In the second of Connie Willis' brilliant Oxford trilogy, Ned's holiday in Victorian England becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers, and the mysterious bishop's bird stump.Ned is suffering disorientation, maudlin sentimentality and a tendency to become distracted by irrelevancies: classic symptoms of excessive time travel. And no wonder. Oxford's history department has just pulled him out of World War II and Ned's barely had time to wash off the gunpowder when he has a straw boater shoved on his head, a carpetbag in his hand and is thrown straight into Victorian England. For a holiday.But an impossible accident makes it hard to relax. Ned's holiday becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers and the mysterious bishop's bird stump. If he can't make all the pieces fit it …
In the second of Connie Willis' brilliant Oxford trilogy, Ned's holiday in Victorian England becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers, and the mysterious bishop's bird stump.Ned is suffering disorientation, maudlin sentimentality and a tendency to become distracted by irrelevancies: classic symptoms of excessive time travel. And no wonder. Oxford's history department has just pulled him out of World War II and Ned's barely had time to wash off the gunpowder when he has a straw boater shoved on his head, a carpetbag in his hand and is thrown straight into Victorian England. For a holiday.But an impossible accident makes it hard to relax. Ned's holiday becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers and the mysterious bishop's bird stump. If he can't make all the pieces fit it could mean the end of history itself.To Say Nothing of the Dog is a delightful and intriguing mystery spanning almost two centuries.
I read her short story "Blued Moon" back in the eighties in Asimov's magazine, and it stuck with me every since as some of the funnest and funniest sci-fi I've read. This book is all that, in novel form.
The romance is weaved right into a great time travel story that pokes fun at everything and everyone. I confess I'm going to have to go back and read it again just pick up the clues I know were there the first time, that I missed while zooming through.
Unless you hate Victorian England, romance and time travel (and maybe even if you do), this is well worth reading.
Review of 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I found the [b:Doomsday Book|24983|Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403972500s/24983.jpg|2439628] to be hilarious and oddly moving. I had hoped the semi-sequel, a separate story in the same universe, would be more of the same. So I started in and found our protagonist, Ned, rooting through the wreckage of Coventry Cathedral, looking for a Macguffin.
And I was confused. So confused. See, our story is told entirely in the first person, and at the beginning Ned is suffering from time lag. Time lag is a lot like jet lag, and being easily confused is a symptom. Ned starts spouting poetry and jumping from thought to thought and mishearing characters and bungling plot elements, and as a result I was disoriented.
"Ah-HAH," I thought. "That's just what she wants me to feel. The game's afoot." I read the rest of the book in either gleeful collaboration with or active defiance of …
I found the [b:Doomsday Book|24983|Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403972500s/24983.jpg|2439628] to be hilarious and oddly moving. I had hoped the semi-sequel, a separate story in the same universe, would be more of the same. So I started in and found our protagonist, Ned, rooting through the wreckage of Coventry Cathedral, looking for a Macguffin.
And I was confused. So confused. See, our story is told entirely in the first person, and at the beginning Ned is suffering from time lag. Time lag is a lot like jet lag, and being easily confused is a symptom. Ned starts spouting poetry and jumping from thought to thought and mishearing characters and bungling plot elements, and as a result I was disoriented.
"Ah-HAH," I thought. "That's just what she wants me to feel. The game's afoot." I read the rest of the book in either gleeful collaboration with or active defiance of her authorial intent. As Ned gets more facts, I the reader get more facts. As Ned is hilariously beset by hilarious Victorian antics, I snicker and chortle in response. And as he sets out to solve the semi-fair-play mystery, I play along at home, cataloguing clues, advancing theories, eliminating the impossible and allowing for whatever remains, however improbable.
It was a delight to read, and I look forward to the day when somebody publishes an annotated edition which resolves each of the manifold literary quotes, references, and allusions.
Review of 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' on 'Goodreads'
No rating
I already knew this was an intricate and delightful book; I read it for the second time to get a better grasp on the ramifications of the plot. There is a happy end, of course; in absolutely Victorian style, there are weddings in the end, and kittens. But I also got a better perspective on the - slightly downplayed - "science"-part of the book: how the improbable can be explained by constantly refining hypotheses. Which is, after all, how science works. And: I love how people get all woozy and sentimental from doing too much time travel.
