To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis
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Book Reviews of To Say Nothing of the Dog
Book Review: Would you believe the butler did it?
Summary: 5 Stars
Side splittingly funny. The mild, midwestern Connie Willis has written a honest-to-goodness British farce. Poor old Ned Henry desperately needs a vacation due to a serious bout of time-lag (symptoms: disorientation, trouble hearing, a tendancy to fall into maudlin sentimentality) caused by too much time-travel. His destination (repeatedly) has been dictated (repeatedly) by the whip-cracking battle-axe, millioneer heiress Lady Shrapnell, a loud and indominable American on a mission: To rebuild Coventry Cathedral, just as it was before it was bombed on that fateful night during the second world war. Her motto is 'God is in the details' and she will stop at nothing to ensure that her monument is an exact replica, nothing will stop her, even if it means taking over the whole Time-Travel department of Balliol College, Oxford, plus all its Historians! It becomes apparent that the only way Ned can escape Lady Shrapnell's obsession is to travel back in time once more... to the idyllic, pastoral world of Vistorian England. You know... Tennyson, Mrs Brown, Darwin, Tea, Sceances, Jerome K. Jerome, Croquet, Kedgeree, India, the Thames, Alice. One of the funniest sections in the book is when Ned is being prepped in Victorian Social History before his leap. Willis is a master at timing, in jokes and popular culture detail, and she delivers all three in 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' in spades!. The book is a tribute to Willis's own literary heritage as a reader: Mysteries, Alice in Wonderland, Three Men in a Boat, the classic farce. Her homages to the likes of Jerome K Jerome, Hercule Poirot etc are charming, and her use of Victorian literary, mystery novel, and farcicle conventions are intelligently twisted into the story and deeply satisfying. Her characters are so alive, believable, sufferable, adorable. She tells you everything with a knowing wink, and the pleasure comes from recognising what she is talking about, recognising the culture, recognising all the in-jokes, and working out what the hell is going on! There is a mystery to be solved here, and the answer is supremely satisfying. Willis is, really truly, one of the masters of her genre, not only because her ideas are so fresh, but also because she makes it so easy to swallow, not by being conventional, but by building on what we know best: popular culture and the fact that we are human. All of her books are enjoyable from page one, so readable, so re-readable, so wonderfully written, so funny.
Book Review: To say nothing of the cat . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
Connie Willis, who apparently can work in almost any style, this time out turns to farce in a delightful sendup of Victoriana, time travel, and the British mystery story.Taking her title from the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's late-Victorian comic novel, "Three Men in a Boat" (its characters even make a cameo here) Willis leads the gentle reader on a giddy chase from Coventry Cathedral at the time of the Luftwaffe's bombings in 1940, to mid-21st-century Oxford (where time travel has arrived but cats are extinct), and back to the Oxford of 1888, and then back to the burning again (the scene in which the Cathedral burns down will probably make you tear up).
Like Ms. Willis's time travelers Ned Henry and Verity Mering, you'll meet a lot of not so eminent victorians--a swain, a looney Oxford Professor or two, a Colonel obessed with exotic fish, several butlers, the formidable Mrs. Mering, and her screamlet-filled daughter Tossie who talks baby to her cat, Princess Arjumand--to say nothing of the dog, named Cyril (his likeness appears on chapter opening pages).
Much is made of an item known as the Bishop's Bird Stump, which may (or may not) have been in the Cathedral at the time the Luftwaffe destroyed it, and the status of which the 21st-century woman who funds the time travel enterprise, the formidable Lady Shrapnell (pun almost certainly intended), wants determined--she's also funding the reconstruction of the Cathedral at Oxford. (She's pretty much taken over the time-travel ops after the military et al. discover there's nothing in time travel for them because you can't transport objects back from the past--well, except for this cat . . . )
In addition to the references to Jerome K. Jerome, Ms. Willis tosses into the pot Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Willkie Collins, Conan Doyle, and mid-20th-century writers of classic British mysteries.
Don't worry that Ms. Willis seems to make up the rules as she goes along--it matters not a bit (and the publisher clearly knows this--the sci-fi "Bantam Spectra" logo is set aside in favor of the standard-issue rooster trademark). Fans of the profoundly serious and moving "Doomsday Book" (arguably one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time) may at first be disconcerted at finding the some of the same characters in a comic novel this time out. But the author brings it off. Think of it as a special holiday episode of one of your favorite TV dramas.
Book Review: Stumped By the Bishop's Bird Stump
Summary: 4 Stars
Ned Henry and Verity Kindle are historians from the second half of the 21st century. Their job is to travel back in time and study the past up close and personal. Ned has been stuck in 1940 for the past several weeks searching for a monstrosity called the Bishop's Bird Stump (which was located in Coventry Cathedral) for a wealthy patron of Oxford University and which was lost during the bombing of Coventry.
