To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis
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Book Reviews of To Say Nothing of the Dog
Book Review: What time is it?
Summary: 5 Stars
<b>To Say Nothing of the Dog</b>, by Connie Willis, is a Victorian time travel romp with some touching moments as well. This is my first Willis, and it's very different from what I've been led to expect from her. That's why it took me a little time to really get into it, because I was expecting a science fiction opus. Instead, I got a comedy of Victorian manners with heavy doses of Chaos Theory thrown in. It was definitely worth getting into, though, as it's a very enjoyable book in its own right.I greatly enjoyed this book. I wasn't really expecting to, though. I picked this up on the strength of Willis' name, but it seemed so different from what I was expecting that I almost put it down. After finishing it, I was glad I didn't. I laughed out loud quite a few times, and had to restrain myself a few other times as I was in a public place. Willis did a good job of showing the hilarious tension between our 21st century heroes and the cultural traits of the late 1800s. Ned sees a straight razor used for shaving, and thinks that he's going decapitate himself trying to use it. They see the courtship rituals of high society, so vastly different from their own time (and even ours!), and they can't believe them. Once they get involved with the Mering family, things move at a comic pace that is breathtaking. Even before that, though, things are wonderfully timed. Ned's boat ride down the Thames with Terence, Professor Peddick almost literally falling into their laps as they row, the Professor's obsessions with history (as well as his ongoing argument with Professor Overforce about historical forces versus the individual in the study of history). All of these subjects are addressed in a wonderfully comic manner by Willis.
The main characters are wonderfully drawn by Willis. Ned is so time lagged that he doesn't know if he's understanding anything correctly, as well as getting overly sentimental about everything (that's one of the effects of time lag). He doesn't know whether he's so drawn to Verity because of the lag or because she truly is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. He tries very hard not to let Verity know how he feels, just in case it is the effects of the lag. He's a very dedicated man, who's willing to do anything to get the job done. He's very bright and interesting to read about. Verity is not a viewpoint character, but you see enough of her through Ned's eyes that you know she's intelligent, even though she's fairly new to this time travel business. She's a quick thinker, though, which makes getting the job done easier. She's definitely Ned's equal, and has many good ideas of her own. The small love story that develops between them is a nice parallel with the romantic ideals of the Victorian era.
The Victorian characters are just hilarious. The Mering women (Tessie and her mother), are very heavily into the spirit world with very funny results (the séance that takes place at the Mering home where Ned and Verity have to out-charlatan the mystic results in at least four pages of utter hilarity). Mr. Mering is a stodgy old colonel who believes that it's all a bunch of hooey. Terence, the besotted Victorian man who has fallen in love at first sight with Tessie. Professor Peddick, the eccentric history professor who's always going on about his fight with Overforce, even Baine the butler and Jane the maid. All of these characters are wonderfully done, not quite three dimensional but definitely fulfilling their roles with wit and humour.
The plot is very straightforward, but filled with complications that make it interesting. The bird stump makes a nice macguffin, driving the plot forward while not being seen until the end, in a truly surprising manner. Chaos Theory is discussed all the way through this book, and it can get a bit heavy with it at times, but it doesn't prove too distracting and if you don't like that sort of thing, you can skim those parts. There is a lot of repetition for affect, with the characters constantly referring back to the Battle of Waterloo, and what might have happened if some seemingly insignificant change had occurred. Peddick's argument with Overforce about the affects of individuals on history, versus the inevitable forces that drive history and minimize the impact of individuals, makes a nice parallel with the actual events in the book. This argument gives the narrative a lot of its drive and makes an intriguing philosophical question in its own right. Can we as individuals affect events, or are we just carried along like a bit of flotsam in a raging river?
The nice thing about <b>To Say Nothing of the Dog</b> is that you can read it on either level, or even both. If all you want is a nice Victorian comedy, you can read it as such. You may have to skim a lot of the theory as it presents itself, but it can be done. If you like heavy science fiction, though, with discussions of history and Chaos Theory, you can read it for that too. It becomes a truly fascinating book in that light, and I think Willis does a great job in sugarcoating it for the masses to be able to swallow.
