A Lot Like Christmas

Book Review: A Lot Like Christmas by Connie Willis

I adore Connie Willis, so it was a given that I’d love this collection of Christmas stories. I actually think, if you’ve never read Willis previously, this might be a good place to start. Her unique style is on show throughout this collection and you’ll get an idea of whether you love it or hate it.

For Willis fans you’ll straight away be familiar with the issues the characters have with their physical settings – getting lost, getting stuck in the snow, unable to find the right spot to hide etc. There’s also the usual communication breakdowns – phones don’t work, or characters go to say something and are cut off by others, or just plain ignored. And, of course, my favourite Willis touch of including pop culture references.

As this is a Christmas themed collection, Willis uses Christmas movies, carols, books, bible stories and fairy tales. She also throws in a couple which don’t have anything to do with Christmas, and I felt all warm and cosy when some of my favourite movies were mentioned –Jumping Jack Flash, All About Eve, Desk Set, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

My favourite of all the stories was the first one called Miracle. It’s probably one of the most romantic and has an excellent ‘looks aren’t everything’ message. (It also includes debate about whether or not It’s a Wonderful Life is that great of a movie. There’s a running joke about how many times the movie is shown each year and this made me laugh due to the fact I have never seen it, nor do I remember it ever being shown on tv here in Australia. So maybe Willis needs to come over here one year to get away from it!)

The other two standouts for me were Newsletter, where people’s personalities are much more pleasant when they’re taken over by aliens, and Cat’s Paw, a classical mystery paying homage to Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle, with talking apes.

Good scifi always includes important themes and those Willis covers include global warming, AI doing the jobs of humans (even though this story was obviously written quite a while ago, it’s very much a topical subject, given the recent Hollywood strike!), tolerance and acceptance of refugees, and that appreciation of art is what separates man from animals.

If you’re looking for something a little different with a Christmas setting, I can’t recommend this enough.

5 out of 5

Bellwether

Book Review: Bellwether by Connie Willis

Connie Willis is my favourite [living] author. Her style is very familiar to me now and, even though it’s one that apparently annoys some readers, I just love it.

Although it won many scifi awards, this book is best described as a romcom and is an easy enjoyable read for all, no matter what your level of interest in the scifi genre is.

Sandra is a scientist, working for a corporation called HiTek, where she studies fads. Bennett is another scientist for the firm, studying chaos theory. They meet when HiTek’s incompentent admin assistant, Flip, delivers a package to Sandra instead of Bennett’s lab partner. From there, Flip continues to be the catalyst for a series of mishaps and miscommunications which elicit slapstick comedic events and hilarious running jokes.

Sandra and Bennett are very likeable leads. Sandra is full of subtle snark and sarcasm. Bennett is the classic rumpled absent-minded professor. I couldn’t help thinking of one of my favourite movies, the Hepburn/Tracy classic Desk Set, when reading. The book has similar themes of technology being used for profit.

Some people say this isn’t scifi in their reviews but it is in the a bit of a 1984 sense, with the boss of HiTek known by no other name but ‘Management’. I’m pretty sure anyone whose workplace has more than about ten employees can relate to Management. I’ve definitely sat through one of these team building meetings where crazy catch phrases and acronyms are thrown at me far too many times.

The other scifi aspect is the fads which Flip and co are following. They get sillier and funnier as the book progresses. You might say they are so mad that they could never be real but then, in between each chapter, Willis presents us with some actual fads throughout history and you realise anything is possible.

This is also a book about books. Sandra’s visits to the library spotlights many classics.

I could actually wax lyrical for longer which is a sign of how much I loved this book as, unlike the other Willis books I’ve read, this is a short read. In fact, one of the awards it won was for a novella. I appreciated that though; the plot never had a chance to get boring.

I actually listened as it’s a freebie on Audible but I’m definitely going to try and find it in paperback to add to my Willis collection (the other books of which I had to purchase from overseas as she really isn’t on anyone in Australia’s radar sadly). Obviously 5 stars.

