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Summary: A.D.62: Pompeii
Review: This is a wonderful fantasy trip to the past, well researched and intelligently written. Amazing work for a first novel!
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Summary: Reviews I've read about this novel
Review: This novel has received glowing reviews from several different sources. Excerpts of reviews follow:
An interesting, well-told story (think Upstairs, Downstairs crossed with I, Claudius) with a strong and intelligent heroine, A. D. 62: Pompeii draws the reader into a vividly imagined ancient world. Definitely recommended. -- India Edghill, Historical Novel Society Reviews, May 2003 issue.
A compelling page-turner... a must read for those who wish to visit the real Pompeii. Romantic Times, June 2003.
East creates a tender and charming interaction of Miranda and the other characters. She brings in scenes of courage, love, loyalty, selflessness, bravery and heroism. East's story would be interesting in any time period, but her placing the story in first-century Italy (with her knowledge of Roman history and archaeology) adds a charm that fascinates and educates. The reader gets an in-depth exposure to Roman life and customs -- Maurice Williams, The Best Reviews web site.
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Summary: Time Travel
Review: This novel involves time-travel and thus might be classed as fantasy or science fiction, but the time-travel is only a means to move a 21st century Harvard ABD in classics back to shortly before the first earthquake at Pompeii. She brings along her knowledge of the ancient world, including Latin and Greek (which she finds to be rather bookish for common conversation) as well as a knowledge of what would eventually happen, but she shares this knowledge with only 2 people, and only near the end of the novel. She brings, of course, her attitudes as a modern educated and liberated woman to an era when women were rarely educated and hardly ever liberated. This problem is compounded for our narrator, Miranda, when she is, right from the start, sold into slavery, where, for a while, she has even less chance to speak her mind or use her talents. East has done solid research and used good sources for Roman daily life and Pompeian topography and architecture, which she discusses in her 4-page Appendix. She has also created interesting characters in Miranda and the members of the household where she serves. A running motif is the failure of her return button to work, so she is stranded in 62 AD, whatever is going wrong. East keeps us guessing whether the device will finally work and bring her back her own time. The major problem with the book is also, perhaps, its greatest virtue - the amount of detail about Roman life. If you want to know what food, social mores, architecture, medicine, dress, etc. were like in this period in a small wealthy town, you could not have a better start than this book. Of course, you could get the same thing from any textbook on Roman life, where it will be arranged more conveniently for reference. For teachers of Latin or Roman history looking for a way to make this material palatable to those who would rather read novels than a textbook, this would be a good choice. There is some sex in it, but mostly discreet. The one other motif of the novel that seems to get too much repeated play, in terms that some readers may find annoying, is the continued mournful reflections by Miranda about how much she longs for her master, Marcus Tullius (yes, of that family, some generations removed), and how impossible any true relationship can be, not only because she is a slave and he her master, but also because the attitudes of a modern woman and and an ancient Roman man would be so disparate. She could have expressed this a few times and in different ways, but she harps on it. Yes, it's true she has it very much on her mind, but we don't have to hear it so often to know it is bothering her. This is paralleled a little by the fact that Miranda keeps repeating, early in the book, that she can escape anytime she wants. This doesn't happen, and her insistence that it can and will makes us guess that it won't work when she calls on it -- or at least not when she particularly wants it to. East tells the reader in the appendix about the historical characters she has woven into the plot and the literary and artistic materials she has incorporated or used as inspirations. This firm historical basis helps to give the novel its feeling of real Romanness, contrasted, of course, with the 21st century attitudes and practices that Miranda brings along. Miranda finds an ally in Marcus's friend Julia Felix, a wealthy widow with a willingness to stretch women's roles a bit. She also has the help of two fellow slaves, the generally surly cook and Demetrius, the well-educated Greek that helped Miranda come to Marcus' house in the first place and who conceals a sexual secret until Miranda finds it out near the end. There are villains, of course, principally Holconia, Marcus' sharp-tongued and bitter wife, and Mamius Flaccus, who tries to keep Miranda as his slave, but they are all overcome. Miranda gets to experience being a slave, and brings to us a better perspective on what that might entail, good and bad, and a freedwoman, which allows her to experience a different life-style. Miranda's modern knowledge is drawn upon mainly in two instances: when she correctly predicts the earthquake that destroys much of Pompeii (but not Marcus' holdings, since he believed her) and when she treats correctly, with modern knowledge of how diseases spread, an illness that kills some of the household but spares most of the rest. These 2 efforts increase her stature with her master. It is interesting to watch how Miranda becomes an accomplished storyteller and musician by drawing on Shakespeare and Hans Christian Anderson for plots and her recorder repertory of Mozart et alii. By seeing Marcus' relationship with his wife, with Miranda and with his slave mistress, Iris, we get a view of the kinds of attitudes a Roman paterfamilias considered good and relatively enlightened might have, and can draw from that (and from the few other masters we see) what less good masters could be like. We see the relationships among slaves in a household presented as well as any Roman novel I've read. Given the fact that East's professional field is psychology, this is a reasonable area for her to develop. Overall, I liked the novel and felt it presented a probably accurate picture of what one household might have been like in Pompeii of 62 AD. I recommend it to any reader, but especially to those whose interest is strongly historical.
