Tag Archives: Rome

Some Enchanted Evening: The Invitation

30 Monday Jul 2018

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Review: The Invitation, by Lucy Foley
Little, Brown, 2016. 426 pp. $26

Hal Jacobs, a struggling English ex-pat journalist in Rome, crashes a soirée given by a contessa, the first time he has been social in months. It’s 1953, close enough to the world war so that the city and its inhabitants still bear wounds, Hal included. By the evening’s end, however, he’s charmed the contessa — who knows perfectly well he wasn’t invited — and a mysterious, beautiful woman who, in their moment of mutual vulnerability, hints at the scars she does her best to hide. Their brief tryst leaves such a deep impression on Hal that he believes he’s experienced the only warmth and happiness of his life — or has he simply loaded the circumstances with more emotional freight than they can bear?

Remains of the Roman Forum, 2012 (courtesy Bert Kaufmann, Roermond, Netherlands, via Wikimedia Commons)

Months later, however, he sees the woman again. The contessa has managed to fund the film she was trying to produce — that had been the soirée’s purpose, to assemble angels who might invest in it — and because Hal knows the cinema, she engages him to write a magazine story about it, an assignment he gets through her contacts. The stars, director, and others associated with the film will revisit the coastal location where it was shot, and Hal is to pen glitzy, frothy nonsense about this gathering as publicity for the release. Since much of the money to make the film comes from Frank Truss, he’s there with his young wife, Stella — the woman Hal met in Rome.

The invitation to a Mediterranean setting, themes of sexual passion and emotional honesty, and lost souls searching for what they’ve never had reminds me of The Magus, one of John Fowles’s early novels. Another similarity is a parallel narrative, but this one goes back several centuries rather than decades, which Hal reads about in an old diary. But Foley does better than Fowles, I think, in two crucial respects: Her female characters are fully drawn, not merely sex objects, and there’s less literary artifice.

What there is, I could do without — the prologue adds nothing, and I skipped the parallel narrative of the diary. The real action, between Hal and Stella, needs no mirroring or adornment. Foley not only takes love at first sight and makes it credible, she skillfully uncovers layers of past and secret hurts for both principal characters. I’m not sure why Stella’s sections are first-person, whereas Hal’s are in third; does that difference accomplish anything? But two unspoken questions lurk constantly within the narrative, and it’s amazing how much tension they create: What will happen between Hal and Stella, and what will result?

That tension emanates from the characters themselves, much less so the antagonist. Frank Truss lives up to his name as Stella’s sole support, but she pays a heavy price. It’s not so much that Frank likes to get his own way; it’s that when he’s around, there is no other way. He’s menacing enough to serve his narrative necessity, but as a character, he’s too one-sided, the only flawed portrayal in the book. Foley tries to rescue him somewhat at the end, and though I like the shifts in perspective that she creates, they don’t go far enough. You know Frank’s a bad guy from day one, and the pretense he has of altruistic commitment is so obviously pasted on, it’s no surprise when it’s proven a sham.

By contrast, though, Foley does a terrific job with the lesser characters in attendance. I particularly like the film director, Gaspari, a lonely man, humble in his artistic gifts, and the contessa, whose warm-hearted, tolerant approach to life is very appealing. Foley also sets her scenes with care, as with Hal’s crashing the contessa’s soirée:

Torches have been lit in brackets about the entrance, and Hal can see several gleaming motor cars circling like carp, disclosing guests in their evening finery.… He is not prepared for this. His suit is well-made but old and worn with use, faded at the elbows of the jacket and frayed at the pockets of the trousers. He has lost weight, too, since he last wore it, thanks to his poor diet of coffee and the occasional sandwich.… When he first wore it he had been much broader about the chest and shoulders. Now he feels almost like a boy borrowing his father’s clothes.

With prose like this, Foley delivers her keen psychological insights, connecting closely with the reader on every page. The Invitation is well worth reading.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

The Man Who Saw It All: Dictator

05 Monday Sep 2016

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Review: Dictator: A Novel, by Robert Harris
Knopf, 2015. 385 pp.