Verity finds herself in Victorian England (1888) and while there inadvertently brings something back to the 21st century that could change the course of history itself.
Now, Ned is sent to 1888 to help correct the timeline and get historic events back on track. There, along with Verity, both must not only figure out what has gone awry with history, but must also locate the Bishop's Bird Stump in time for the consecration of the newly rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in the 21st century.
To Say Nothing of the Dog is a wonderful old-fashioned mystery, awash with hints and clues throughout the book, yet the final puzzle is not solved (at the end, of course) until the characters use a path of logic way too complicated to ever to be fully understood...let alone determined by the reader before the ultimate denouement. And yet... the characterizations are extremely solid and the setting exquisitely detailed.
The main drawback to this book is that it took way too long for the plot to approach anything near interesting for more than brief half-page/page mini-spurts. Indeed, it took a full third of the book for the plot to begin focusing on the what the story was actually about (finding the Bishop's Bird Stump and getting history back on track) in a coherent manner that went beyond mere exposition. While exposition is generally a good thing and certainly necessary to construct a solid, focused plot, too much exposition, as in this book, can leave the story floundering to a point where some may just give up reading it entirely.
And that would be a shame... because once one gets past the first third of this book, one would see that it is a true work of art (even looking back on the first third) with an incredibly intricate plot, rich characters that one actually cares about and full of a literary "flavor" that one rarely sees in science fiction these days.
Book Review: A stitch in time
Summary: 5 Stars
This story takes off from the same setting that Willis used in her earlier novel, "Doomsday Book", about Oxford historians who travel back in time to investigate past events and occasionally recover artifacts. But the main characters from that book aren't re-used, and the style and themes are entirely different. This is a sequel only in a very weak sense, and those who haven't read "Doomsday" (which is longer and considerably darker) can still enjoy it.
This is a light novel, with elements of a romance and a comedy of manners. Ned Henry is suffering from time lag, having been run ragged by Lady Schrapnell, a wealthy heiress who is providing most of the funds to keep the research going. Lady Schrapnell is a stickler for detail in her elaborate reconstruction of the Coventry Cathedral, and insists that the historians provide the Bishop's bird stump, a strikingly ugly work of art that was lost when the Cathedral was bombed in 1940.
The only way Ned can escape from Schrapnell is to go back to before she was born, so he is given a simple courier assignment to make a delivery in the Victorian era, where he can rest up for a few weeks after his task is completed. Unfortunately, Ned is too time-lagged to be able to understand his instructions, so he is left wandering about the 1880s uncertain what he is delivering to whom, and never quite aware of whether he is preserving the proper time line or undermining it. He does know that Tossie, the distant ancestress of Lady Schrapnell whose family home he is a guest in, is supposed to fall in love with her future husband in a few days, but he doesn't know who that is - only that it definitely isn't Cyril, the young gentleman he accidentally introduced to her, who is now wooing her with marked success.
The plot is complex and worked out in great detail - many apparently random details are ultimately brought together in an ending that is almost too clever. The characters, major and minor, are nicely drawn. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable.
Book Review: Didn't like as well as Doomsday Book. still very good tale
Summary: 4 Stars
Set in 2057, a couple of years after Ms. Willis' previous effort "Doomsday Book", this book revisits Oxford University and its' time travel research porgram.
This time the story is that a rich widow, Lady Schrapnell, is rebuilding Coventry Cathedral (destroyed by fire in 1940 - the book never explains why she's doing it in Oxford)and running the History department ragged going back in time for research on a missing item that she wants in order to complete her task.
Historian Ned Henry has made so many trips in quick succession (cathedral dedication only days away) that he has developed severe time lag ( something that was only briefly mentioned in Doomsday Book)and is sent into the past, Victorian England, to recover. His time lag is so bad that he doesn't realize for some time that he had a mission to restore the time line. Supposedly objects cannot be brought foward in time (although Kivrin Engle returned to 2055 wearing 1348 clothing in Doomsday Book)but another historian has done just that, bringing a living cat that belonged to Lady Schrapnel's multiple greatgrandmother ( whose diary was the inspiration for the reborn Coventry).
The bulk of the book follows the adventures of Ned and Verity Kindle (the other historian)as they live in the past with that ancestor's family trying to reset history to it's proper order. I don't see the humor that some reviews and the book cover mention but I found it to be a great book anyway filled with lots of detail and interesting points.
The Victorians were cartoonish but I've read similar depictions in the past. I loved getting more details about how time travel "works" and the history of it's development but had trouble follwing the self correcting continuum bit. Nice idea about the restoration of lost things idea that Mr. Dunsworthy, yes he's back too, and others develop as a result of the cat coming forward.
I've gotten all three of Ms. Willis' time travel stories now (I understand that she's writing another one), no regrets on any of them.