find mists and vapors. Then little protuberances of old angers and longings. Then a large emptiness. You think of what you ha...

I love this book, having first read it back in '92-'93. It's still sitting right there on my shelf, despite having been pulled off several times for a re-read. Complex? Uhmmm, not really. Big words? No bigger, certainly, than McCarthy. Ha! Not even close. No, just top of the line, grade A, "historical romance." If that. I'd call it much more myself. Susan Sontag is a writers writer. 5 Star caliber all the way.

Critic Lettie Ransley of The Guardian calls Susan Sontag’s self-proclaimed romance The Volcano Lover “A novel of ideas.” According to the blurbs on the back of the Picador paperback, the New York Times critic does the same. Seems like the literary establishment wanted to praise Sontag’s historical fiction of Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples, his remarkable wife Emma, and Emma’s scandalous affair with English war hero admiral Nelson, but they were puzzled

Who knew a volcano could give birth to such a wealth of conflicting symbolism? In Sontag’s gripping piece of historical fiction, it appears as a metaphor for destruction and preservation, the artistic and the scientific, the penis and the vagina – and a whole lot more.I personally love historical fiction and The Volcano Lover is an enjoyable and thought-provoking example of the genre. It takes as its basis a very famous, real-life love affair from the Napoleonic Wars, but avoids directly naming

درود بر خانم سانتاک دوست عزیزممن عاشق نقد‌ها و کتاب‌های ادبی خانم سانتاک هستم نمونه بارز و درجه یکش کتاب علیه تفسیر که واقعا محشر و درجه یکولی متاسفانه نتونستم بیشتر از 400صفحشو بخونم و خواننده‌رو خیلی پَس میزنه عقبنمیدونم چی بگم، امیدوارم عذرخواهی منو بپذیری سوزان مهربان و عزیزم

I love Sontag the writer, provocateur, thinker, etc...and I love her essays and criticism. And her life. I always think twice about what she says and recommends and the attitudes she takes. But this book didn't really live up to my expectations. I love some of it- the aphoristic insights and the subdued delineations of places and objects, especially. Her characterization can be pretty strong and sometimes the evocative feel of time and place is really there.Unfortunately the writing is a little

In ‘The Volcano Lover,’ the High Priestess of Cool has delivered an extended fictional essay on aesthetics, desire, feminist politics and revolution. There are certainly some risks taken in structure and narration but overall, this is a wonderful blend of the romance of history and ideas in its broadest form.

Annie Liebovitz has called this Susan Sontag's best book, and she should know, and I agree. It's a book wearing many disguises. A roman à clef disguised as a gorgeous, lyrical novel of ideas... disguised as an 18th century romance... about a love triangle... between the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, the concubine he marries and the Naval hero she worships. This book has it all: pretty girls, virile noblemen, erupting volcanoes, priceless paintings, science and seduction, sex and w...