A round-up of this week's paperbacks
The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag, Penguin, £12
The Volcano Lover is a welcome addition to Penguin Modern Classics' reissues of Susan Sontag's major works. When John Banville reviewed the book for the New York Times in 1992, he called it "a surprise". A historical novel by one of America's leading avant-garde intellectuals and a romantic novel to boot? But the trysts of Sir William Hamilton – the Cavaliere – the British envoy to Naples in the late 1700s, his wife, and his wife's lover, Admiral Nelson, makes for more than an engaging love story. Sontag's novel is a subtle but rich analysis of 18th-century society, particularly highlighting the venality of politics and morality and the role of women as underclass. Mount Vesuvius, which erupts throughout the story and is the Cavaliere's true love, is more than just a metaphor for the various love affairs; it projects the complex relationship between nature and art and the commodification of both. An epic read. Emily Firetog
Bedlam: London and its Mad,Catherine Arnold, Pocket Books, £7.99
Here’s a madcap tour of Bedlam – the Bethlehem Hospital, founded in 1247 – with a rich cast of mountebanks, rogues, villains, extortioners, thieves, and murderers. In the medieval madhouse there were barbaric “exorcisms”; in Tudor times the cure was roast mouse, eaten whole. By 1700, a new hospital was “a costly college for a crack-
brained society” grumbled a jaundiced observer: spectators arrived in droves to gawp, scoff, and jeer, and “there was a Jack for every Jill. People came in singly and went out in pairs”, and “all I can say of Bedlam is that it is a hospital for the sick, a promenade of rogues, and a dry walk for loiterers”.
One genius shines out: Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Here is the great man on the condition of religious mania: "a vast ocean full of incredible madness and folly . . . with swift currents and contrary tides, full of fearful monsters, uncouth shapes, roaring waves, tempests, Siren calms, Halcyonian Seas, unspeakable misery". Go back to Burton as often as you can. Andy Barclay
Stairway to Hell, Charlie Williams, Serpent's Tail, €7.99
Pub singer Rik Suntan makes a meagre living belting out Cliff Richard covers in his local dive in Warchester. When he discovers that he is actually David Bowie, Rik is shocked – he'd much rather be Chris De Burgh. It seems that back in the 1970s, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page's dabblings in the occult led to Rik swapping souls with Bowie – now Rik has only a short time to swop them back before the reaping begins. Stairway To Hell plunges us into a mad, alternative rock 'n' roll universe, where ordinary people are possessed by the souls of past rock stars, and bizarre rituals involving urine become commonplace. The rock'n'roll in-jokes come faster than Zep riffs, and the cringe factor is cranked up all the way to the final showdown at the X-Factor auditions. Kevin Courtney
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922, Giles Milton, Sceptre, £8.99
Smyrna (modern Izmir) was, at the beginning of the 20th century, a cosmopolitan Ottoman city where various nationalities lived in harmony under an enlightened governor. After the first World War, Greece tried to take advantage of a weakened and defeated Turkey, taking Smyrna in 1919 only to lose it to Turkey three years later. The Turks then unleashed a reign of terror on the city in which hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and refugees perished. The book describes incidents of great depravity (young girls were raped and had their breasts cut off before being murdered) and also of great humanity, none greater than that of Asa Jennings, an American Methodist pastor who worked for Smyrna YMCA, and whose skilful and dogged efforts saved some half a million refugees.
After a century of such – and worse – horrors, the fate of Smyrna may not exactly be an example of paradise lost but it is certainly an emblem of our human capacity for hatred. Brian Maye
Can You See Me? Ruth Gilligan, Hachette Ireland, €13.99
Ruth Gilligan is enamoured of Cambridge – you can see it in every detail of every description of the hallowed streets of the university town. And who can blame her? It’s the land of sex and study groups; a dream, a wonderland, allowing for plentiful Alice in Wonderland references.
Her heroine, Dublin-born Alice, also loves Cambridge, just like her cool English Uni mates, but to the bafflement of her clueless Irish friends. When Alice is raped by a drunken student, her world unravels. All the strength she had relied upon in her home life, with semi-absent parents and younger siblings to look after, deserts her. In the sometimes soap-opera-ish aftermath of her assault, Alice disassociates herself from friends and work and her battered subconscious throws up the figure of Flo, a comforting stranger who becomes her coping mechanism and lifeline. Gilligan's voice is still, naturally, very young, so this tale might appeal more to teenage readers, but Alice's story earns her top marks for determination and effort. Claire Looby