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"A tour de force."- The New York Times Book Review Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit. For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin-barely of age herself-finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.… (more)
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Set in the near future (2050s), time travel has become a reality, however the physical laws of the universe prevent you from going back to change an event so the main users of time travel are historians doing research on
The story opens at Oxford University where an historian is the first person to be sent back to the 14th century which had previously been blacklisted as too dangerous to visit. The plan is to send her to a small village near Oxford in 1320 which has been chosen as a safe year to visit as it is a full 28 years before the Black Death reached England. Shortly after the historian has been sent through however, the technician operating the time travelling machine collapses and is rushed to hospital with a serious virus. As more cases of the virus come in, 21st century Oxford is put under quarantine and the team have no way of knowing whether the historian sent through to the 14th century contracted the virus or even whether she has been sent back to the write time or not. As more and more people in the 21st century fall ill, they're soon not even sure if there will be anyone left in Oxford to bring the historian back.
This book is really two interlinked stories, one set in the 14th century and one set in the 21st century and either story on their own would make a gripping read but the way the two stories are intertwined makes it really special. I've seen the ending described as dark but although it's definitely a sad ending (I cried for the last 50 pages) I would also say that I found this quite an uplifting book overall.
The book apparently took Willis five years to write and was nominated for and won a slew of awards including both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Although there are science fiction elements (time travel isn't possible at the moment as far as I know!) it's not hardcore science fiction (there are no aliens or spaceships) and I would recommend trying it even if you're not normally into science fiction books.
The depiction of the middle age village and the battle against the plague is very well done indeed. The characters and their relationships within the village are well portrayed and the effects of the plague on the community are frighteningly realistic. While the scenario here is very successful the same cannot be said for the corresponding storyline in 2054 Oxford. In fact this scenario seems horribly outdated. The handling of the epidemic is amateurish in the extreme, no central co-ordination people having trouble getting connected by telephone and generally a feeling of making it up as they go along with one of the most effective operators a 12 year old boy.
Connie Willis published this novel in 1992 just at the dawn of the telecommunication and computer revolution, but her Oxford of 2054 reads to me more like Oxford in the 1980's. She also tries to bring in a sort of comedy of manners approach particularly in the 2054 storyline and here her writing seems to unravel a little. We have eccentric stock "English" characters; the over protective mother, the precocious schoolboy, the boffin Dunworthy and the acting head of the team Gilchrist who will jeopardize everything to keep his position. The arrival of an American bell ringing team who get caught up in the quarantine then proceed to make much of the action border on farce. It is not funny and it does not work. Some of this storyline is inconsequential at best and at times badly overwritten. Peoples thought processes are at times repeated ad nauseum and this sloppy writing then leaches a little into the otherwise taught middle age story. Characters become annoying and serve to hinder the novel rather than enhance it.
There are two sides to this novel. For me with an interest in the middle ages the historical fiction of the plague village was fascinating and well researched. My love of a good rattling yarn was also satisfied, however I had to wade through chunks of some poorly written fiction to get there. I am not sure that a lover of literary fiction would rate this very highly and it might well make him/her feel that their suspicions that most science fiction was poorly written were justified
Extended review:
Doomsday Book is anchored in a wonderful premise: that in the year 2054 academicians use time travel to conduct historical research.
The story takes place in two time periods: a future Oxford, where a mysterious
The plot elements are well thought out, and the twist at the end is nicely done: unexpected and yet seeming logical enough to have been inevitable.
There are some charming characters. I liked twelve-year-old Colin, his great-aunt Mary the doctor, the secretary Finch, and the priest, Father Roche. The relationships that Kivrin forms in the household where she finds shelter are bonds as strong as those with the loyal professor who is determined to bring her safely home, even though the five-year-old is too willful and demanding to seem as adorable as she's claimed to be. And the depiction of village life in the Middle Ages is very vivid, based, I presume, on solid research conducted without benefit of a time machine.