Crosstalk

Book Review: Crosstalk by Connie Willis

Crosstalk is a story about Briddey who decides to have (is pressured into having actually) an EED, which is a device implanted in your brain to make you more emotionally connected with your other half. Obviously sticking anything into your brain just to be trendy is a bad idea and things don’t go to plan. (If you’re feeling all superior, thinking you would never do such a thing, get over it; no one heeds any warnings about mobile or airpod use). Briddey’s other half, Trent, is a complete dick (I think it’s pretty obvious from the first chapter so I won’t say that’s a spoiler) who is more worried about his job than Briddey’s welfare. So, to the rescue comes CB, a techno whiz who works at the same mobile phone company as Briddey and Trent.

I would say Crosstalk, out of everything Connie Willis has written, is probably her most mainstream offering. Definitely in Australia it’s the only one of her titles I’ve seen readily available in paperback format. (I bought the Oxford Time Travel series in book form after listening to them on audible and I had to get them from overseas.) And, unlike her other books which only have a hint of romance, it’s probably one which could almost be catergorised as a straight up romance. Or if I was getting technical, a scifi romantic comedy.

Although mainstream, it is still a very trademark Connie Willis book. Yes, Crosstalk is my sixth Connie Willis book and, as such, I am now very familiar with her style. Actually, I would say there is no other writer that I can think of (certainly none I’ve read of late) that has such a distinctive and familiar style.

She always includes communication issues for the characters. Here she has characters who can’t get through to others due to lack of mobile coverage, or phones not being turned on, or phones being taken off their owners for one reason or another. This is all rather ironic in Crosstalk as much of the plot is centred on Briddey’s phone company (a rival to Apple) wanting to expand into a world where communication with others would be even more instantaneous and all encompassing. For those of you who have conspiracy theories regarding mobile phone usage, this is the book for you! (Or not, depending on the state of your nerves.)

The other Connie Willis ‘must have’ is characters being unable to do something because of their physical constraints. In Passage, for example, it was a confusing hospital layout which had the lead characters stuck in stairwells etc. In Crosstalk, Willis takes on a corporate office. Priddey has to divert her mission on many occasions because of the physical layout of her office building including (my favourite) avoiding people by diving into the claustrophobic photocopy room without knowing if it is already occupied by someone else she should be avoiding.

Another popular Willis theme which pops up again is marental love and its various issues. This time, it was a mother with helicopter syndrome. Priddey’s sister has terrible anxiety when it comes to her only child and she hovers and monitors everything nine year old Maeve does. Maeve, not surprisingly, rebels and Willis manages to make this into a dramedy of sorts. Maeve reminded me a lot of Maisie from The Passage, although I do much prefer the latter, not to mention Colin from Doomsday Book and Binnie and Alf from Blackout/All Clear. Those young characters really tugged at all my heartstrings and, although one of the major plot points of Crosstalk was the need to protect Maeve, I didn’t find all this so convincing. Maeve, for starters seemed a little too clever for her age and I guessed almost all of the twists surrounding her plot which was disappointing.

Actually, I guessed quite a lot of the plot points in Crosstalk. Willis usually throws such curveballs and I kept waiting for one that I’d missed which was going to smack me in the head. There were a couple of surprises, but no shocks, if that makes sense.

I think Willis’s book fall into the love them or hate them category and I definitely love them. In fact, I have a weird almost unhealthy passion for her books. However, unfortunately, out of all the ones I’ve read so far, Crosstalk is my least favourite.

I’ve thought about this and I think my main issue is that I was expecting more. As I said, it seems to be her most commercially successful and I was expecting pure sweet and funny and romantic. I got that but I also got predictable now and then and I’ve never really had that feeling with her other books.

Unlike Willis’s other books, there isn’t much tragedy in Crosstalk and, if I’m honest, I really think it needed something to give it that extra punch Willis usually throws my way. There was an attempt of tragedy/drama but unfortunately I never really felt scared or sad for our characters. Oh, there were a couple ‘how-are-they-going-to-get-out-of-this’ moments but never that huge knot of tension in my guts I felt as I read the Oxford series and The Passage.

