The Middle Ages are a shady back alley of history. They are a juvenile delinquent to which all the 'proper' historical eras give the proverbial side-eye. “Life expectancy in 1300 was thirty-eight years,” he had told her when she first said she wanted to go to the Middle Ages, “and you only lived that long if you survived cholera and smallpox and blood poisoning, and if you didn’t eat rotten meat or drink polluted water or get trampled by a horse. Or get burned at the stake for witchcraft.”And yet, despite the filth, the ignorance, the ever-present dangers, the rats and the Plague - the dreaded Black Death that wiped out a third to a half of Europe - a young Oxford history student Kivrin Engle gets her way: to be sent to the Middle Ages for a few weeks of full-immersion research armed with nothing else but a voice recorder to create her own version of the Domesday Book, an account of what it was to live in those times. “She’s seven hundred years from home, Dunworthy thought, in a century that didn’t value women enough to even list their names when they died.” Nothing could go wrong on this carefully planned time travel, of course - well, except for nothing going as expected: the sudden severe illness, the incomprehensible language that apparently was very different from what we thought Middle English was supposed to be like, the inability to find the place from which she is supposed to be transported back into the present. Oh, and a slight mistake that happened during her time travel - the mistake Kivrin is unaware of, the one that resulted in her arriving not in the relatively boring 1320, but in a slightly more eventful 1348, the year the Black Death made in appearance in England. “People who have the plague don’t wonder if they have it. They’re too busy dying.” “Nothing, she thought. There’s nothing you can do. It swept through village after village, killing whole families, whole towns. One third to one half of Europe.” ----------Despite what textbooks have you believe, history is not only about the columns of dates, the battles, the pivotal events, and the decisions made by those in power. History is about people, and even though everything around them may change over hundreds of years, people remain the same in their essential humanity. “They’ve all died, she thought, and couldn’t make herself believe it. They’ve all been dead over seven hundred years.”And that's how Doomsday Book packs such a powerful emotional punch with the sci-fi time travel story turned historical observation turned historical tragedy. Because Connie Willis makes you, the reader, slowly inhabit the world she imagines and come to care about the people she creates. To me, the bunch of characters in the story of the Middle Ages slowly became people, with realistic flaws and strengths, with motivations and desires that are colored by the gap of seven hundred years and yet so relatable in their humanity, and with lives unfolding along their own trajectories until an unstoppable force of nature rolls over them, leading to a tragedy grief-stricken Kivrin can best compare to "The slaughter of the innocents.” Through the strength of Willis' writing, they come to life, reflecting history the way it unfolds - through the stories of people who live that history, strands blending together to create a broad tapestry. “Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose.She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.”The trivial concerns, the petty squabbles, the bloated righteous selfishness - all of this disappears once the horror strikes, and it's the last third of the book that becomes so powerful as we through the eyes of Kivrin see the tragedy that cannot be stopped, see the people who rise above the everyday pettiness and become heroes when necessity calls. And as Kivrin first almost mantra-like hopefully and the with the tired and angry resentment recalls the percentages that perished in the Black Death onslaught, the realization hits - it does not matter whether everyone died or some survived because they all, every single one, the brave and the weak and the innocent and the scheming and the petty and the evil and the stupid and the saint-like - they all mattered, all of them, every single one, "frightened and brave and irreplaceable". “I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.” This bell, as we all know, "tolls for you" - tolls for all of us.----------------And yet I know this book was not nearly perfect, despite my sincere love for it. I see where those who found this book unpalatable come from. There is a reason why, after devouring this book twice in a month, I reread it again - but only half this time, skipping all the modern day chapters and instead choosing to remain in the Middle Ages with Kivrin. Because yes, the present-day parts have flaws that stand out like a sore thumb. The endless scrambling around to get a hold of someone just to figure out that the landlines are not working properly. The characters inserted for little but comic relief. The seriously stretched parallels to the things Kivrin experiences in the Middle Ages. The most annoying child character since that kid in the second Indiana Jones film (Colin, you make me go into a near-murderous rage every time your 'necrotic' whine appears on page!). “Most of it was terrible,” she said softly, “but there were some wonderful things.”But all this - at least for me - is so easily overshadowed by the magic the Middle Ages sections hold. And all this, as I discovered, is so easy to just flip through and ignore while searching for the next Kivrin section. And so to me the flaws are there, but not quite there, and I choose to skim them without hesitation.Because falling in love with a book is no different than falling in love with a person. You don't stop seeing the flaws; it's just that the connection you feel is stronger than any flaws can ever be. “I got it all on the corder,” she said. “Everything that happened.”Like John Clyn, he thought, looking at her ragged hair, her dirty face. A true historian, writing in the empty church, surrounded by graves. I, seeing so many evils, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed. Lest things which should be remembered perish with time.Kivrin turned her palms up and looked at her wrists in the twilight. “Father Roche and Agnes and Rosemund and all of them,” she said. “I got it all down.”