This third book in a trilogy about Marcus Tullius Cicero has much going for it, even as it suffers pitfalls typical of biographical fiction on a grand scale. The subject is certainly worthy. Ancient Rome produced few men whose range of accomplishment rivaled Cicero’s–senator, consul, historian, philosopher, legal advocate, and, not least, the most gifted orator of an age that valued public speaking. What’s more, and perhaps what makes him such a tempting fictional protagonist, he knew everyone who was anybody, as friend, enemy, or (often) both.

Bust of Cicero from the first century CE, Capitoline Museums, Rome (Courtesy glauco92 via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Bust of Cicero from the first century CE, Capitoline Museums, Rome (Courtesy glauco92 via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

As this volume begins, Cicero’s in exile from Rome. That would humiliate anyone but especially a man used to power who believes he has upheld its dearest principles. His marriage, never particularly happy, seems more like a tenuous accommodation than a supportive partnership, while his beloved daughter, Tullia, is suffering her own marital problems. By promising to support Julius Caesar, a political enemy, Cicero regains the right to return to Rome. But as this experienced, adroit politician knows too well, such a bargain brings as many dangers as possibilities, just as he recognizes that Caesar is a man ill accustomed to hearing the word no. In other words, Cicero has little choice.

Therein hangs a tale, and a fine, often familiar one it is–the tense rivalry between Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey), which devolves into civil war; Caesar’s dictatorship; what, thanks to Shakespeare, may be the most infamous assassination in history; and its aftermath. But to read Dictator makes you realize how much Shakespeare compressed, edited, changed, or simply invented. And knowledge of the history in no way dampens appreciation of the book. One reason I admire Harris’s novels is his skill at making tense drama out of well-known events, as with Aquarius Rising (about Pompeii) or, my favorite, An Officer and a Spy (about the Dreyfus Affair). Among other things, that implies a talent for characterizing famous people, and here, they include the two Caesars, Julius and Octavian, as charismatic as they’re cold and calculating.

But that’s not where the narrative comes from. Rather, Dictator unfolds through the eyes of Tiro, Cicero’s secretary, a real historical figure, incidentally. (He invented a system of shorthand to keep up with Cicero’s prolific dictation and coined abbreviations [such as i.e., e.g.] still in use. At first a slave, Tiro was a friend and adviser even before Cicero freed him, and in these pages, his enforced proximity has lent him a keen eye for politics and for his master’s virtues and flaws. Most important, perhaps, he has infinite patience, much needed during Cicero’s rages, such as when the great man chafes at his banishment from Rome:

He should have heeded the example of Socrates, who said that death was preferable to exile. Yes, he should have killed himself! He snatched up a knife from the dining table. He would kill himself! I said nothing. I didn’t take the threat seriously. He couldn’t stand the sight of others’ blood, let alone his own. All his life he had tried to avoid military expeditions, the games, public executions, funerals–anything that might remind him of mortality.

However, Tiro’s narration, witty and ironic as it often is, keeps raising the unspoken question: What about the man telling the story? Who is he, really, aside from being Cicero’s scribe and shadow? Like any devoted chronicler, Tiro puts himself in the background, but this isn’t always satisfying. Harris has him refer to himself as invisible, meaning nondescript, but I’m not buying. Tiro may be the conveniently overlooked witness to great events, but he’s a character too, and deserves more. It’s as if Cicero and the Caesars use up so much oxygen, there isn’t enough to go around, which leaves the minor characters less able to live and breathe. Conversely, though Cicero enjoys being the center of Roman attention, he has his humdrum years, like anybody else, so that Dictator occasionally drags, despite Harris’s prodigious storytelling skills.

The novel offers other pleasures, though, not least a window on Roman politics: endless cabals, corruption, backstabbing (literal and figurative), and reversals, whose participants have long memories and sharp tongues. That Cicero, an intellectual for the ages, would attempt to make sense of this cesspool in which he waded is quite understandable, and his analyses sound as cogent today as they did two thousand years ago. For instance, when he asks, “Must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system?” you can’t help thinking how prescient the ancient philosopher was. Likewise, when he supposes that a human can only prepare for death by leading a morally good life (essentially by following the golden mean), I find myself having to stop to reflect on that.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Aquarius Rising: Pompeii

30 Monday Nov 2015

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Review: Pompeii, by Robert Harris
Random House, 2005. 278 pp. $15

About halfway through this ingenious novel set in late August, 79 C.E., the corrupt villain tells the incorruptible hero, “Here’s a piece of advice for you, my friend: there’s no safer investment than property in Pompeii.”