But the narrative is marred by some conspicuous flaws that ought to have been seen and corrected by an editor. They are so egregious that it makes me doubt that any manuscript editor was even involved. I am speaking mainly of a terrible habit of repeating things--over and over and over and over again. And again and yet again. And this refers not just to pieces of historical data such as the fact that the Black Death killed one-third to one-half of Europe but that some entire villages were spared, or that it had reached Oxford by Christmas. It also pertains to bits of story information that the author simply could not stop restating, sometimes more than once on a page.
For instance, she tells us repeatedly that Kivrin didn't know where the drop was and so she had to speak to Gawyn because he was the only one who knew where the drop was (the rendezvous point for her return) and she had to find the drop, the drop, the drop. We got it. She had to find the drop, and she didn't know where it was, and she had to ask the only person who knew. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it! (If the "Look Inside" feature of Amazon were active for this book, I would have done a search and counted instances of the phrases "where the drop" and "find the drop," which I expect would have figured in the hundreds.)
Not only does she weigh down the pages with endless recycling of information in the same words, adding significant heft to a bulky book, but she often seems not to realize that she is saying something she just said. It's as if she frequently changed her mind about where to place a line and so she adds it here but forgets to delete it there. For example (boldface added):
=====(Excerpt begins)
"You know, if Ms. Montoya is at the dig, I could get you through the perimeter," Colin said. He took his gobstopper out and examined it. "It'd be easy. There are lots of places that aren't watched. The guards don't like to stand out in the rain."
"I have no intention of breaking quarantine," Dunworthy said. "We are trying to stop this epidemic, not spread it."
"That's how the plague was spread during the Black Death," Colin said, taking the gobstopper out and examining it.
=====(Excerpt ends)
Likewise, several characters are apparently as obsessive about repeating the same thoughts and recollections to themselves as the author seems to be about reminding the reader for the dozenth or the twentieth time.
The incidence of authorial/editorial errors of this kind is so high that it was getting on my nerves well before the one-third mark, and by the end it made me want to scream.
Besides the location of the drop, there are several other key bits of information that one character needs to obtain from another and yet they suddenly seem to go mute when their opportunity to gain them arises. So instead of moving forward, we are cycled through the same fruitless exchanges again and again, while the author tells us (as if we didn't know) that the information is needed and that they're not getting it. This is not suspense. It's just wheel-spinning frustration.
Similarly, she has characters trying to reach someone by phone (land lines; the book came out in 1992 and did not anticipate cellphones or other wireless communicators) and failing to get through; calling again and failing to get through; calling again and failing to get through. Sometimes this goes on for pages.
And (while I'm at it) we also have several very dimensionless cardboard characters who are seriously obnoxious. It is hard to imagine anyone being so obtusely single-minded as either Lady Imeyne or Mrs. Gaddson. Lady Imeyne serves a purpose in the plot, but Mrs. Gaddson seems superfluous and is far too annoying to be funny. Apart from supplying an occasion for a little constructive coercion, I couldn't see what she added other than the scene-by-scene conflict that the standard fictional formula requires. But because she's a minor character, conflict with her is irrelevant to the plot. Again, it's just an annoyance.
In sum, then, I can award this novel only a half-hearted 3½ stars, even though I wanted to love it and do admire its original plot.
I really enjoyed Doomsday Book. Every few chapters, Willis moves between the present and the past, and the events in each time frame have significant connections to one another. I especially enjoyed Kivrin's story, but Dunsworthy's story was also good. The middle of the book dragged somewhat, though. I thought that there could have been a bit more judicious editing in both timeframes, leaving out some rather boring sickbed scenes with Kivrin and some of the more repetitious bits in Dunworthy's story.