If you don't like science fiction, this book will probably be too heavy for you, even though it is a comedy. But if you're a science fiction fan in need of a little humour to brighten your day, you can't go wrong with this one.
Book Review: All Time Favorite SF Book
Summary: 5 Stars
As you can tell from the title of my review, this is going to be a positive review! I'll tell honestly any problems I think the book has, but frankly, there aren't many. This book is one of the very few that SUCCESSFULLY combines humor, romance, and science fiction all in one book. I loved this book because the characters are so real, even if they aren't swashbuckling heroes or evil, power-hungry villains, or strange, fascinating aliens. I really enjoy hard-core science fiction, but this book was so enjoyable, so funny, so enthralling, that it shot to the top of my list.
I won't summarize the plot here, but I'll mention a few interesting points: one, the whole premise of the book involves time-travel. In the late 21st century, time travel has been invented; but because you can only travel to places and times where your presence cannot affect the future, time-travel can't be exploited for gain. So time-travel is really only interesting to historians. This allows Willis to set her story at Oxford, with a bunch of characteristically nerdy historians and academics as the main characters.
Second, the plot revolves in many ways around the reconstruction of Coventry Cathedral, sponsored by an absolutely rabid, rich old lady that due to her large donations to the History Department, has been able to commandeer the services of every time-traveling historian to serve her purposes. Add in a beautiful, young, lady historian; a dashing young, naïve, confused male historian, and a cat that has potentially destroyed the space-time continuum and you have all the makings of a great story. Another interesting point is that the book was in many ways inspired by one of the very few Victorian comedies, "Three Men in a Boat"...to say nothing of the dog..... (the fourth companion). You don't have to have read the other book, but it does add to the enjoyment as is quite funny in its own right.
As for problems with the book: there aren't many, but I have heard many complain that the first part of the book drags a bit. I can understand why, though it didn't for me. At a minimum, though, please be prepared to stick with it, because the very beginning of the book is seen through the eyes of Ned, who is going bonkers from too much time travel AND is exploring the destroyed Coventry Cathedral. So the first few pages are confusing both because Ned is confused AND because of the all the Church terminology: nave, apse, and so on. But it is WORTH it! I promise! Another possible complaint is the constant revisiting of the plot by the characters. The characters are faced with one of those classic time-travel problems; you know, the whole, if I went back in time and killed my grandfather-type problems, and they are desperately trying to sort it out. So they spend a lot of time running through the scenarios. That could get tedious (again, didn't for me). Finally, one long-running prop in the novel is something called the Bishop's Bird stump, which the characters are familiar with, and talk about throughout the novel, but the reader is in the dark until the end. That was a little annoying.
Seriously, though, this novel won the Hugo for a reason. It is well-paced, funny, smart, clever, and even sappily romantic in a way that touched even me, someone who normally prefers Glen Cook's gritty violence. I could not recommend this book more highly and the author, Connie Willis. I've read everything she's written and have NEVER been disappointed.
Book Review: Screwball Comedy about Time Travel and History
Summary: 4 Stars
To Say Nothing of the Dog is one of Connie Willis' time travel stories, sharing a milieu with her award-winning novelette "Fire Watch" and her award-winning novel Doomsday Book. This current novel almost seems a response to some criticisms of Doomsday Book. If the former book was primarily a tragic story of the Plague, this book is a screwball comedy set in the time of Jerome K. Jerome's classic (and highly recommended) late Victorian comedy, Three Men in a Boat. (Indeed, the title of this book is the subtitle of Jerome's.) And, Willis seems to be saying, if this is a screwball comedy, darn it, I can have implausible plot points, and outrageous coincidences, and my tone can be as goofy as I want. But a funny thing (so to speak) happened on the way to Coventry, and this novel turns out to have a serious and moving center to it after all, albeit in the context of a generally very funny book. What's more, Willis' point derives nicely from her story's outrageous coincidences, almost too overtly so, as if the book points at its faults and says "I meant it that way".
