Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I love hell. I can't wait to get back there.", 4 Jan 2006
Geoffrey Firmin, the former British consul to Mexico, is a prisoner of alcoholism. A victim of the shakes, he hears voices, talks to people who are not there, and hallucinates, though he is often able to hide the extent of his drinking. "True, he might lie down in the street, but he would never reel." On The Day of the Dead in 1938, his recently divorced wife Yvonne returns to Quauhnahuac, over which two smoking volcanoes loom, to try to persuade him to reconcile. Coincidentally, Geoffrey's half-brother Hugh, with whom Yvonne apparently had a brief affair, also arrives that day, and the three share quarters, each hoping to recapture the past. When they take the bus to Tomalin to a bull-riding event, they see a wounded peasant dying beside the road, the peasant's horse with the number 7 branded on its rump, a tricky pesado, and a group of vigilantes, all of whom play a role in the climax which follows. Rich with details, both of the external world of Quauhnahuac and the internal world of Geoffrey, the novel, first published in 1947, reflects Lowry's own experiences as an alcoholic. Geoffrey, a fully-rounded character, knows that he must stop drinking in order to function effectively, but he is unable to function at all without drinking. He both loves and despises Yvonne, wants to leave Mexico but wants to stay, and wants to find peace but creates chaos. As Lowry reconstructs this one day in Geoffrey's life, the Day of the Dead, the pervasive symbolism adds to the feeling of overpowering doom--the smoking volcanoes ready to erupt, the "hideous pariah dog" that follows Geoffrey and Yvonne to the house, a barranca (chasm) which exists beside the house and which contains a dead dog, an Indian carrying "the weight of the past," vultures in the forest, Yvonne's release of an eagle in a cage, and sudden storms. All add weight and intensity to this powerful story of dissolution. Despite the depressing subject matter and a frustrating main character who cannot or will not help himself during the novel's four hundred pages, the novel is breath-taking--elegant both in language and construction. Carefully plotted, filled with unique imagery, and enhanced by symbolism which brings it alive on new levels, it overwhelms the reader with its impact and approaches classical tragedy as the inevitable, doom-filled events play out. Though the novel includes peripheral political issues of the day--Mexico's instability and the philosophical conflicts between fascism and socialism--it is primarily a variation on the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man--full, rich, dense, and rewarding, despite its pervasive sadness. Mary Whipple
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Advise My Best Friends Never to Read the Volcano, 30 Aug 2008
It is my belief that Malcolm Lowry wrote the last chapter of this novel first - Chapter 12 - and my advice (who am I to give advice? - Lowry himself suggested that this book required twenty readings, and I have read it but only eleven times) to a "new" reader is to begin by reading the novel at Chapter 12, the end. And another thing: Lowry read aloud, mostly to his long-suffering wife and his few friends, every single word of this novel, so guy or gal, try this and take turns - eventually, I hope, you will tune in to his voice, and I hope that it is the voice of the book that will carry you through. And yet another thing: why not read the Chapters in reverse order? Lowry does not care how you read it - he's dead! - and maybe he did not have much talent, but I feel that he has stuffed the Volcano with so much stuff, that the novel assumes some sort of organic life of its own, with internal organs and the means to travel from A to B, or from B to A, such that one might be inclined to take it for a walk on a leash. Will this novel still be being read 50 or 100 years from now, along with "Heart of Darkness", "Cannery Row" and "Catch-22"?? - who can tell? This book has so much life in it that it has become a kind of friend to me. It will be in my box when the flames come.
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22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece, 18 Aug 2000
Malcolm Lowry sacrificed almost everything - his mental, physical and financial, perhaps even spiritual, well-being - in order to produce this, a masterpiece of such immensity that it belongs with the 'pantheon' of twentieth-century literature: Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, Naked Lunch, Gravity's Rainbow. It tells, quite simply, the inevitable decline and eventual death of Geoffrey Firmin, an ex-consul living in Mexico and also, the seeds of his downfall, a chronic alcoholic. Lowry himself was, of course, an alcoholic and, in this book, he takes you inside a self-destructive, but brilliant mind: his own. The nature of Lowry meant that, tragically, this is really the only 'completed' work of fiction he produced: others, such as Dark is the Grave and Through the Panama are incomplete, sporadically brilliant, but undefined, whereas Ultramarine is merely a typical post-university first novel, entertaining, promising, ultimately rather minor. Under the Volcano, though, is too rich, too extraordinarily layered and exciting, its language too beautiful and musical (and flowery, Lowry called it) to adequately reflect in this short review. Read it. You must read it. It will haunt your days and nights. A masterpiece. Full stop.
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