In reading other reviews on LT, it seems that dedicated science fiction readers tend not to like Doomsday Book as much as others, primarily because the technology is not fully fleshed out (so to speak) and because Willis did not anticipate greater use of portable phones and computers. I personally rarely read science fiction, so I had no great expectations of how things should be or what the genre's conventions are. Given that, I read Doomsday Book a bit more as an alternate reality to 1992 (when the book was published) rather than as commentary on the future, so the technical aspects did not bother me at all - I was really focused on the two stories.
Overall, I thought Doomsday Book was a good read, especially over a long winter weekend.
Doomsday Book is set in Oxford in the 2040s, where a little has changed, but not a lot, and time travel is administered by the history faculty, who send historians on controlled "drops" into the past, allowing for paradoxes and slippages and whatnot. Kivrin is young and very dedicated and wants to go the Middle Ages, the first historian to do so; her longsuffering tutor, Dunworthy, wishes she wouldn't, but knows he can't stop her. And so she goes, and Dunworthy stays behind, and the point of view alternates between them.
There is a disease in modern Oxford, beginning to creep; in the past, there is a great deal afoot, which is obscured and made mysterious very effectively by how Willis writes Kivrin's disorientation. The details of both places are beautifully written, beautifully realised, and the research on the past that must have been done is palpable. Even so, I mostly prefer Dunworthy's sections with their larger, more vibrant cast - Colin, the unfortunate small boy trapped in the Oxford quarantine is an unexpexted joy, and so is Dunworthy himself, a quiet epicentre of chaos.
(Note: a lot of people criticise this novel because so much of the plot could be resolved by the invention of the mobile phone, which had been invented when I came up to Oxford in 2005, so it is a great shame that Willis doesn't include it; but that said, her particular type of plotty politicking couldn't work otherwise (Passage and Lincoln's Dreams wouldn't work with mobile phones, either), and it's easy to suspend one's disbelief when the rest of the novel is so richly written.)
In the end, the novel comes across as a real achievement - it balances theme, plot and character beautifully, with some oddly effective mirroring between times (the absent Head of History, Basingame, for example, ends up playing much the same role in the twenty-first century as God does in the fourteenth), and it never does anything easy, or simplistic. Not as technicaly sophisticated as To Say Nothing of the Dog, set in the same universe, but deeper.
The tale tells of Kivrin, a student of history, who travels back in time to the middle ages and mistakenly finds herself arriving at the moment of the Black Plague's introduction to England. At the same time a mysterious outbreak occurs in the "present day" (2048). The first two thirds of the book is light-hearted. Whatever anxiety is introduced feels hypochondriacal, self-pitying, and silly. In the present day people lark around a university that has Hogwarts overtones. In the past, Kivrin worries about the same things over and over again with little variation for 300 pages. The writing is entertaining, but essentially nothing occurs for a good portion of the book.
Then somewhere about two thirds of the way through there is a dramatic change in tone that I can only imagine matches something occurring in Willis' life. You don't just change a book like that on purpose. That is, it goes from worrying about bureaucracy to worrying about the death of humanity, from Kivrin's redundant anxieties to watching everyone die around her. I feel like I went straight from Woody Allen to the opening segment of Saving Private Ryan.
Now perhaps this was intentional, perhaps Willis spent so much time developing the normal state of life in order to emphasize the contrast when plague truly hit. But I do wish the pacing had worked better. I wish that it seemed less like two different books. I liked both of them. The beginning was entertaining, the end was suitably harrowing. This was enjoyable and nicely researched but it could have been such a great book, and after reading it I must say I grew nostalgic for that book that never was.
Why, oh why does everyone in the Oxford of 2050 sound as if they came from 1950? I can cope with the picture of the future when the book was written being different from what we might envisage today (although the lack of mobile phones is a little odd given when it was written) but the picture that's presented just doesn't seem believable. It's like a Disneyfied, Hollywood, picture of England where everyone speaks with a cut-glass accent and has a stiff upper lip. It's just too formal, and too religious, and just well wrong ... And at the same time it's not different enough from the real world to form a credible alternate universe, like the Oxford that Philip Pullman creates for Lyra in The Northern Lights which in contrast seems just right ...
