26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing story, annoying protagonist, December 12, 2003
Harry Turtledove and Judith Tarr team up to write a historical novel with an overlay of time-travel atop it. Late 20th century Los Angeles lawyer Nicole Gunther-Perrin is stressed, stressed, stressed. She's a divorced mom of young children, her ex traded her in for a younger model, her babysitter quits with no notice, and she's been passed over for partnership in her law firm while a male colleague gets credit for her work. The firm's senior partner hits on her, then tells her she won't succeed if she's uncooperative. In short, she is having the Day From Hell.
She's also a very unsympathetic character. She shows little concern with her own children. She's indifferent to why her sitter quit (sitter's mother in Mexico is sick). She's resentful toward those who succeed, and fails to see how her attitude and reactions affect how those around her will treat her. She's a bigot, generalizing about whole classes of people based on the actions of a few.
After the Day from Hell, Nicole makes a plea to a plaque of two Roman "Household Gods" (smaller deities who helped with more trivial matters). Liber and Libera haven't been worshipped in more than a thousand years, so they honor her request to send her "to a simpler time." And then Turtledove and Tarr toss her into 2nd century Carnuntum, frontier Roman Empire. This city is near the Danube river (near present day Vienna), but far from Imperial Rome's center. Her attitudes run smack into her new reality. Won't drink? Surprise: you own a tavern! And a slave to run it! Oh, and she's a part-time prostitute, and you get to keep the money! And your kids ignore your requests unless you spank them!
Any chance of returning home? No way. Everyone's petitioning the gods here, the line is always busy. Nicole is stuck here as Umma, widowed tavern-keeper. Life is difficult, painful, and monotonous. No electricity, little hygiene, no butter, no coffee, no antibiotics, no anasthaesia, no Tampax. And did Nicole think men were sexist pigs? Now she's stuck where women are second-class citizens by LAW. Bad enough? Okay, the barbarians are invading. That comes either before or after the plague.
The details of day to day life are terrific, from attending Roman-style public baths to dealing with head lice. The story stays compelling despite Nicole's limitations. And in the end, while she has become a stronger person, she still isn't someone many of us would care to sit with for a spell. No matter. She doesn't end up anywhere as obnoxious as she started, so that's an improvement.
While Nicole does learn from her experiences, her intial unpleasantness is hard to get over. Her ignorance of history and science don't serve her well when she arrives in Carnuntum, either. Perhaps this is why so many reviewers detest Nicole; the obvious audience for this book are SF fans, and they don't think much of scientific illiterates. How long does it take Nicole to figure out she ought to boil her water if there isn't any sanitation? Well, the typical SF reader would be doing so within 15 seconds of smelling the chamber pots dropped into the street. It takes Nicole about eight months. But not everyone thinks like an SF reader; there are lots of people like Nicole who manage to earn a law degree without remembering any history or science. She isn't unrealistic at all, just unlikeable. That shouldn't be a reason to downgrade the book; the story succeeds despite her.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slow start, but an interesting and enjoyable story, October 11, 1999
This is basically a coming-of-age novel, even though its main character is already of adult years. But despite her age, she's basically a spoiled child: self-centered, judgmental, irresponsible, and largely ignorant of the world. This has one major flaw: she's so damned unlikeable that I found it hared to really get into the book for the first couple of hundred pages. Perhaps the authors were a bit heavy handed in their portrayal, though I've certainly known women lawyers like this character. At any rate, as she begins to learn from her experiences, and as new characters are introduced, the story gets steadily better. I enjoyed it, and was sorry when it was over.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gritty and compelling, August 23, 2000
Nicole is an attorney in modern-day LA who suffers a meltdown on a Day from Hell, wishes herself in a simpler time... and wakes up in the body of Umma, a 2nd-century innkeeper in the Roman colony of Carnuntum, near present-day Vienna.
But of course, a woman's life on the Roman frontier makes her Day from Hell seem pretty darn decadent... _Household Gods_ is a meticulously researched, gritty, compelling book.
Talk about pulling no punches-- the 2nd-century comes alive with stenches, lice, prejudice, plague, war, and some vividly imagined characters. I shudder to think about how much research went into the painstaking depiction of everyday life in the second century AD. Definitely not a fluffy read, but one of the best books I've read so far this year.
Like some of the other reviewers, I would have liked a bit more closure on Umma's fate, and perhaps have Nicole not *quite* as ignorant of the past as she was (though I know plenty of people who don't know much about history and don't care).
But whenever I was forced to put the book down, I found myself eager to pick it up again and find out what happened next, which is something that I can't say for most of the books I read.
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