Robert Harris sells books by the truckload, but when it comes to it, he hasn’t written all that many. And the only book that I’d previously read of his was Enigma – a book that I’d bought on the basis of the subject matter, before leaving on the shelves for some years, until finally reading it some time around the time of the film coming out.
So Pompeii is my second Harris novel, and a rip-roaring read it is too. I imagine that it’s not the easiest thing in the world to set a novel against the backdrop of the volcanic explosion of Vesuvius, when everyone knows basically what’s going to happen.
Since the explosion at the end is no massive surprise, the novel essentially tells you that it’s four days out from the explosion right at the start, as we’re introduced to our protagonist, Attilus, who’s recently arrived from Rome to become the ‘Aquarius’ – the man in charge of keeping the aquaduct running smoothly. Things are not running smoothly as the aquaduct is very quickly damaged by tremors from the soon to erupt volcano.
The action largely follows Attilus, but we jump around a few other characters including both Pliny the Elder and his nephew, people who really did record the events of that cataclysmic time. Otherwise the action jumps around between the main players as you’d expect in a thriller, which is what this really is.
I don’t know an awful lot about the true happenings at the time, but from what I’ve gathered from brief research on the internet, many of the characters named, really did live in those places at the time.
All in all, a good read them, although if you pick up the paperback, the several pages at the front pretty much attest to that themselves (I’ve never seen quite so many quotes from newspapers and magazines in the front of a book).