I also never fell completely and utterly in love with Priddey or CB. I liked them but I wasn’t in love with them like I am with Mr Dunworthy and Mary Ahrens and Merope, for instance.

Another thing Willis also adds to every book that didn’t work as well for me in Crosstalk was her pop culture references. She’s used Agatha Christie books and the Titanic disaster, for example. In To Say Nothing of the Dog she uses my beloved Harriet and Lord Peter from Dorothy Sayers. In this one it’s show tunes. Ugh. I hate musicals with a passion, so this just didn’t work for me at all. She also uses a couple of poems but they’re very American and I had never heard of them, so again, I think I felt a little cheated in this arena. (I will say I liked the library references though and, as I assume everything Willis tells us about it is true, found it nuts as well as fascinating.)

If I had to compare this to a normal book, I’d easily give it 5 out of 5. But comparing it to other Willis books, I have to rank it lower even though that breaks my heart. 4 1/2 out of 5 (I know, you’re saying half a measly star – but if I could, I’d give all her other books 100 out of 5, so that half a mark is actually a big deal.)

2018 Top Ten International Reads

As choosing an overall top ten is far too difficult, I broke it up into Aussie authors and ‘the rest’.  I have more US writers on this list than I thought I would.  Of course, this might be Connie Willis’s doing.

Blackout by Connie Willis:  Blackout is part of Willis’s Oxford Time Travel series and  has time travellers heading for England during WW2. The book is full of ordinary characters doing ordinary things. Then, it suddenly dawns on you that the characters and their lives are anything but ordinary! Blackout and All Clear as basically the same book, but it was too long and Willis and her publishers cut it up into two parts.  They are my overall favourite reads of the year.  5 out of 5

All Clear by Connie Willis: After finishing All Clear, my love for Willis’s Oxford Time Travel series has not diminished and in fact I’m sad and depressed that I only have Fire Watch, the short story, remaining. I’d love to demand Willis write another book in the series but as I recently read she took an epic eight years to pen Blackout and All Clear, I don’t see it happening in my near future.  5 out of 5

Passage by Connie Willis: Passage isn’t part of the Oxford Time Travel series but as this is the fifth Willis novel I’ve read, I’ve become very familiar with her style. I can understand why some people become frustrated with it when reading her books, but I just continue to adore it and her. She is truly one of the most deceptively intelligent writers there has ever been. I can’t recommend Passage enough. 5 out of 5

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths: Ruth Galloway is a nearly 40 unmarried overweight introverted cat owning archaeologist. DI Harry Nelson is the lead detective working on two missing child cases. When bones are found on the salt marsh near where Ruth lives, Harry asks for her assistance and soon Ruth finds herself drawn further and further into the police investigation and subsequently, danger.T here was something about this book which dragged me in and made me want more. Luckily for me there are another ten books in the series.  I’m currently up to number 8.  I won’t list them all, but I rated them all 5 out of 5.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeymoon: You’d have to live under a rock to not have heard of this debut. There’s several themes Honeyman explores with Eleanor’s story. How people cope with mental illness, of course, plus how people cope with loneliness and the importance of love. We’re all a little crazy. We’re all a little damaged. But in the end, we might find the strength to make it through the day and feel fine — about certain aspects, at least. After all, if Eleanor can do it, so can we.  5 out of 5

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan: There’s a little bit of everything in this book: romance, mystery, comedy, drama. It’s a book about books and a book about movies. It’s a collection of short stories. It has diverse characters who will warm your heart and make you cry. It’s above love and second chances. It’s about loss and the flow on effects of those losses And it’s a keeper. 5 out of 5

The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen:  Schaffhausen is a good friend of a good friend of mine meaning I feel like I know her (even though the limit of our friendship is the occasional comment/reply on one of our mutual friend’s Facebook posts, LOL) and, therefore, I felt obliged to pick up a copy of her debut novel. For someone who doesn’t read this genre often, The Vanishing Season definitely had its creepy moments. There’s no huge Gone Girl twist in the end of the book but there is enough tension in the climactic scenes to make you keep turning pages until you reach the end. 5 out of 5

