Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog is a time-travel novel that pays tribute to, while gently poking fun at, Three Men in a Boat and Golden Age mysteries (Christie & Sayers particularly). I listened to the audiobook read by Steven Crossley.
This book is a good example of why genre is important. The time travel in the beginning reminded me vaguely of Kage Baker’s Company series, and so I was expecting something sinister to be lurking the background—especially with the airy, implausible assertion that there was no profit in time travel because material objects couldn’t be brought out of their own times, and so it was left to the academics. (The Company’s strategy for exploiting the past, hiding away artifacts lost to history and then “rediscovering” them, would work just fine.) However, this is a comedy, so nothing sinister’s to be seen.
Instead, To Say Nothing of the Dog is a long, amusing wander through Victorian England from the point of view of Ned Henry, a seriously time-lagged 21st-century Oxford historian who boats down the Thames with two men and a bulldog, and winds up at a country house trying to identify a mysterious Mr. C—in service of a mission that he can’t remember, but that may be vital to the outcome of World War II or, perhaps, to the preservation of the time-space continuum. At points I thought it might be a little too long for listening. For one thing, I figured out Ned’s mission well before he did; for another, the whole book is almost 21 hours, which is on the long side no matter what’s happening. However, the narrator does a nice job, and listening means I’m more likely to notice the jokes.
Time travel stories tend not to be my thing: either they make my head hurt or they take a view of the universe I don’t care for. I could take or leave the time-travel plot here. However, I adore the conclusion of the country-house plot—I laughed and laughed when it was revealed—and that made the whole book worthwhile, for me.
(A couple other minor infelicities about the audio version: every time the title is worked into the narration, it really stands out, and sometimes it feels forced. Also, I was deeply disappointed to find that “placet” is pronounced with an audible “t”; I didn’t take Latin and was mentally pronouncing it as though it were French, which sounds much more suited to romance. Not that this last is the book’s fault, of course.)
The time travel in the beginning reminded me vaguely of Kage Baker’s Company series, and so I was expecting something sinister to be lurking the background.
Had you read Doomsday Book before this? Reading that had certainly colored my expectations for …TSNAtD.
Nope, this is my first Willis novel. But yeah, that must’ve been some serious whiplash, going between the two.
Oh, I do like this book, and it’s been far too long since I re-read it. It’s funny and kind, and it references so many other books I’ve read and loved, although the only problem with that was that I was halfway through Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone when I first read TSNoftD, and it spoiled the ending for me. I haven’t been able to finish The Moonstone since, but it seems a bit unfair to blame Willis for spoiling. anything that had been in print for that long.
Every so often I go and rifle through the internet in the hope that there’s a release date for the next Willis novel (ideally, All Clear, a WWII one she read from at Worldcon in 2002), and every time (I’ve just done it again) I am disappointed. I’m sure this is teaching me valuable moral lessons.
Hmm, now I can’t remember if there are any spoilers for the Wimsey/Vane mysteries, rather than relationships. Some for Agatha Christie, I think.
Nope, this is my first Willis novel.
I would humbly recommend that, before reading Doomsday Book, you first read the novella “Fire Watch”. I think that might mitigate the whiplash a bit, and the three works make a set.
(But do by all means read Doomsday Book.)
Enh, I’m really not interested in reading _Doomsday_. It’s long, it’s depressing, and it sounds a little too much like another book I read recently.
I liked Doomsday Book much better than TSNotD, which I couldn’t finish.
Jeane: welcome, and sorry you were temporarily trapped in the spam filter; it shouldn’t happen again.
I can definitely see that the two books would have very different appeals. And comedy is quite a matter of personal taste.
Doomsday Book is long, yes, though not so long by modern standards. And it is depressing, even cathartic (for me). But it is not without its moments of humor, and of beauty, and of sensawunda. I agree with Jeane — I liked it much better than TSNotD, even after calibrating for the very different intent of the two works.
I’d still recommend “Fire Watch”. If you don’t like that, then you can be reasonably certain that you wouldn’t like DB, and you won’t have invested so much in finding out.
Well, the story is online, so I’ve bookmarked it for future reading.