Subject: Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

From: "Mariann T. Woodward" <[email-masked]>
Date: 07 Feb 1999 18:00:15 -0500

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
	Review Copyright 1999 Mariann T. Woodward

Time travel is one of those delicate concepts that we all like to explore
but, since we have no realistic or rational frame of reference beyond the
theoretical, the time travel story can fall flat on its face.  Connie
Willis made an art of the time travel story, first with her award-winning
novel, The Doomsday Book (1992), and now with this one.

In Willis' latest novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog, the consequences of
time travel is explored in three significant time periods: Victorian
England, the 1940s during the Nazi blitzkrieg of WWII, and the twenty-
first century where Lady Shrapnel (the name itself is extremely accurate
as this character's voice is piercing) is planning the reconstruction down
to the smallest detail of Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a German
bombing raid.  Ned Henry is assigned to the task of locating the bishop's
bird stump, a nicknamed vase of horrendous design.  Because Lady Shrapnel
wants everything perfect down to the smallest detail, Ned must find out
what happened to this item before the cathedral's consecration.

Thus begins his adventure.  After fourteen "drops" into the 1940s in
search of the bishop's bird stump, Ned is exhausted and suffering from
severe time lag.  He cannot go on, but he and his supervisors know that if
he attempts to rest in their now, Lady Shrapnel will only find him and
insist he continue his search.  So he is sent back to the Victorian era,
barely prepped on the culture, times, history, and customs, with a
secondary task in addition to his doctor-ordered rest: repair the
incongruency in the slipstream or else the entire world as he knows it
will collapse.

Quite the task for a man who's supposed to be resting, eh?

Along the way, he meets a fish-obsessed professor, a spoiled brat (well,
actually several spoiled brats; must be the culture), a butler with a
tendency to read despite his mistress's dislike (of course, she is a woman
who also believes in spirituals and mediums, but that's another story), a
nearly drowned cat named Princess Arajumand, and the love of his life,
Verity Kindle, another time traveling visitor in search of the bishop's
bird stump.  Verity is also the same individual who caused the whole
problem in the first place by bringing something forward in time when she
wasn't supposed to.

The time travel plot in To Say Nothing of the Dog is flawless.  The
incongruity causes numerous slippages in the time continuum, and even the
slightest misstep causes considerable harm for the future.  While Lady
Coventry pushes for her Cathedral to be finished, Ned and Verity
simultaneous attempt to complete their task and repair what went wrong.  I
found myself trying to figure out the mystery along with Ned and Verity,
stumbling as they did when ideas collapsed and breathing a sigh of relief
when a step in the right direction was taken.  The overall results,
regardless of the situation, were hilarious, to say the least.

Willis has a sharp eye for detail for Victorian society and customs; I
learned much about the upper class in this book, and it never once felt
like a history lesson.  As Ned learned how to deal with his situation, I
learned a little bit, too.  It also helped that Willis has a terribly
wicked sense of humor.  Subtle and cutting, the jabs at all of those
quirky customs within Victorian society sparked frequent giggles from me.
Ned's comments on his situation, his companions, and his frustrations,
even though they were terribly serious under the circumstances, still
prompted a good laugh. I found myself grinning even when Ned was in his
own time as well.

The title of the book comes from a line in Jerome K. Jerome's 1888 Three
Men In A Boat, a selection from Victorian vaudeville humor, and it's
entirely appropriate in a two-fold manner.  Willis' style is clearly
reminiscent of the wry, occasionally sarcastic, humor of the period.  And,
of course, Ned has much to say about Cyril, the English bulldog he finds
as his companion, with as much personality as any of the human characters
in the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed every page of To Say Nothing of the Dog.  The cover
is now torn from accompanying me to work, to school, and the like, but
it's been patched up to last for many readings to come.  As usual with a
book I'm really enjoying, I found myself staying up just a few more
minutes past bedtime so I could read a just a few more pages.  It's a book
I'll be keeping in my collection, and although Willis has already won six
Nebula and six Hugo Awards for her work, she is most definitely an author
to watch!

Grade:  A

%T To Say Nothing of the Dog
%A Connie Willis
%I Bantam Books
%D 1998
%G ISBN 055357-5384
%O $6.50 (paperback)

** remove REMOVE from e-mail addy to reply **
For more reviews, please visit my home page:
http://members.aol.com/deerskin/