The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson: A nuclear war ends when a super flu spreads around the world. Those few who have managed to survive both of these events flee the cities, living off the land in isolated areas. Johnson’s debut skips along at a fast pace which had me hooked from the first chapter.   4 1/2 out of 5

The Queen of Wishful Thinking by Milly Johnson: Despite being around 500 pages long, this book was a fast easy read; for the most the characters were ordinary people who you could imagine live down the road; the setting was cute and typically English; the characters too were very English; and I appreciate the fact they were older.  4 out of 5

Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn: First books in mystery/detective series can be tough. The author has to introduce the main characters and establish their personalities, one of whom we need to find very likeable, as well as give us a bit of background on those characters, without using information dumps or corny flashbacks. Then, they need to bait us enough in the ending to ensure we pick up book number two in the series. Dunn’s effort ticked all the boxes all while presenting a half decent murder plot.  Considering there are currently 23 titles in the series, I assume Dunn kept up the high standard and I’m not the only one who instantly became a bit of a fan of Daisy and Dunn’s writing. 4 out of 5

Hopefully I’ll pick up just as many 5 star reads in 2019.

Happy New Year!

Passage

Book Review:  Passage by Connie Willis

In Passage, two doctors, Joanna Lander and Richard Wright, team up to study NDEs (near death experiences), hoping their research will assist with reviving patients who are coding (going into cardio arrest). The scifi aspect comes in when Dr Wright comes up with a cocktail of drugs that replicates a NDE in a healthy person. In true Willis comedic fashion, the number of volunteers the doctors have lined up for the trial dwindles to such an extent that Joanna herself decides to go under and experience a NDE firsthand. This is where the tension begins to build and the drama unfolds until a climactic moment that no reader will ever see coming.

This is the fifth Willis novel I’ve read and I’ve become very familiar with her style. I can understand why some people become frustrated with it when reading her books, but I just continue to adore it and her.

Willis always has pop culture/historical moments she references throughout her books. For example she incorporated Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers novels into her Oxford series plotlines as well as events such as the Blitz and the Black Death. In Passage, she references many movies and uses disasters to make her plotline more relatable to the modern reader, in particular the sinking of the Titanic.

Willis’s research must always be extensive because without a doubt you’ll learn more about the Titanic from this novel than you will from any other source. (And fear not, if you’re like me and hate the movie, you’ll still love the references to it in this book.) I was not as familiar with any of the other disasters mentioned: the Great Molasses Flood (who knew?), the Hartford circus fire, or the Hindenburg, so it was interesting to learn about these events.

The other thing Willis does in every book is include a plethora of physical reasons the characters can’t find solutions to their problems. Passage is set is in the 90s, so there is no internet and very limited mobile use. Willis includes phones and pagers which aren’t answered, messages that aren’t passed on, and books that can’t be located. The physical layout of the setting, a hospital, is also one large stumbling block for the characters, with its labyrinth of walkways, blocked off stairways and lifts that only reach certain levels.

While some readers might be frustrated or lost at why she is including such frivolous details, others will see that everything has its place and reason and nothing is as random as it seems. And, in particular with Passage, it’s a metaphor!

Another thing Willis does really well is supporting characters. They’re always so different and detailed and just as important to the stories as the lead characters (actually, there is often a question of who is a lead character and who isn’t, I would sometimes argue her books are true ensemble pieces). The standout in Passage for me was young Maisie, who has spent a large chunk of her life in hospital and is on the heart transplant list. Everything comes back to her in the end and tears will be involved.

Just as a warning, yes, there definitely will be tears. They might creep up on you when you least expect it too. (For me, it was a moment featuring Joanna’s clothes and makeup.) However, even though death is the main subject, Willis handles this with such aplomb that nothing gets overly depressing or maudlin and at times death feels quite inspirational (as young Maise proves at one point, there are worse things than death).