And if you're creating a book where the plot hinges on the nature of the deadly diseases that are ravaging the fourteenth and the twenty-first centuries, you would do a little bit of research on what deadly diseases are a possibility, wouldn't you? Is it the cholera? asks Lady Eliwys in the fourteenth century. Well actually, no it isn't as cholera didn't find it's way to the UK from India until the 1830's. And Kivrin assures herself that the illness she is suffering from couldn't possibly be malaria as it had never been endemic to England. Well actually yes it was, when England was a much marshier place than it is now malaria was very endemic, except that they called it ague instead.
And the whole organisation of the time-travelling itself just seemed a disaster waiting to happen. Why on earth would you send time travellers into an unknown situation on their own? It makes no sense at all. I mean Britain is still part of the EU in this future world, so where are the health and safety regulations, the risk assessments, the government committees governing time travel?
I know I'm taking it all too seriously, but there were just so many things that irritated me! And it's such a shame because underneath everything there was a good book waiting to get out. But overall the irritation won and so I don't think I'll be trying any more Connie Willis.
(It's also amusing to see a book published in 1993 predicting videophones and time travel in the 2020s, but not cell phones! Half of the book involves people desperately trying to get ahold of other people on clogged land lines! How ridiculous!)
The story alternates smoothly between past and future. While the time travel aspect still feels futuristic, unfortunately the pandemic scenario does not with the recent Ebola outbreak reaching all the way to Europe and the United States. Telecommunications technology is the most glaring anomaly in the future section of the novel. Telephones include video, but they're all landlines. Mobile phone use wasn't nearly as widespread when this book was first published as it is more than twenty years later, but it did exist then, and I would have thought anyone imagining the future at that time would anticipate its growth, if not its explosion within the next decade.
Several characteristics of this book will appeal to readers who normally don't read science fiction or fantasy. Many historical fiction fans will like the focus on the Middle Ages. YA readers will identify with Kivrin and 12-year-old Colin, who has a prominent role in the story. Readers whose interests lean more towards literary fiction may appreciate the imagery and themes woven throughout the book that provoke reflection on religious faith and doubt, research and medical ethics, and culture.
When a friend recommended To Say Nothing of the Dog, I learned about this title too, but was afraid to read it because I'd heard it was sad. It was an excellent read, however, and I'm sorry I put it off as long as I did. The two stories and times, Kivrin in the 1300s and Mr. Dunworthy in 2054, are well-balanced, switching off every few chapters, and building the tension perfectly. The story is dark at times and even heartbreaking, but humor, particularly through the characters of Colin and Mrs. Gaddson, keeps the story from becoming depressing. I came to really care about many of the people that Kivrin meets - especially Father Roche, Agnes, and Rosemund - as well as loving Colin, who was often used for humorous effect but still struck me as a realistic twelve-year-old boy. I hope I get to read more about him when All Clear comes out in the fall.
Other than that it's hard to really describe this one. As I was reading other more negative reviews, I could see where most of their writers were coming from. If you are looking for a particularly fast paced novel, this probably isn't the book to pick up. It steadily works it's way towards the conclusion without cutting corners or forgetting to detail the mediaeval world that makes this book so engrossing. The modern storyline could become tedious, but I found the way Willis tied the two together engaging. Without Dunworthy's story, I'm afraid the message of historical repetition would have been lost on me. The future also let in the comic relief that was necessary to cut the high drama of the mediaeval sections for me.
I can see why this was given so many awards, it was well researched and put together and allowed me to recall the power of storytelling (something I believe every good novel should do). This is highly recommended to those who like science fiction, historical fiction, or stories of good and evil.
