Household Gods - Hardcover

Tarr, Judith; Turtledove, Harry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312864876 ISBN 13: 9780312864873

Publisher: Tor Books, 1999

Synopsis

When a troubled housewife awakens one morning as a tavernkeeper in the Roman frontier town of Carnutum around 170 A.D., she must face plague and war in order to survive, and prosper, in her new life. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Judith Tarr is the author of many distinguished historical novels, including Lord of the Two Lands, King and Goddess, and White Mare's Daughter, called by Diana Gabaldon "a great adventure, beautifully written." She lives near Tucson, Arizona.

Harry Turtledove, "the modern master of alternate history" (Publishers Weekly), is the Hugo-winning author of many alternate-history novels, including the Byzantine "Videssos" series, How Few Remain, and the bestselling The Guns of the South. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

-Nicole Gunther-Perrin, a divorced mother of two preschoolers and an attorney in a mediocre Los Angeles law firm, has had a very bad day. Overwhelmed by problems familiar to many modern women, she makes a heartfelt wish to Liber and Libera (Roman gods on a plaque she had brought back from Europe as a souvenir) that she could live in their simpler time. The gods grant her wish and send her back in time, into the body of one of her ancestors-Umma, a widow in Roman-occupied Austria, and she wakes the next morning to the all-too-real squalor of Umma's existence. Retaining her memories of her 20th-century life and masquerading as Umma, she uses all of her wits and wisdom to negotiate such daily circumstances as public baths, haggling in the market, poor sanitation, and abuse of children and animals. Gradually, her problems escalate, until, in the end, she has experienced nothing less than a personal apocalypse: plague, war, starvation, and rape. Nicole seems at first to be merely a vehicle for the authors to satirize contemporary attitudes. However, as her trials become more extreme, her character deepens, and she achieves a powerful synthesis between her own modern life and the perspective she ultimately brings to it from the past. With elements of science fiction, fantasy, history, and social commentary, this tale can be enjoyed by a variety of teen readers; in spite of its length, it is both fast moving and engrossing.
Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Historical fantasists Tarr and Turtledove rework The Wizard of Oz in this absorbing new collaboration. Nicole Gunther-Perrin, their L.A. '90s version of Dorothy, is a 30-ish attorney trapped in a single mom's nightmare. Her well-to-do, deadbeat ex-husband is frolicking with a bosomy blonde. Her baby-sitter abruptly decides to move back to Mexico. A youngerAmale!Acolleague gets the partnership she's been thirsting after. The kids throw up in the car. The microwave gives up the ghost... and Nicole, praying for a simpler life, collapses. She wakes up in the body of a widowed tavernkeeper in 2nd-century Carnuntum, a Danube-side outpost of the Roman Empire. Life is simplerAbut even more miserable: battling filth, lice, lead poisoning, dysentery, plague, starvation and barbarians, Nicole learns that the mangy lions in Carnuntum's arena eat real people, and she is raped by one of the armor-clattering Roman soldiers who beat back the ravaging Germans. Then Titus Calidius Severus, a reeking workman with a tender, generous heart, thaws Nicole's brittle spirit and helps her share the basic happiness that keeps the everyday Romans around her going. Nicole also abandons some of her liberal sacred cows for solid Roman common sense: a swat on the bottom, she learns, does wonders for pre-teen rebellion that futile attempts at reasoning cannot. Once Nicole whirls back to present-day Los Angeles, she's more grown-up, far better able to cope with her life because she now understands the people around her and cares about them more. Drawing on a wealth of fascinating historical material and fleshing it out with snappy dialogue, superb characterizations and a genuinely appealing heroine, Tarr and Turtledove genially prove how much fun it can be to go back to OzAand even better, that there's no place like home. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Immensely prolific historical romancer Tarr, who recently mythicized Old Europe in Neolithic times (White Mare's Daughter, 1998) and goddess lore in ancient Egypt (The Shepherd Kings, 1999), joins forces with Byzantine scholar Turtledovea prolific historical (and alternate-historical) novelist plus full-time SF and fantasy writer (Colonization: Second Contact, 1999, etc.)to take on a time-travel adventure about one Nicole Gunther Perrin. Los Angeles lawyer Nicole is the mother of preschoolers Kimberley and Justin, the very image of his deadbeat and long-gone father, Frank Perrin. Nicoles life is a wearying shambles of child care, sexist office partners, and missed child-support payments. On her bedroom nightstand sits a Roman plaque of Liber and his consort, Libera, bought during her honeymoon in Vienna. One disenchanted evening she falls asleep and awakens in a.d. 170 in the Roman frontier town Carnuntum, where shes a widowed tavernkeeper and speaks Latin! All of this may echo the Rip Van Winkle device made familiar by Washington Irving, Lewis Carroll, and endless modern fantasy writerscarrying the fear of 0h, it was all a dream! as its resolution. Yet while Carnuntum, with its plague, war, rape, gladiators, slavery, drunkenness, pillage, and polluted drinking water, is at first just a far cry from California, some human strengths still have to be relearned eternally. Far strongerechoes asidethan its plot initially suggests. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

After a frustrating day in which her professional work goes unrecognized owing to her gender, lawyer and single-parent Nicole Gunther-Perrin falls asleep in her Los Angeles home and awakens in the second century as a Roman widow in the frontier town of Carnuntum. Veteran fantasy author Tarr and alternative-history specialist Turtledove (see his The Great War, above) combine their considerable talents in a tale of time travel that recalls such classics as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, yet emphasizes the human qualities that transcend the limitations of history. Suitable for most fantasy collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312864876
• ISBN 13: 9780312864873
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 508