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To Say Nothing of the Dog: Connie Willis (S.F. MASTERWORKS)
£11.40£12.30 (-7%)
Ned Henry is a time-travelling historian who specialises in the mid-20th century – currently engaged in researching the bombed-out Coventry Cathedral. He’s also made so many drops into the past that he’s suffering from a dangerously advanced case of ‘time-lag’.
Unfortunately for Ned, an emergency dash to Victorian England is required and he’s the only available historian. But Ned’s time-lag is so bad that he’s not sure what the errand is – which is bad news since, if he fails, history could unravel around him…
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Additional information
| Publisher | 1st edition (9 May 2013), Gateway |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 528 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 9780575113121 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0575113121 |
| Dimensions | 12.8 x 3.6 x 19.6 cm |
by Sheena
I can understand why not everyone might love this book as much as I do. It happens that I love Three Men in a Boat, and have read it twice; I also love science fiction, especially the thoughtful sort that doesn’t just deal with technology and isn’t just a commonplace story in a space setting. On TV, I like to watch Red Dwarf and Big Bang Theory. I also enjoy reading Douglas Adams. Therefore, my mind is probably primed to enjoy a book like this one.
Some reviewers have complained that the characters are not well developed. To me they seemed at least as well developed as might be expected in a thriller, as well as being more varied. This is a book primarily about the philosophy of time travel, chaos theory and of history. It is amazing how the feel of each English era is induced so well, especially since the author is American. (I did find once that the use of the word ‘gotten’ gave me a jolt.)
Maybe those who didn’t like the book are reading something that is outside of their preferred genre. As an example of though-provoking science fiction, in my opinion, it would be very difficult to better this work.
by Kindle Customer
As Ned Henry is sent back to victorian times to right a wrong (one created by the people of the future), he is highly time-lagged. As the traits of the that time-lag include a tendency towards flowery speech and hearing impairment, it is felt that he will fit right in. At least there he will be able to recover from his all-too-many trips back into the past.
The nyiad of his heart Verity turns up there as well. Things could not have been better for good old Ned. But not so.
Connie Willis manages to enthrall her reader (ie myself) all the way through the book. This is not a high-action book with explosions and death on every page. Instead it manages to gently make fun of people in all eras. There is action and tension and that too is kept well within a gently comedic sphere.
I loved this book and have read it before. It was not lessened by a second reading, unlike too many of the other books that I have read.
by Heligany
Could have been so much better if it had tried to do so much and only succeeded in doing none of it very well.
There is some parody going on of Victorian literature, that makes it a bit of a slog to read.
I didnt find it funny at all let alone hilarious. The characters were ok but could have had more depth all a bit cardboard (maybe that was part of the ‘joke’ too….)
It didnt seem very sci fi really, the focus was all over the place and not melded together, more bitty chunks of various aims the author had…. sci fi here, then a bit of an attempt at comedy, then ‘romance’ chucked in, then a parody of a Victorian novel, then a bit of sci fi…. it really felt awkward…. but above all it was SLOW for anyone not expecting the victorian novel style (which I wasnt).
The ‘clues’ were also very obvious and huge wedges of the book were spent just waiting for the lead characters to catch on, thats never a good thing
Im doing a bit of a Time Travel Book Marathon at the moment and have just finished Time and Again by Jack Finney, and the historic and romantic elements were tackled in much more to my taste in his book, there was a depth to the depiction and everything seemed to fit together a bit more coherently.
by boggismordlesvampires
It turns out that if you want to write a thoughtful and deeply moving book about the philosophy of history, its importance in the affairs of mankind and the meaning of time and loss then the best way to do it is to write it in a style that blends equal parts of Jerome K Jerome, Kurt Vonnegut and P.G. Wodehouse. It’s also important to throw in a little time travel and a Bishop’s Bird Stump.
For quite a while, I thought I was reading a very good emulation of a Wodehouse novel – To Say Nothing of the Dog made me laugh the same way Wodehouse does (embarrassingly, uncontrollably) – but there are humane touches that lift it out of knockabout comedy and slowly draw you into the lives of the characters. This is where the time travel is handy. The characters from the future dropped into the middle of Victorian England give a perspective on the lives of the Victorians that Wodehouse never provided for his 20th century gadabouts. Slowly, one gets an inkling for what it might have been like to live back then.
The mechanics of the time travel aren’t very important, which is a blessed relief. Sci-fi can get a bit tedious in the presence of time travel. One gets thrust into po-faced considerations of the paradoxes caused by the ability to kill one’s own grandfather. The deal here seems to be that that kind of stuff isn’t allowed. If one tries it on, the universe intervenes in ways that make one suspect that it might have a sense of humour. Indeed the whole notion of time travel gets a gentle ribbing with the paraphernalia of time travel being eerily reminiscent of the trappings of a Victorian séance. There is a séance, which, of course, unwinds amusingly, but it also underscores an interesting point: given the chance to meet your own grandfather back in the day, wouldn’t you rather have a nice chat than shoot him?
Instead, time travel is a Heath Robinson engine that drives the magnificently daft mystery plot and, whilst the characters bimble around history with a little H, there are some interesting observations about History with a big one.
The mystery plot revolves around Lady Schrapnell’s obsession with creating in 21st Century Oxford a perfect reconstruction of Coventry Cathedral as it was on the eve of its destruction during the Second World War. Almost every piece is in place except for one: the Bishop’s Bird Stump. The Lady’s hapless minions are thrust backwards in time again and again to find the Stump, an item of almost zero historic consequence.
Through this seemingly tiny hole in history, we are led deep into the intricately tangled lives of a forgotten Victorian family and reminded quite clearly that History is far more than a picture perfect reconstruction of a single moment in time. We are also reminded that any History is necessarily built up from almost nothing. A single line in a Parish register is forced to stand in for a time, a place, a whole society. Here we are dealing clearly with fiction, but any History worth reading requires the same imaginative effort to breathe life into the facts and figures.
That sounds heavy, but it’s not. The skill of Connie Willis is that the whole skips lightly, effortlessly across deep waters. As two Oxbridge dons argue by the riverside about their theories of history and Darwin, we feel the brief shadow of the totalitarian nightmares of the twentieth century, then one don pushes the other in the water and we laugh.
by vanessa phillips
The story has likeable elements such as rowing past Jerome K Jerome and his friends on the river…but I was very disappointed by the way the 20th century Coventry Cathedral and all it stands for seems to be dismissed as irrelevant and disposable. I bought the book because I love Coventry Cathedral just the way it is, with both buildings, new and old, telling their stories and complimenting each other and housing a treasure trove of meaningful works of art. A glorious celebration, not of death and destruction, but of reconciliation and hope. So no, this book was not for me.