The very beginning of the story showed great promise, and I found all the details about 14th century England fascinating, but I felt that for at least the first half of the narrative barely anything happened at all and we were circling round the same details over and over again, as if in a bad dream. The same information kept being repeated countless times and I quickly lost patience and was ready to give up, but so many fans of this book assured me it was well worth the effort that I stuck to it. The story that finally emerges is a good one, but I would probably have enjoyed it more had there been a serious weeding job done, since so much of the book was taken up with what seemed like filler. Had the novel been cut by half, I would probably have given it at least four stars, but as it is I have a hard time believing that it won prestigious awards, and was tempted to give it two stars for all the frustration I went through in the process. I think I found a reasonable compromise. You might love it completely, and then again, you may not.
The book is written pretty well (with the glaring exception of an extreme repetitiveness, especially in the medieval sections, of events, character thoughts, and even words), and one does get sort of caught up in the book, but it doesn't really DO anything. I kept waiting for a reveal (about history, about time travel, about the characters, about anything), but it never comes. The parallels between the two stories were interesting (especially those to do with faith in an unseen savior), but they never rose to the level of theme, never became what the book was about. The book is supposed to be an excellent piece of science fiction, but as the only science fictional aspect (the time travel) is never explained or explored, I don't see where it gets the label "science fiction," never mind "excellent." Disappointing, perhaps most because it comes so close to being very good indeed.
For a Hugo and Nebula winner, I felt this book underperformed. In my opinion, the real genre of this book is historical fiction. Anything that had to do with the time travel, or "science" was glossed over with the barest of explanation. I still have no idea how the time machine worked, yet with any mention of a time "fix" it seem presumed that we knew what that meant. For another example, the author explains away the problems of time paradoxes by saying (paraphrasing) "Time does not allow time travellers to disrupt anything important in temporal history. If it is important, the person the machine won't allow the time fix and we can't send the person back". I'm really sorry, but that feels like a huge cop out. Don't worry about paradoxes! Time doesn't let them happen! Forget about it! As a Trekker since I was two years old, I have a massive affection to what is known as the "Temporal Prime Directive". And because of it, any book I read about time travel I expect some sort of rational explanation of how people make sure they don't accidentally kill the Lincoln's mother, or something-or-other. The fact that this book kept glossing over any "Sci-Fi", irritated me throughout the book.
However, anything that had to do with history and the Middle Ages was amazing. Willis obviously did a lot of research and is able to craft a tale where I felt I learned so much about the early 1300s while this part of the story was engaging. You really feel the muck, the dirt and the disease that was prevalent at this time. The relationships between an individual, their community and how they see their place with the world was thoroughly explored. The author even uses an ingenious way of making the reader learn how Middle English evolved and was spoken. You feel for Kivrin as she tries to fit into this world even though many of her assumptions (and the history texts) were wrong.
In the end, I only give could only give this book an average rating. There were a lot of plot devices and plot holes that should have been tied up at the end, but were not. There were too many instances of where I couldn't become engaged in the story because it asked to turn off the rational part of my brain (ie. Why would a newly-graduated student be allowed to time jump to a dangerous period alone? Wouldn't you send her to the 1960s first for some experience? Why do people go alone - that seems dumb?). The time travel explanations irked me and Willis didn't incorporate new and obvious technologies when she wrote this in the early 1990s such as the coming age of cellphones (everyone in the book has a land line in the mid 2050s). It seemed that the author put all her effort into researching history and none into researching time travel and science.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a great page-turner (don't start it if you have anything urgent to do).
I found it somehow comforting that Oxford in 2054 is very similar to Oxford today, with academic turf wars, bacon and eggs for breakfast, and students reading Petrarch. It's also very nice to see that the NHS is still functioning, but less so to see that people are still protesting against Europe and against immigration. Then again, as the book goes on, you start to think that perhaps human nature hasn't changed all that much since the middle ages - when faced with disaster, people still flee, stay and help, blame outsiders or perceive the just wrath of God.