As per usual, Willis offers us many emotional and intellectual themes in amongst her deceptively basic scifi plot. You’ll think about your faith a lot whilst reading Passage. There’s also a strong theme of friendship and the sense of family with friends versus true blood relatives. These themes were all majorly covered at one time or another in the Oxford time travel series yet this didn’t annoy me and only reinforced some of my previous personal conclusions.

I fret for people who dismiss Willis’s work because it’s scifi. Yes, her books are scifi, but they’re so realistic you’ll forget you’re reading scifi within a few chapters. They don’t fit easily into any genre in fact. Yes, there’s hints of romance in all her books but they are merely hints. (Passage had an undercurrent of romance that I was not expecting at all but I found myself really enjoying it.) They are comedies and tragedies and very much literature.

She is truly one of the most deceptively intelligent writers there has ever been and with so many layers to her writing, it’s difficult to cover everything in a couple of hundred words review. Let’s just say, like all her other novels, I can’t recommend Passage enough.

Another obvious 5 out of 5

All Clear

Book Review:  All Clear by Connie Willis (#4 Oxford Time Travel)

After finishing All Clear, my love for Willis’s Oxford Time Travel series has not diminished and in fact I’m sad and depressed that I only have Fire Watch, the short story, remaining. I’d love to demand Willis write another book in the series but as I recently read she took an epic eight years to pen Blackout and All Clear, I don’t see it happening in my near future.

All Clear is a continuation of Blackout (#3 in the series). You have to read Blackout for it to make any sense as it’s not a separate plot/book which you can follow without reading the former. (Blackout and All Clear combined would have edged out War and Peace for length so Willis decided to break up the book into two volumes.) Upon stating that, however, I did feel a slight change in the mood when All Clear began.

All Clear seemed to answer a lot of Blackout’s questions rather quickly. Only, instead of making the reader more calm, Willis managed to add yet another layer of tension with their solutions.

The main premise of both books is that three time travellers, Polly, Michael and Eileen, cannot seem to return to their own time after arriving in England during WW2. In Blackout, the time travellers thought their presence and the ‘net’ (a time travel portal) refusing to open and return to them to 2060 was due to their level of interference during the period. They wonder if, after inadvertently changing minor events, they’d affected the future and Germany and the Nazis might have won the war.

In All Clear, they start to believe that the time travel ‘net’ might be closed in an effort to kill them, and everyone they come into contact with, to prevent a time paradox. Adding to their woes, besides the obvious dangers of the war, is their fast approaching ‘deadlines’ (a deadline is the date the traveller started a different assignment into the past). As in, they can’t be in two places at once and will die if they haven’t returned to their present by this date.

This is about as technical as Willis gets. Her stories aren’t about sci-fi gadgets or explaining the nuts and bolts of how time travel works. They’re about people and love and death and friendship and romance and bravery and sacrifice. The characters in her books are ordinary people. Ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Actually, she said it best: What are Blackout and All Clear about? They’re about Dunkirk and ration books and D-Day and V-1 rockets, about tube shelters and Bletchley Park and gas masks and stirrup pumps and Christmas pantomimes and cows and crossword puzzles and the deception campaign. And mostly the book’s about all the people who “did their bit” to save the world from Hitler—Shakespearean actors and ambulance drivers and vicars and landladies and nurses and WRENs and RAF pilots and Winston Churchill and General Patton and Agatha Christie—heroes all.

Yes, while Dorothy Sayers is almost another character of To Say Nothing of the Dog (book #2 in the series), Agatha Christie plays a huge part of All Clear. As does Shakespeare and JM Barrie, the latter being used in a long running gag which made me laugh each time it was used. Oh, and the spies working for Operation Fortitude (a military deception by the English to make the Germans think they were attacking at different times and different areas than they were in reality) which features heavily in the book all have names taken from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest — such irony!

Willis seems to weave things like this through her stories so effortlessly. Another thing she does effortlessly is writing huge emotional moments when you least expect it. That is, she has a knack of making you laugh at something right before she punches you in the gut.

