Pompeii
4 journalers for this copy...
Cover text:
"A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? But even as Rome's richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world - the mighty Aqua Augusta - has suddenly ceased to flow...Through the eyes of four characters - a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist - Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction."
"A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? But even as Rome's richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world - the mighty Aqua Augusta - has suddenly ceased to flow...Through the eyes of four characters - a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist - Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction."
I'm not sure, really, what to think of this book.
When only considering the idea one thinks this could be a really good story, but I'm not sure I think Harris is putting it off. Sometimes I get the impression he is trying too hard to create caracters with whom the reader can identify, and at the expense of the credability of the story. I often find myself thinking that I don't really belive what I'm reading. It feels as if the author has moved a modern scenario to the time and the place of the Roman empire and so making an anacronism. And trying to make it look "old time" he wears out the concept of misogynism as if that was the only thing carachterizing this era (wich I don´t even think it did - at least not to that point).
But then again; the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 is an event that fascinates me greatly. So the description of the forces of nature gives me the goosebumps. And what more; it makes me want to read even more about this and about the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, what has been found and what the archeologists and historians make of it. I've got to learn more about that!
When only considering the idea one thinks this could be a really good story, but I'm not sure I think Harris is putting it off. Sometimes I get the impression he is trying too hard to create caracters with whom the reader can identify, and at the expense of the credability of the story. I often find myself thinking that I don't really belive what I'm reading. It feels as if the author has moved a modern scenario to the time and the place of the Roman empire and so making an anacronism. And trying to make it look "old time" he wears out the concept of misogynism as if that was the only thing carachterizing this era (wich I don´t even think it did - at least not to that point).
But then again; the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 is an event that fascinates me greatly. So the description of the forces of nature gives me the goosebumps. And what more; it makes me want to read even more about this and about the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, what has been found and what the archeologists and historians make of it. I've got to learn more about that!
Giving it to my partner.
Good but anachronistic. (But he really has done his research. The events of the book closely followed the preserved record of what happened.)
It arrived today. It will probably take me some time to read it - 397 pages. But I look forward to reading it.
I like this book. I agree that it is anachronistic in some parts but as a whole entertaining and absorbing. (I'm very interested in Roman life and society!)
På väg till k-line.
Tror maken min kommer sno denna boken innan jag hinner läsa den :)