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Summary: The best!
Review: This novel rates a place on my "keeper" shelf among the books I read over and over because they give me so much pleasure. It's an engaging story with appealing characters and a wonderfully vivid setting. It combines a tender love story between intelligent people and an inside look at the ancient world. The historical details are accurate; the book provides an unusually sympathetic look at the ancient Roman world. This is storytelling at its best!
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Summary: Romantic pre-Raphaelite story
Review: This story is a romantic and gentle answer to the question, "what did ancient Roman families DO in the houses the tourist sees in Pompeii?" East's heroine, Miranda, a modern time-traveling tourist, is her means to envision what it was like.
I suspect this is East's romantic wish-fulfillment--a modern lady as a chaste observer of Roman family life, administration, slavery, and cuisine--and pleasantly enjoyable as such. This is not Alternative Herstory, and the author's actual interest in time-travel, paradoxes, or subversive consequences is zip. Instead, this is the charming tale of a young modern woman adapting herself to a surprise life as an ancient Roman house slave in Pompeii. Necessarily, there are a great number of happy coincidences to get her started after she falls into the Roman sea, but the story becomes a satisfying tale as she lucks into a household that is tolerant of her daily ignorance and gaffes. Her advancement is facilitated by her conveniently extensive knowledge of Latin, Roman history, and world faery tales, and by her unexpected ability to play Mozart on a flute. The story builds through a series of tribulations and trials to a frighteningly personal decision faced by all women.
Is iUniverse a vanity press? East's prose is rather simple, sometimes childlike, and occasionally repetitive, but effective enough. She digresses into ancient Roman rules at various points and has Miranda recount numerous famous fables (the Sheherazade ploy). A companion web site illustrates the places, faces, and items described in this book.
For a fuller and grittier view of almost exactly the same story line--an emancipated Californian dropped into a provincial ancient Roman town--see Tarr and Turtledove's impressive HOUSEHOLD GODS. Harris' POMPEII is about an engineer's experience of the famous earthquake of AD 79, while East's story includes tremors, of diverse sorts, that preceded it in a young lady's life.
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Summary: True time travel back to ancient Rome
Review: When I saw this book, I had just finished reading two works by men on Roman Britain where they used the contemporary names for the towns, and I swore never to read another fiction book on the Romans again. Then, I decided to give Ms. East's work a chance and I was more than pleasantly surprised. She not only has done her research exceptionally well, she also writes with a clarity and precision that is hard to match. She describes the scenes so accurately and completely in her time travel venture that I actually could visualize myself as part of the story. The main character, Miranda, is transported back in time as part of an experiment and winds up as a household slave for a wealthy Roman family. However, unlike the character in the Tarr-Turtledove effort, "Family Gods," the young lady does not try to impose her 21st century values on the Romans. Instead, she learns to adjust and fit into their lifestyle. I recommend this book for anyone interested in ancient Rome and Pompeii. The research is so well done that one could use it as a teaching tool. Mary Plus 2 Cats
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