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Title: To Say Nothing of the Dog
Author: Connie Willis
Genre: Time traveling comedy of manners
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: In search of a particularly hideous example of Victorian ironwork, a team of time travelers save a cat and accidentally wreck history. Will Ned and Verity repair the continuum? Will Terence marry the entirely unsuitable Tossie? Will we ever find out why Fitch is pretending to be a butler?
Thoughts: I find it astounding that an author managed to set in the same universe, using some of the same characters, two books so different in tone as Domesday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. The first is a thriller and ultimately more a tragedy than anything else. This one, however, wants to be Jerome K. Jerome.
Bumbling time travel historians mess up what should be an extraordinarily minor event in Victorian England. The rest of the book consists of them trying to right things, with increasingly convoluted effects. The title is not the only Jerome reference--the absurd ramifications of boating accidents, random pets, small children, and obscure British foodstuffs (as well as brief appearance of Jerome himself) echo the older book.
To be perfectly honest, I prefer it to Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog). It helps that the author had more of an idea of what she wanted to accomplish when she sat down to write. The plot is intricate, as time-travel generally demands. I'll admit I did manage to figure out both who Mr. C was and what happened to the bishop's bird stump ahead of time (although my guess as to why Fitch was running around the countryside masquerading as a butler was entirely off). But that made the resolution of each mystery no less satisfying. Especially Mr. C--despite the fact that I saw what was coming a mile away, the actual resolution left me gleeful.
I appreciated that Willis came up with an entirely reasonable explanation of why her characters' intelligence was highly variable. Far too many books require ostensibly intelligent people to do incredibly stupid things. Conveniently enough, making too many time travel trips has side effects of exhaustion, loopiness, trouble with logic, tendencies to wax poetic and Difficulty in Hearing. We meet our protagonist in a state of profound time lag, so it's unsurprising he botches his first few actions royally. He becomes more sensible as the lag wears off, but then has to dig himself out of the hole of his own stupidity. She's actually very good about keeping the characters' relative intelligences tied to how recently they've made a drop--they're very consistent in when they're stupid and when they're not.
Overall, it's a delightful book. Funny, clever, and surprisingly sweet.
Author: Connie Willis
Genre: Time traveling comedy of manners
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: In search of a particularly hideous example of Victorian ironwork, a team of time travelers save a cat and accidentally wreck history. Will Ned and Verity repair the continuum? Will Terence marry the entirely unsuitable Tossie? Will we ever find out why Fitch is pretending to be a butler?
Thoughts: I find it astounding that an author managed to set in the same universe, using some of the same characters, two books so different in tone as Domesday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. The first is a thriller and ultimately more a tragedy than anything else. This one, however, wants to be Jerome K. Jerome.
Bumbling time travel historians mess up what should be an extraordinarily minor event in Victorian England. The rest of the book consists of them trying to right things, with increasingly convoluted effects. The title is not the only Jerome reference--the absurd ramifications of boating accidents, random pets, small children, and obscure British foodstuffs (as well as brief appearance of Jerome himself) echo the older book.
To be perfectly honest, I prefer it to Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog). It helps that the author had more of an idea of what she wanted to accomplish when she sat down to write. The plot is intricate, as time-travel generally demands. I'll admit I did manage to figure out both who Mr. C was and what happened to the bishop's bird stump ahead of time (although my guess as to why Fitch was running around the countryside masquerading as a butler was entirely off). But that made the resolution of each mystery no less satisfying. Especially Mr. C--despite the fact that I saw what was coming a mile away, the actual resolution left me gleeful.
I appreciated that Willis came up with an entirely reasonable explanation of why her characters' intelligence was highly variable. Far too many books require ostensibly intelligent people to do incredibly stupid things. Conveniently enough, making too many time travel trips has side effects of exhaustion, loopiness, trouble with logic, tendencies to wax poetic and Difficulty in Hearing. We meet our protagonist in a state of profound time lag, so it's unsurprising he botches his first few actions royally. He becomes more sensible as the lag wears off, but then has to dig himself out of the hole of his own stupidity. She's actually very good about keeping the characters' relative intelligences tied to how recently they've made a drop--they're very consistent in when they're stupid and when they're not.
Overall, it's a delightful book. Funny, clever, and surprisingly sweet.
