To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (3.5 stars)

After loving most of The Doomsday Book (but really hating some of it), I decided I'd back it up with some more Connie Willis.

Interestingly after reading this, the Doomsday Book makes a bit more sense. The humour in Doomsday seemed really out of place, and...terrible, but in this novel it is much much better and even got me to chuckle a few times.

I see now that the author was trying a similar thing in Doomsday, but it just completely flopped. The humour in this one, and the overall absurd tone, reminded me quite a lot of Catch-22. Especially with Lady Schrapnell's relentless pursuit of the historians to "fly" missions back in time for the damn birdstump:

A thought struck me. “Could I be admitted to Infirmary?” I said hopefully. If anyone could keep Lady Schrapnell out, it would be those Grand Inquisitors, the ward nurses. “Put in isolation or something?”

 Colonel Mering was far and away the most absurd and most hilarious of all the characters:

Twaddle!” Colonel Mering said, which pretty much completed the collection of explosive Victorian disclaimers.

And Professor Peddick was the worst. Because he was basically non-stop history in-jokes which I didn't get at all...

“It is the very image of the field of Blenheim,” Professor Peddick said. “Look, yonder the village of Sonderheim and beyond it Nebel Brook. It proves my point exactly. Blind forces! It was the Duke of Marlborough who won the day!

Some of my favourite funny bits:

“Terence St. Trewes, at your service,” Terence said and doffed his boater, which unfortunately still had a good deal of water in the brim. It sent a shower over Mrs. Mering.

“Ah,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “I am so pleased to meet you, Mr. Henry. Allow me to introduce my flower garden.” I had gotten so used to having people say nonsensical things to me in the last few days that it didn’t even faze me.

But this was Baine we were talking about, clearly the forerunner of Jeeves, and Jeeves had always known everything.

And as in Doomsday, I quite liked the idea that history had a protective mechanism that wouldn't let you modify important events. It's a pivotal part of this novel, and actually really clever:

So it must not have caused an incongruity, because if it would have, the net wouldn’t have opened. That’s what had happened the first ten times Leibowitz had tried to go back to assassinate Hitler. The eleventh he’d ended up in Bozeman, Montana in 1946. And nobody’s ever been able to get close to Ford’s Theater or Pearl Harbor or the Ides of March. Or Coventry. 

and it makes for a great ending.

3.5 stars.

PS. There are mobile phones!!! Where were they in Doomsday? It drove me nuts.

I stuck the handheld in my blazer pocket, picked up the bishop’s bird stump, and started down the stairs with it. The handheld rang.