The protagonist and narrator, Ned Henry, a 30ish "historian" in 2057, has been trying to get to Coventry Cathedral just prior to the pivotal bombing in 1940 (which destroyed the Cathedral but which may have indirectly turned the Battle of Britain against Hitler) in order to rescue the Bishop's Bird Stump, a hideous item which the historians (read time travelers) need to help convincingly furnish a rebuilt Cathedral. Willis conveniently (for plot purposes) invents a syndrome she calls "time lag", which happens when people time travel too often, and results in confusion, difficulty hearing, excess emotionalism, and such like. The only cure is rest, and Henry's superior, Mr. Dunworthy of Doomsday Book, decides the only place he can rest is in the past (out of reach of the fearsome Lady Schrapnell).
Unfortunately, Dunworthy decides to have Ned complete one little tiny task for him in the past, returning an anachronistic item from 1888 to it's proper time, before resting. But Ned is so time-lagged he doesn't quite realize what it is he needs to return, and there isn't enough time to properly brief him...
I won't detail the rest of the plot, which is quite complicated, though in the end nothing much is really accomplished (which becomes part of the point). We are treated to a brief river journey (an hommage to the trip which makes up the action of Jerome's novel, indeed Willis cannot resist having her characters encounter Jerome and his friends Harris and George, to say nothing of their dog, Montmorency, which I found a bit over-indulgent of her), to a thematically central and also quite funny ongoing rant by an Oxford Don on the subject of the Great Man theory of History vs. his opponent's belief in Natural Forces, to the origination of the jumble sale, several nice love stories, and lots more.
I ended up really enjoying this book, with a few reservations. At the surface level there is the shall I say typical good fun of Connie Willis in her screwball mode. Beyond this, the book engages in some Sfnal dialogue with earlier SF such as Asimov's The End of Eternity. And, finally, it all comes together to mean something, and I was quite moved by the final metaphors, which touch on the importance of details to history, and on the worth of grand indulgences like cathedrals.
Book Review: A fantastic and funny tale of time travel, love, and mystery!
Summary: 4 Stars
Ned Henry is a historian badly in need of a rest. As a historian, he's been running back and forth in through time to find the bishop's bird stump for his tyrannical employer, Lady Schrapnell. All these trips have left him with "time-lag," which is a condition resulting from too much time travel and manifests symptoms such as Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds, Tendency to Sentimentality, and an inability to think logically. The only cure is rest--something completely foreign to any one in the employ of Lady Schrapnell. To get Ned out of the way (and to attempt to fix a damaged time continuum), Ned is sent back to the Victorian era on a mission. If only he could remember what it was...
Honestly it took me a little while to get into TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, but once I was into it, I was lost. I'm not entirely sure why it took me so long (about 70 pages) to warm up to TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG. I found plenty humorous in those pages, I just didn't feel compelled to read. This might be because the action doesn't really begin until Ned meets up with fellow historian, Verity Kindle... In fact, other than than Willis' humor and obvious talent at writing, the relationship between Ned and Verity was one of my foremost enjoyments of the book.
Willis really managed a deft humor in TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG. However, it's certainly a sense of humor that will either mesh completely with a reader or leave the reader completely wanting. For me, it was perfect. Willis mixes literary references (especially to Jerome K. Jerome's THREE MEN IN A BOAT), historical quirks (like Arthur Conan Doyle's interest in spiritualism/the paranormal), and comedic situations--which was perfect to tickle my funny bone.