Well, I can safely say this is the best book I’ve ever read about time-traveling historians and deadly diseases that kill a shit ton of people.And no, it’s not the only book I’ve read about that! I read Timeline about ten years ago, although I barely remember it. Anyway, I love Michael Crichton books, but Connie Willis’s writing is on a whole other level. Although they both write science fiction, Crichton was first and foremost a thriller writer, and judging by Doomsday Book, Willis is more interested in the intricacies of day to day life. Conflict in her writing is mined not from twists and turns and a frantic plot, but from the minutiae of interpersonal relationships.I think the thing I love most about Doomsday Book is that it manages to make something nerdy–time travel–even nerdier just by making its heroes historians. They don’t want to time travel to save the world or to have adventures. They want to learn stuff! On top of that, this is a world where time travel is an accepted scientific precept, and the world is completely fine with it being controlled by a bunch of people who want to use it to find out whether or not people in the Middle Ages rang one bell or two at the death of a noble, or whatever else nerd thing they want to know. And that’s frigging fantastic.The actual story involves Oxford student and proto-historian Kivrin traveling back in time to 1320. She will be the first person to travel back to the Middle Ages, previously a restricted time period, and she’s doing so against the advice of her mentor, the other main character in the novel, Dunworthy. Kivrin is his favorite pupil, and he spends most of the novel worrying over her like a mother hen. Rightly, as it turns out. Things go badly on her end of the time travel pretty much from the get go, and in ways no one expected. They’re not so great in the present day, either, as a pandemic of a new and very strong flu-virus begins killing people all throughout Oxfordshire.Right away, the tone of the novel grabbed me. I loved Willis’s prose, how quaint everything felt, even as they were messing about with more futuristic technologies. It was a bit weird that even though it takes place in the 2050s, cell phones don’t exist and the characters have to rely on these weird videophones, but the book was written before 1992, so I’ll cut it some slack in that department. I also think at points it was a bit too reliant on the trivial actions of its characters, both in the past with Kivrin and in the future with Dunworthy. There’s a LOT of Dunworthy trying to track down people by phone and then waiting for phone calls that gets a bit exasperating. And all the characters in the Middle Ages we end up getting to know through their daily actions more than we do their interactions (i.e. conversation) with Kivrin.But somehow it all works. The sections in the present and harrowing and confusing, as we watch Dunworthy deal with the outbreak all the while trying to figure out what’s going on with Kivrin. And it especially works as the novel approaches its endpoint in the Middle Ages. I won’t spoil it just in case you don’t manage to guess the unbelievably obvious twist before it happens, but the last 250 pages of the novel are brilliant.This is definitely a book worth picking up, but I would maybe leave it alone if you’re in the mood for something light. It’s by no means an emotionally torturous book, but it does pack a heavy wallop.
What do You think about Doomsday Book (1992)?
The Doomsday Book is an ambitious “soft” SF novel that borrows its title from the famous “Domesday Book” completed in 1086. Despite sharing names, the two works have only a little in common. The original was a survey of land and property holdings in England and Wales undertaken for William I (aka William the Conqueror) which was to set the basis for taxation. (Happily for historians it records details of life that would otherwise be lost to us.) The modern one is a novel and also a dictation within the novel that records the people, lifestyles, society and conditions of early 14th Century England.I consider it ambitious because the novel tells twin stories: one set in a future where time travel is possible and the other set in the past of a town near Oxford. Because time travel is extant, this is nominally a science fiction story, but the ability to do so is part of the background. It is not easy, nor is it commonplace, but it has become a research tool for historians. The rest of the book is part mystery novel and part historical novel. Although we see further glimpses of future technology, these are very limited (and it turns out somewhat divergent from what has occurred in the past 20-odd years since it was written).I can’t verify the accuracy of the historical content, but it seems that the author has done her homework. For the little that I was familiar with (medicinal plants and treatment) everything seemed correct. The “technology” that she establishes for Medieval England appears to be accurate, also. As such, I take it on faith that her information about language evolution, consonal shift (and other variations of pronunciation) and lifestyle is also correct.As for the modern part of the story, the information about infectious diseases and medical treatments are pretty good, including the advancements she postulates. She creates a believable scenario for a community under quarantine.Without spoilers, that’s about all I can say. For those that want more, I’ve included some “protected” material below. I’ll add that the author resolves the plots pretty well.Kivrin’s Adventure(view spoiler)[Even though she was disoriented and ill when she first meets Father Roche, I thought it was a bit too contrived that she doesn’t realize who he is until long after her recovery. Because he is painted as such a devout and dedicated village priest, I would have expected him to pay a visit to her once she began to get well. I did like the confusion that Gawyn is the only one who can lead her to the drop site when, of course, it is Father Roche in his alter ego of the cutthroat (in her fevered imagination) who found her.I was also expecting that her knowledge of hygienic procedures in treating infectious diseases would put her under earlier and deeper suspicion, but except for Lady Imeyne’s natural distrust it doesn’t become a significant factor. For once the first outbreak of plague is seen, she is given free reign in how the patients are treated both in and out of the manor house.To her horror, instead of being sent to 1320, which is over two decades before the plague reached Oxford, she was sent to 1348 which is exactly when it marched through from Bath. Trying to combat the disease in the local village allies her with Father Roche, but eventually causes her to miss the agreed-on “recovery date. (hide spoiler)]
