SOURCE: "That Hamilton Woman," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 16, 1992, pp. 3, 7.

In the following review of The Volcano Lover, Eder states that although Sontag digresses and provides commentary, she tells her story well.

Susan Sontag at play. That is not remarkable in itself. Double-domes make their stabs at levity: George Will writing about baseball; Chief Justice William Rehnquist capering solemnly—I saw him—in an amateur production of "Patience"; John Kenneth Galbraith trying his hand at an academic novel.

What sets The Volcano Lover apart from such heavy-footed exercises is not just that it is light-footed but also that, as play, it is both great fun and serious fun. Writing what I suppose could be called a historical novel about the celebrated and sloppy triangle of Admiral Horatio Nelson, Lady Emma Hamilton and her celery-stalk husband, Sir William Hamilton, Sontag condescends not at all.

The cross-country impetus...