One small thing - it's funny how dated the past's view of the future can seem. I wouldn't blink if I read a book set in 1992 where people watch videos and don't have mobiles, but it still seems strange that 1992's view of the future is like that. Mind you, that was something I only noticed at the very start - soon I was drawn into the story and past quibbling with little details.
Sample sentence: "You have no business wearing white to the Middle Ages," he'd said. "It will only get dirty."
Recommended for: anyone who wants a good story and isn't put off by the label of 'science fiction'.
The story line takes two paths, one follows Mr. Dunworthy, a professor at Oxford in the near future (mid 21st century). It is here that historians not only study history, but observe it. Trained as time travelers, they visit the time periods they wish to study. It is in this Oxford that an epidemic of enfluenza breaks out, just as Kivrin, a history student is sent back to 1320, just prior to the outbreak of the Black Death. While Dunworthy runs around trying to get Kivrin back from the middle ages, everyone around him falls ill, and he finds himself frustratingly trying to track down the source of the flu and the head of the University, while setting up sick wards, etc. It is this story line most people find fault with, but Willis does a good job of pulling Dunworthy in so many directions that he couldn't possibly get anything accomplished. He becomes the father figure who is impotent to save his student from imagined horrors, while he can scarcely do anything to help those around him falling like flies due to the modern day horrors of an unidentified flu strain.
The second story line follows Kivrin into the middle ages and into the lives of "contemps." WIllis has created a much more engaging story here, in which Kivrin becomes part of these peoples' lives, and we begin to question the time travel paradox laid out before us. Is it really true that time travelers cannot affect the lives and outcomes of those they come in contact with. As the story progresses, we see Kivrin figure out that she is not in 1320, and we watch as she struggles to save the people around her.
Has she infected the people she's come into contact with? Has she changed the future? Will she ever manage to get back to 21st century Oxford? and in the end, will it matter?
This is an engaging read, if slow and frustrating at times. The ending, while full of sadness, is the story's (& the characters') redemption. Willis weaves the two stories together with a loose thread, but the connections are very palpable and hold true. Read Dooms Day Book with a willingness to experience the failings and hopefulness of the human condition, then go out and do something fun.
Time travel mechanics were far to obviously only there for dramatic effect. "The engines cannae take it Cap'n" or "Reverse the Polarity!" would have been just as convincing. The phone system firmly rooted in the 50's, People make trunk
These are however mere mechanics, a background on which is displayed with humour and pathos a well drawn cast. The humour in particular suprised me I had dreaded an unremittingly depressing read but the first two thirds, especially the long suffering Mr Dunsworthy's encounters with bellringers and bureaucrats not to mention the Gaddsons. were levened with wit.
It is only when the plague strikes that things darken, by which time we are well and truely bound up in our characters lives with emotional attachments that tear with each terrible event.
"Doomsday Book" follows two parallel stories separated by about 500 years. 50 years in the future, history Professor James Dunworthy finds himself caught amidst an epidemic, trapped in a
Willis carves out parallel paths between the present and past. Characters from both worlds mirror each other and reflect what's different in each era and what remains very much the same. Both paths have religious intolerants, blindly blaming sickness under a pretense of godly rationale. Both tell stories of hope and courage in face of intolerable odds. Both stories tell stories of how religion effects people - both believers and non alike. All of this is strung together by disease running rampant across the modern and historic England.
The story is thick and rich. Each world is built very steadily and is framed in the minutiae of life's daily details. Through these details, a very character-driven story emerges and this is what ultimately led to my enjoyment of the book. Kivrin's relationship with two young girls who live in the home in which she recovers is the most potent. A bond develops quickly, and Willis writes with a tone and palette and that feels very genuine, both in time period and in the voice of youths. Dunworthy develops a relationship with a friend's great-nephew, Colin. This relationship is paralleled by Kivrin's to the girls, and sewn together by the touching relationship between teacher and student.