The humor was great for me and (to be embarrassingly honest), I found that the time travel aspect was a good introduction to time-travel fiction. Yes, I have until now not really read anything having to do with time travel. Willis' version of time travel appealed to me. Although I can't speak from an experienced point of view, I liked how she dealt with incongruities and "time-slippage". That isn't even to mention time-lag, which I found hilarious and wonderful. I loved how completely lost Ned was at the beginning of the book due to time lag. His inability to Distinguish Sounds and Tendency to Sentimentality never got old:
"Also, I seemed to have overcome my Tendency to Sentimentality. The younger lady had a pretty heart-shaped face, and even prettier ankle-shaped ankles, which I'd caught a glimpse of when she alighted from the train, but I hadn't felt any inclination to dissolve into rapturous comparisons with sylphs or cherubim. Better still, I had been able to come up with both words without any trouble. I felt completely cured" (p61).
I probably shouldn't mention how I chortled ridiculously every time Ned refers to the symptoms in capitalized form...
TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG doesn't fit nicely into any particular genre. I lump it into science fiction just to keep things simple, but it really has a lot of great aspects. It's truly humorous, has a great romance (with one of my favorite romantic lines probably ever--if you ask I may just tell you what it is), a mystery...
Except for the rocky start, I enjoyed TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG immensely. I'm looking very much forward to my next Connie Willis read...
Book Review: A truly creative and captivating book, unlike any other!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the kind of book that defies the reader to put it down. I read the entire second half in one sitting, staying up until about 4:00 in the morning. I had the same experience when I read Connie Willis's "Doomsday Book" and was glad to find "To Say Nothing of the Dog" equally captivating. It is a hard book to categorize. It is science fiction, but at the same time it is historical fiction, and thrown into the mix are elements of satire, comedy, mystery, and romance. It is hard to imagine any author combining all of these successfully, but Willis pulls it off without a single hitch.
The protagonist, Ned Henry, is an historian from the year 2057. He spends his days traveling back and forth between 2057 and 1940, where he has been sent to investigate a hideous vase known as the bishop's bird stump that disappeared when Coventry Cathedral was destroyed during an air raid. The cathedral is being re-built, and patroness Lady Schrapnell is a stickler for accuracy, wanting everything in the new Coventry Cathedral to be just as it was immediately before the bombing. But Ned is exhausted, suffering from a condition called time-lag, brought on by excessive time travel. His superiors decide that the best thing would be to send him back in time to 1888, the Victorian era, for a rest. But they have an additional motive as well. Fellow historian Verity Kindle has brought an item from the Victorian era back to the present, something which is not supposed to be possible, and which could alter the course of history. Ned, therefore, is instructed to return this item to its owner in 1888, and then spend the rest of his time recovering. But Ned is already so time-lagged that he misses half of his instructions and arrives in Victorian England with no idea what he is carrying or what he is supposed to do with it. Meanwhile, the entire space-time continuum may be in jeopardy.
The story is just as complicated as it sounds, and for a while I had doubts about whether Willis would be able to tie all the various threads together into a satisfying, plausible whole. But I should not have worried. Though some parts of the plot stretch the imagination a bit, the resolution makes everything fall perfectly into place. I am generally not a big fan of science fiction mainly for the reason that I find it hard to suspend my disbelief, but Willis is one of the few authors I've encountered who manages to make time travel seem entirely possible and absolutely logical. Her use of chaos theory as a framework for the events of the story is fascinating. If you're at all interested in themes like this, "To Say Nothing of the Dog" will suit you perfectly and keep you thinking long after you finish reading.
Despite the complexity of the plot, the story is also choc full of humor. Ned has not studied the Victorian era in much detail and does not have time to do so before being hurriedly shipped there to escape Lady Schrapnell. It is highly amusing to watch him fumble along, trying to figure out the detailed etiquette of the period. And at the same time Willis pokes fun at these rigid social customs. Some scenes are almost farcical and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. This is definitely a book for any reader, on any occasion. It is thoughtful, it is funny, it is well-written, and Willis's characters are some of the most likeable you could hope to find. Highly recommended.