Binnie and Alf, two children Eileen is saddled with in Blackout, are perfect examples of this. I adored them both. They are hilarious. And then, suddenly, they do or say something so small and seemingly insignificant, and you’re awash with emotions and tears.

Yes, like in her previous Oxford books, parental love is a huge theme of All Clear. Eileen’s developing bond with the children is probably my favourite part of the book. It’s a storyline that is never forced or cliched or corny. Instead it’s poignant and timed exactly right.

I also adore the relationship between Mr Dunworthy and Colin. This had, of course, began in The Doomsday Book and its continuation feels so organic and right.

As is the romantic love featured in the book. Again, instead of shoving the romance at the reader, Willis presents it so naturally we not only believe in it wholeheartedly, we cheer it on eagerly.

There is also the continuing theme of friendship and loyalty. Other than our main time travellers, we get a plethora of supporting characters who also carry on with the theme. Willis’s characterisation is so superb with all the many and varied minor players she introduces and uses. I could imagine them all so clearly. You also get a huge sense of who loves whom, platonically or otherwise, so easily from the way Willis writes.

Don’t panic though, the book is not a romance in the traditional sense. It has great literary value for its history lessons, if nothing else. (I get so mad that scifi is dismissed by most intellectuals.) I learned more about WW2 from this book than I had from any other platform.

I can’t recommend these books or this series enough.

Obviously this is a 5 out of 5 read.

Blackout

Book Review:   Blackout by Connie Willis

I quickly checked out some reviews of this book a moment ago and I don’t understand all the hate.

Yes, it has no ending but this is not a secret. It’s a well advertised fact that Willis broke the original book into two volumes due to its length. So yes, the book has a huge cliffhanger and you’ll have to fork out more money for All Clear. Get over it. It’s worth it.

Yes, it has ordinary characters doing ordinary things. This is the point, people! You’re supposed to look past the ordinary until it suddenly dawns on you that the characters and their lives are anything but ordinary! If you haven’t had that lightbulb moment, move on!

Yes, I don’t think the book will make much sense to those who haven’t read the first two Oxford Time Travel books. Willis doesn’t get bogged down in explaining her time travel or its mechanics, you’re supposed to already know the basics of how it works. You’re also supposed to know about Professor Dunworthy and crew’s adventures from the earlier books. So, before you even think about reading Blackout, you must read, at least, Doomsday Book for it all to make sense. (Doomsday Book is pretty harrowing, so I’d also suggest you then read To Say Nothing of the Dog as it’s more of a romantic comedy and will ease the pain of the first book.)

Professor Dunworthy has only featured briefly thus far (of course, if he was in the book more we would then know the outcome of the plot). Also returning from Doomsday Book is Colin, Dr Ahrens great-nephew and, I assume, he will feature a little more heavily in All Clear.

Blackout has time travellers heading for England during WW2. Polly heads for London to work as a shopgirl and observe how people coped in the blitz, Merope (who has changed her too-modern name to Ilene) goes to Warwickshire as a servant to observe children who’ve been evacuated out of the city, and Michael (who poses as an American and therefore, changes his name also to Mike) goes to Dover as a reporter to observe the rescue of the Dunkirk troops.

We also get brief scenes of another time traveller who our main three do not seem to know about — Mary Kent, who joins the FANY as an ambulance driver/nurse. Although Mary’s surname is Kent, could she also be using an alias and Mary is actually my beloved Dr Mary Ahrens from Doomsday Book? (I’ll know for sure if she turns out to be epic and saves the world! LOL) If she has time travelled from an earlier time than our three leads it would explain why they do not know about her existence.

If I can’t convince you to read these books for enjoyment, you should read to learn our history, at least. I thought I was pretty learned when it came to WW2 (especially compared to the limited knowledge I had of the Black Death when I started reading Doomsday Book) but there is interesting fact after fact that Willis presents which are new and I had no idea about. Because Willis’s style is to focus on the ordinary, they’re usually smalls things that probably never made it into history books but just make you pause and think, ‘wow’. And even if you know the history, Willis presents it in such a way that makes you appreciate it more. What a miracle it was that England withstood Hitler and the Nazis!