"Vesuvius from Portici," by Joseph Wright of Derby, eighteenth century (Public domain, courtesy Titanic News Channel).

Vesuvius from Portici, by Joseph Wright, 18th-century English painter (Public domain, courtesy Titanic News Channel).

The reader cringes at the irony, but neither party to this conversation realizes that within days–hours–Vesuvius will erupt and bury the town in pumice, ash, and molten rock. It’s testament to Harris’s skill that he fashions a much-storied historical event almost two millennia old into an edge-of-your-seat thriller, despite certain elements common to the genre and therefore predictable. How does he do it? By going against the grain.

Harris could have focused on the victims, playing on their ignorance, innocence, and tragedy. There’s nothing wrong with that–we can all imagine unseen terrors striking us down–but Harris goes the other way. He shows the Pompeiians at their worst, whether the scheming politicians, the astonishingly greedy villain, his feckless friends and relations, or the townspeople, brutal, superstitious, and quick to anger.

This setup gives the author wider scope. Not only does he ratchet up the tension over whether the evil will perish along with the good, his premise opens several roads to explore. One is the thirst for money (a metaphor of double meaning here). Another compares nature’s cruelty to the human variety; to no surprise, nature comes out the better, because its ravages imply no intent. But that proposition, which (a) has implications for what civilization means; and (b) suggests a random universe, troubles these Romans. As rulers of the known world, they assume their moral superiority and humanity, while as polytheists, they worry about offending capricious gods, so that there’s no such thing as a random act. However, not all Romans in this novel accept these common beliefs. Pliny the Elder, in these pages a vivid, significant character, sets higher store by observation than what Vulcan may or may not be up to beneath Vesuvius.

So does the protagonist, Marcus Attilius. He’s a newly appointed aquarius, or engineer, who serves the Aqua Augusta, the aqueduct that supplies the region with water. Attilius possesses several virtues on which ancient Romans prided themselves: honesty, courage, willingness to work hard for the common good, and the energy to sweat the details. Coming from a long line of aquarii, he discounts Vulcan’s wrath as the reason for a mysterious break in the Aqua Augusta and its pervasive odor of sulfur. But whatever the cause, it’s his job to repair the aqueduct and solve the mystery before the public realizes their water supply has failed.

Trouble is, Ampliatus, the real estate magnate full of sage investment advice, has been building splendid baths in Pompeii, and he sees a large, illegal fortune to be made in water. (As a former slave who works rather too hard to enrich himself and burnish his reputation, he’s aptly named, for ampliatus means “to widen,” “to enlarge,” or “to glorify”.) He quickly recognizes that Attilius will oppose him and takes steps to have him removed. Nobody will be surprised to hear that Ampliatus has a daughter, Corelia, whose beauty, sensitivity, and generous heart smite the stoic engineer between the eyes. Harris does tweak that cliché, though, loosening up his priggish protagonist as the novel proceeds, a nice touch. But Vesuvius, naturally, will have the last word over all petty, human affairs, which makes a normal engineering project a very tense activity.

Harris has also researched his ground, to great effect. The houses feel lived in, the streets vibrant, and, important to a story like this, the engineering worthy of awe. I learned that the aqueduct builders sloped their pipelines a small, precise distance every hundred yards–roughly, the thickness of a human finger. Any less, and the water remained stagnant; any more, and the current destroyed the masonry. What a metaphor for the business of state or survival–a hair’s breadth off, and life ends, history changes.

Like An Officer and a Spy, Harris’s superb novel about the Dreyfus Affair (reviewed March 9), Pompeii hews to events as they happened, yet still astonishes. If you read historical thrillers sparingly and prefer a deeper, more complex novel, try An Officer and a Spy first. But both will reward you.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.