—Mike
I think Connie Willis did a great job at portraying something so absolutely horrible that it defies comprehension. I had read about the plague that almost eradicated Europe, but nothing could prepare me for what I read here. The horrors of the Black Death seem to be something so far beyond anything we could imagine.. I found myself cringing and pleading: "she's not going to go there... she's not going to go there.. so when she does...it's devastating. The feeling of abandonment that these people had, coupled with the fact that they did not hold their religion to the casual standard that most people in this age do - that they really thought God, Angels, and Demons, were just as material as anything they could physically see and touch, made it that much more heart wrenching. I could tell Willis did a shitload of research in writing this book, and just for that, I really appreciated this. It was not a book without faults however, the chapters in contemporary times were not as interesting. Dunsworth and his "tasks" grew repetetive. It seems the author was tyring to create a parallel structure with the medieval and modern era, but it fell flat. Our heart was with Kivrin the entire time. Everything else was sort of irrelevant. As I say after I finish a Hamilton book: "Good, but needed to trim alot more fat."I think Willis was trying to make a point about the fragility of the human experience by diametrically opposing a plague in the 14th century with one in the 21st, but I never really felt too terrified with the events in contemporary times. Most of that horror seems to happen "off camera". Not so much with Kivrin's chapters though. This book really isn't for everyone. I had nightmares and I still think about this book more than most of the fiction I read, because while this is a fictionalized account, it really happened. I can't help but place myself in some of those situations and start sweating. Wllis does a great job at making these characters more than just numbers in a history book. Trust me when I tell you that you will feel it. The technology described was not as impressive, but I can forgive her for not being a wonderful prognasticator of technology back in 1991 - for God's sakes, the internet was in its infantile stages back then. How could I expect her to predict telecommunications in the year 2054? The Time travel itself had very interesting rules with the slippage, but not alot of thought went into the mechanism itself, which was a little disappointing, but it didn't take anything away from the novel. In my opinion, time travel is pretty much the stuff of fantasy anyways, which is ok, so I"m not going to get bothered by it. It's speculative fiction after all, so we don't always need all the answers. So the bottom line was that it was a solid book that was sometimes oppresively dark, but light on the technical details and feasibility of the technology. It was a bit too long and repetitive at times. Could've served as a novella in my opinion. Powerful story- Kivrin's sections were wonderful to read, which were about half the book. Could just as easily be a 3 or 3.5 star, but the fact I still think about these characters this long after I've finished the book, elevates it to a 4.
—Guillermo
Fast-forward a few years hence to Oxford, and then travel all the way back to the 14th century with this gem of a book. In the process a Pandora's box is opened and the contents revealed.I prefer to say less rather than more in order not to spoil this story for you, and for that reason most of my thoughts on the book are between spoiler tags. Let me just say that it has become possible to send historians back in time so that they can observe and participate in events as they happen. But what if? Follow these parallel 21st century and 14th century stories to find out. It is a 600 page opus and perhaps does not move fast enough for everyone's taste, but it is well worth persevering. The characterisation is excellent. There is an interesting cast of characters in both the 21st century and the 14th. I had my heart in my mouth for them and I laughed, cheered and cried with them. Horror, sorrow and grief abound, but there is also much humour to balance it - of both the wry and the laugh-out-loud varieties. Egos of academics clash and back in the Middle Ages there is friction at home. There are a few oddities. For example, at one stage (in the 21st century section) they all scramble to use the phone. In this day and age where phones seem to be glued to people's hands, wrists or ears it seems oddly old-fashioned.(view spoiler)[If you would like to know what it was like during the Black Death, this novel will give you a very good idea - maybe even a nightmare or two. Bye-bye any romantic ideas that one might harbour about the Middle Ages.I was struck by the following:a) that Kivrin understood the problems and had the knowledge to heal or solve, but was unable to do so;b) and then the guilt: "I should have... I should have...";c) her difficulty of not inserting modern idiom into her speech;d) her realisation as she joined festivities that these people had been dead for 700 years;e) the question of whether life in the Middle Ages was as we perceive it;f) that some things like ignorance, prejudice and fear mongering don't change - they have travelled with us through the centuries;g) Finch's obsessive concern about the lack of lavatory paper in the midst of major crises.h) the medieval view that if she did not remember anything, how could she remember how to speak?I liked that Kivrin dropped the phony identity and instead pretended loss of memory. Also, that things weren't always as they seemed - for example, the kindly priest with the cutthroat appearance. (hide spoiler)]
—Marita