Of course, this being scifi and time travel, the tension is that perhaps England won’t prevail due to the small changes Merope, Polly and Michael are making by their presence. Are they changing history unwittingly? Well, I won’t know until I finish All Clear.

All Clear is the last in the Oxford time travel series, however, so I want to savour it. I don’t think I can truly explain the love I have for this sci fi series. I don’t want it to end.

5 out of 5

PS: I listened to the audiobook version of this book. The narrator is the best I’ve ever come across in audiobook land. I was so impressed by her narration, I looked her up and her name is Katherine Kellgren and I will look out for other books she’s read. She is American, but studied in England and there’s no way I would have guessed she wasn’t a Brit from her narration. Sadly, she passed away in January after battling cancer.

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Book Review:  To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel #2) by Connie Willis 

After falling in love with The Doomsday Book, I obviously had to read the next in Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel series, To Say Nothing of the Dog.

If The Doomsday Book is the series’ tragedy, To Say Nothing of the Dog is its comedy. I’d even class it as a romantic comedy.

My beloved Mr Dunworthy again features, as does his secretary, Finch, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.

Unlike in The Doomsday Book, there is only one narrator, our hero Ned, and most of the action is set in the past. The few scenes set in the present (the characters’ present that is, our future) are pretty brief and usually in the Oxford time travel lab.

If you’re like my mother and get confused by time travel and its consequences etc, this isn’t the book for you. The major plot line is driven by what would happen if someone from the future changed events in the past. In fact, this is why Ned is required to return to Victorian England, 1888, to correct an issue a fellow time traveller, Verity, caused.

Only, due to his jetlag-like state and a series of miscommunication and misadventure, Ned fails miserably for most of the time and actually suspects he’s caused more time paradoxes.

There’s a fun cast of supporting characters in 1888, all quite hilarious. Willis uses every single stereotype from the time and I loved it. The characterisation of each is so polished that they all have their moment to shine. Even Cyril, the dog, and Princess Arjumand, the cat, are more well developed than some characters I’ve read in other books. (The animals and their sleeping arrangements amused me greatly.)

Baine, the butler, was my particular favourite. The fact that he is obviously much smarter than his employers is a sad reality of the times.

If I didn’t think the book was good enough already, Willis won me over completely by adding several references to Lord Peter Wimsey books. The characters talk about (and compare themselves to) Lord Peter and Harriet Vane on multiple occasions. And at one stage the characters even have a seance, where Verity uses tricks she learnt from Strong Poison’s Miss Climpson.

Ned and Verity’s main mystery to solve is who ‘Mr C’ is. I did guess this quite early on, but it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. It only showed how good Willis is at writing UST and chemistry between the characters.

The other mystery in the book simmers in the background in such a way that you don’t even realise it is a mystery until you reach the action packed climactic scene. The way Willis uses tension and weaves the storylines together so that you eventually have a dawning reality of what has happened is extremely clever.

You can easily read this as a stand-alone, or as the first in the series. However, I would recommend reading in the correct order so that the heart Willis ripped out of your chest with The Doomsday Book can be healed by To Say Nothing of the Dog.

5 out of 5 and can’t wait to read the next in the series.

Doomsday Book

Book Review:  Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

To say I loved this book is a huge understatement. I adored every single thing about it and am sure I will read it again.

It’s a pretty long book, the first in the Oxford Time Travel series, so to explain the plot without spoilers is difficult.

But in a brief summary, in the near future, 2053, Oxford University performs time travel ‘drops’ to study the past. Scholars have visited the last couple of centuries frequently, studying Egyptian tomb openings and the second world war for example, but some times are deemed far too dangerous to contemplate. Now, however, one student, Kivrin, is allowed (by default, really) to visit the 1300s, which Oxford has rated as 10/10 on the danger scale, to fill in some of the blanks for the history books.

