Customer Reviews

The Last Girls of Pompeii

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The year is 79 A.D. and though we the reader know Mount Vesuvius is set to rain death and destruction on the city of Pompeii, Julia and her family are blissfully unaware that their home is built in the shadow of a volcano. Though Julia is destined never to marry due to a birth defect that has left her with a shriveled arm, she still finds herself wrapped up in the drama of wedding plans as her older sister prepares to marry. Julia is dragged along as her mother consults prophets and seers to determine the date of the wedding. The verdict is always the same: the date selected is surrounded by bad omens. Unbeknownst to Julia, her family is also hard at work planning a future for Julia, though their plans are far from ideal. As Julia struggles with her own troubled future, her slave and companion Sura discovers she is to be sold as a concubine. Together, the girls attempt to stop the plans set for them and create futures of their own choosing.

Both Julia and Sura are sympathetic characters whose experiences are equally engrossing. While their situations are very different, they both struggle with a lack of freedom to determine their futures. The author successfully wove together a host of historical facts with vibrant characters to create a story that was informative, sympathetic, and compulsively readable. Though Julia does mention she notices oddities with the city's plumbing, tremors, and a sulfurous odor, she does not go beyond occasional observation. The story instead focuses on the trials these girls face in their historical time period.

Where the book loses stars is in the writing. Ideally, this book would have been written in the first person with Julia as the narrator. Instead, the book is written in the subjective third person with the main perspective primarily Julia's, but occasionally breaking into Sura's perspective. This makes for awkward reading. The uneven focus between Julia and Sura also makes the narrative awkward, especially because there is little balance or structure separating when Julia's perspective dominates or when it switches to Sura.

These problems interfered significantly with my ability to become fully immersed in the story. It seemed like the author originally chose the third person narrative style with a focus on Julia, but realized partway through that this style wouldn't work for the scenes she wanted to write with Sura. Instead of reworking her story a little to give Sura equal "stage time" and balance out the narration style (alternating narrators/chapters would have been ideal), she decided to just randomly switch perspectives whenever it was convenient to her with little regard to how this actually affected the flow of the story. As a reader, sloppy approaches like this are irritating because they show a lack of effort on the author's part. These complaints are enough for me to lower the rating, but I do still recommend this book, so a solid 3 ½ stars.

One final note: the library I took this book out of had it classified as juvenile literature. Likewise, Amazon recommends ages 9-12 as the target audience. I disagree. There are numerous mentions of sex, most crude and a number in the context of sex slaves. From an historical fiction standpoint, these depictions were accurate and welcome, but they struck me as a little more mature than the recommended age ranges. Young adult seems a more appropriate classification than juvenile.

This book stopped just as the real test for the two main characters, Julia and Sura (not Mitka) began. The historical buildup up to the point of the eruption was interesting but ultimately did not contribute as much as you were expecting. I compare this to Carolyn Lawrence's book and her characters' experiences with the eruption for comparison. Another chapter or two is really needed to complete the story of survival and aftermath.

I did not get very far into the book before I quit. When the main character was at the public baths and the talk turned to male genitals, I quit reading. Seriously, did the conversation have to turn to that? We know that the public baths were a place of gossip...couldn't a book geared toward 8 to 12yo's have been gossip of a non-sex nature??? As a homeschooling mom, I have a hard time finding good historical fiction. Looks like for Pompeii, we will be reading the picture book, Escape from Pompeii by Christina Balit. Sad!

Kathryn Lasky is the author of over 100 books, both fiction and non fiction, many of them for children of all ages. She was born in Indiana.

Pompeii was one of the most beautiful Roman cities and in the summer of AD 79, it was bathed in sunshine, sunshine that cast shadows on the side of Mount Vesuvius. Two young women, hardly more than children live in the city and although their lives are interminably intertwined they come from very different backgrounds.

Julia is the daughter of a wealthy ship-builder, mitka is an orphan. Julia bears the curse of Venus, in the form of a withered arm. Mitka's beauty turns the head of anyone who sees her. Julia is free, but Mitka is her slave.

Then one day Julia finds out that her parents are planning to enter her into the Temple of Damia, the centre for a new religion and Mitka will be sold to an awful man who plans to make her his plaything.

But events bring changes. Mount Vesuvius has always been there and it will always be there. It is just a part of the landscape surrounding Pompeii. But one day the mountain erupts and Julia and Mitka's fates are forever changed. Forcing them both to face the true meaning of freedom.