The middle 150 pages or so includes a lot of hand wringing and anxiety. Credit to Willis for writing it such that I couldn't help but feel the worry as well. Willis' purpose in pushing the reader through this development becomes apparent only in the final 150 pages when the story screams to its conclusion. There were times when I felt the story's mysteries were obvious, but in fact they weren't. Only towards the end did I truly understand why Willis spent as many words building relationships, characters and environments as she did.
The book is as much historical fiction as it is science fiction. It's not a light read, but it's deep and satisfying.
I didn't think this was a great book, but I did think it was a great story. The early
Despite that - and despite the book being very nearly 600 pages long - I read it straight through in about 12 hours. I read straight through 600 pages of irritating characters because Willis made me care and she made me think. She made me care about the characters, and about whether they lived or died. She made me think about what it means to give and to live and to serve, and about what we're really here for. She made me feel Kivrin's pain and Colin's excitement and Dunworthy's anxiety. She made me grieve for a fictional character.
The book has flaws - but the storytelling is extraordinary.
A strange influenza, impervious to all modern vaccines, spreads throughout Oxford, beginning with the tech who facilitated Kivrin's drop. As the quarantine creates a race against time, Dunworthy searches for another tech and permission to re-open the lab in time for Kivrin's return. He has no way of knowing that she brought the influenza back in time with her, was tended by the family who found her and is now desperately trying to get someone to show her the place where she was found which will be the spot where the "net" should appear to take her home. But even that dilemma takes a back seat when she discovers that (through an error made by the ailing tech) she is actually in 1348 - the year that the plague decimated England.
It's a wild ride. Kivrin heroically tends to the family she's come to know as the pandemic spreads mercilessly. There's a lot of lancing of bulboes, spewing of blood, filthy rags, rats running amuck. Willis is magnificent in creating this world of horror and hopelessness.
In both worlds, as the deaths mount and the reader wonders how it will all end, communication is the biggest problem. Kivrin is desperate to interview the man who found her but she's impeded by the strictures of a maiden addressing any man and his constantly being sent away on missions. Dunworthy is desperately searching for another tech willing to enter the quarantined area and for the missing Oxford president - who seems to have gone fishing in Scotland and has no idea of the epidemic.
And here is where science fiction has its problems: writing this book in 1992, Willis would have had no notion that cell phones would be rampant a decade later and that the idea of people not being able to contact each other immediately in 2054 would be absurd. So we have Dunworthy asking people to stay in his flat to await a call while he takes off on another emergency. A young teenager is pressed into service as a messenger and appears with bits of paper that he delivers across the campus. Today's reader can be forgiven for imagining an Oxford circa 1950 (before answering machines!) instead of the future.
But true sci fi lovers can and do look past that. While I don't include myself in that group, I thought the storytelling was marvelous and highly recommend it: the incredibly moving ending alone is worth the read.
In 2054, Oxford is using time travel to amend and correct historical records, and so it allows Kivrin, a young woman studying history, to go back to 1320 for research. Unfortunately,
The book alternates between 2054 and 1348 as the historians try to get Kivrin back, and as Kivrin fights for her life. As we get to know the people with whom Kivrin stays in 1348 and learn to care about them, we live through the Plague as vividly and poignantly as she does. And we live through Kivrin’s terror that she may never get back.
Connie Willis is a remarkable author for several reasons. One is that she so thoroughly researches her work that this account of Medieval England is as extensive and accurate as any you will get in any academic study. The second is that books by Willis focus extensively on miscommunications – sentences only half spoken, or misunderstood, or never conveyed, or conveyed too late, or lost in dreams. The tragic as well as comedic consequences of not communicating well are a recurring theme in her work and serve to provide dramatic tension as well as sociological commentary.
This book is classified as scifi rather than historical fiction, but it could certainly be well-suited in either category.
I do really like
It is interesting to have reread it while the world is in a state of pandemic. There are aspects which are not at all surprising with my new found knowledge of human behaviour. And it reminds me again how perceptive Willis is about the psychology of humans, and their love for bureaucracy.