The opening of the book shows Kivrin’s determination to go ahead with the drop, despite her teacher’s, Mr Dunworthy, grave warnings when it comes to that century’s ignorance and treatment of women. Although Kivrin was as prepared as she could be, both she and the head time travel technician catching the flu just as she is leaving sets a course no one could have predicted for both of the time zones.

The book moves into alternative narratives of Kirvin in the past, and Mr Dunworthy in the present (our future).

In the 1300s, we get to see Kivrin cohabitating with a peered family who are staying in a small Oxford village while the rest of their family remain in Bath. There is a mother, mother-in-law, and two daughters – Rosamund, aged around 12 and Agnes, around 5. Other than the family, Kivrin forms a deep friendship with the local priest, Father Roche.

Meanwhile, in 2053, the flu quickly reaches epidemic proportions and whatever could go wrong, does. Due to all these unforeseen problems, no one will be able to open the time travel ‘net’ to fetch Kivrin at the predetermined time.

I’ve seen lots of complaints online about the ‘future’ scenes, but they were definitely my favourite. (I gasped when someone even suggested skipping them altogether!) The old-fashioned feel to the future (some have suggested it reads like England of the 1950s) was wonderful. It gave the book a classic sci-fi feel akin to a Wyndham novel that worked for me. I would actually say I would skip the Kivrin scenes before I would skip the Dunworthy ones.

All of Willis’s characters are so well written, and their personalities are explained with the ‘show not tell’ method. We learn their traits and flaws from the way they act. The children act like children — often self-centred and needy, but ultimately innocent and in need of protection. And I liked the way all the supporting characters have their reason for being and their purpose when explaining the conflict of the plot. For example, Miss Montoya comes across as selfish and annoying until we get a touching scene of her studying the wrist bones of bodies in an archaeological dig.

Professor Dunworthy was a wonderful character. I’m so excited to realise that he features in the other books in the series. My favourite of the main characters, however, was Dunworthy’s best friend, Doctor Mary Ahrens. She’s a complete standout. I could probably write a thesis based on my adoration of her.

Talking of theses, there could be several written on the book’s themes. One that features heavily is Willis showing us the good and bad side of religion. Many of the religious characters introduced are hypocritical, indulgent and selfish. However, the church is not portrayed as evil and a great many parallels exist between Mr Dunworthy and God. (As Mr Dunworthy is as close as we get to a hero in the book, this is not a case of heresy.) Religion is supposed to encourage forgiveness, empathy and selflessly tend to others in time of sickness — something many of the characters do at various times in the book.

Love in its purest and most destructive form is also covered.

Kivrin develops a deep maternal love for Rosamund and Agnes. Their real mother, however, is too preoccupied with her frivolous love for one of her servants to offer the girls any real guidance.   Rosamund’s unwavering insistence of her father’s love may or may not be unreliable, but the reader knows for sure that her arranged marriage will have very little to do with love if allowed to go ahead. Despite Kivrin’s initial fear due to his appearance, she also develops a deep love for Father Roche. This remains a pure and platonic love despite there being the tiniest hint that it could have developed into romantic love if circumstances could have allowed.

In the present, Mary’s great nephew, Colin, is completely neglected by his mother, leaving Mary and Mr Dunworthy to take over and they both easily develop a grandparental type love for the boy. An annoying thorn in Dunworthy and Colin’s side is Mrs Gaddson, who is not a bad mother per se, but has no understanding of her own child’s personality. And obviously, Dunworthy treats Kivrin as he would his own daughter.

I could go on and on. I’d like to say you can enjoy the book simply as entertainment, but I don’t think it’s true. Like me, you won’t be able to stop thinking deep thoughts after you read.

The audiobook version was very good. I enjoyed Jenny Sterlin’s narration very much. There were many amusing moments in the book and I thought she captured them well.

The Doomsday Book isn’t a comedy though, so I need to warn you to keep a box of tissues on hand. I saw a lot of the events coming, but it still didn’t stop me from crying. Willis basically ripped out my heart at one stage. Still, I’m off to start the next book in the series.

5 out of 5 obviously.