To Say Nothing Of The Dog (1998) - Plot & Excerpts
TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, or How I stopped worrying about the space-time continuum and learned to love discontinuityThis review about a novel concerning time travel is a bit of an exercise in time travel, itself. I had gone to add a book to my to-read shelf and there sat To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis as big as life. Now that can't be right, I thought. I read this in 2010. I loved this book. I'm sure I even reviewed it. I thought. Therefore, there are no read dates I can assign to this, other than it was early 2010, either January, or February. Well, well. Almost two years. How time flies. Call it a facet of the aging process. That's a phrase my wife taught me after a fall she had. I did tell her not to wear those shoes, clunky platform sandals, that she would catch the sole on something or other and that she would hit the dirt. And she did, going to get her new car tag, which an officer had been so kind to remind her was, oh, expired by about a year.I'm sitting in my doctor's office when I get a call on my cell from a strange man asking are you married to...yep, my wife. "Uh-huh." There's a bit of silence on the other end of the phone, then he blurts, "Well, she's fallen in front of the courthouse annex and she looks pretty bad." "Uhm, Doc, how bout you check out your next patient, MJ fell and I gotta go get her. We'll be back. You'll get a twofer today."So, up to the annex where I know everybody from being a courthouse regular. A lady looks up, "Oh. She's in the back." I skip around the corner. There's my wife wearing those clunky platform sandals with a bag of ice over her face. I gingerly pulled it away and winced."Dey were bery dice. I got by dag." She said, pointing to the tag in her lap."Uh-huh. Come on, we're going back to the Doc's. Thanks everybody for taking care of her." She had caught the sole of her shoe on the curb and slammed face first onto the sidewalk. In a way, it was where the sidewalk ended--for her that day. Oh, that was bad. She told me so on the way to the Doc's.Back at the Doc's ranch, things were jumping. The waiting room was full. I signed in again and signed in my wife as well. About this time she's tapping me on the shoulder and announces: "And ib ooo eber boo anyding lige dad agin, I'b galling de bolice."You could have heard a pin drop. Then she gives this goofy grin and says "I was only kidding." The receptionist rescued me and said she really was, that I had told her as I blew by her on the way out that I was going to pick my wife up who had fallen. AND...He's the director of the domestic violence shelter.There was a mass sigh of relief. I could hear my pulse diminishing in my ears.Only, after the Doc patched her up, MJ would be in mid-sentence and wouldn't be able to come up with a word, like, dog for instance. So the Doc does a referral to a neurologist who ultimately says she has a visceral loop, it's ok, and everything should be fine, to say nothing about not being able to say dog.I overheard MJ calling her brother when we got home. She was explaining her diagnosis, saying, "I have a...vaginal loop." I can hear her brother's loud "WHAT?" from across the room, got on the other extension and explained things.Everything was fine. My wife got all her words back, particularly when issuing opinions, suggestions, instructions, imprimaturs, and so on.So, I must have had some kind of visceral loop (Is that a real diagnosis? I'm thinking she substituted visceral for something else that started with a vee. I know it wasn't virginity. Wait, wait--it was venous!) when I forgot to shelve and review this great book.And you were wondering when we would get to this point. We're here. Think of it as traveling with children. After all the "When are we gonna get theres," you arrive at your destination.Connie Willisis one of my favorite speculative fiction writers. I say speculative as opposed to science fiction, not as a disparagement to science fiction, but because there's not a lot of science in this book. It is your basic time travel story, complete with the classic time travel paradox, i.e. don't change anything, you'll screw everything back in the present to heck and gone.Willis won the Hugo and Locus Awards for Best Science Fiction (I don't believe they have awards for speculative fiction, do they?) in 1998. She was nominated for the 1999 Nebula Award, but Joe Haldemanwon for Forever Peace. Well, you can't win 'em all. However, she has won eleven Hugos, Seven Nebulas, four Locus Awards, and the John W. Campbell Award for Lincoln's Dreams back in 1988. In short, she's damned good.Willis' best recognized works are set in Oxford in the 21st Century. Historians are constantly sent back in time to make sure things are going along swimmingly and to conduct historical research to see what really happened. After all, as we all know, history is written by the victors. Most of the "drops" back in time occur during World War II, focusing on the time of the Blitz, as something happened to really wreck the time continuum back then. Her other blockbuster, Doomsday Bookfocused on a drop to the 14th century. Can you say "Bubonic Plague?" I know you can!One of the features of Willis' time travel novels that especially appeals to me are her takes on the foibles of humanity. During the most dire of circumstances you will find some character or characters focusing on the most inconsequential matter while the world is falling apart around their ears. An example would be the Bell Ringers who are bent and determined on performing a bell performance at Christmas, although the plague has been brought to 2057 quite by accident.A word about the title: Willis dedicated To Say Nothing of the Dog to Robert HEINLEIN for introducing her to Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Jerome K. Jerome, published in 1889. It is a comic tale of a boating holiday on the Thames. The boating trip occurred. However, the dog, Montmorency, was completely fictional."To Say Nothing of the Dog" is the perfect title. Willis deals with two drops back into time. One, to 1889, to return something which a historian erroneously brought back from that time and the other being to a Cathedral that existed in Coventry which was bombed to smithereens by the Luftwaffe. Returning the item to 1889 is a real problem, because the only historian available to take the item back is poor Ned Henry, a specialist in 20th century history. He knows NOTHING about the 1880's. Further, he's made so many drops of late, he's developed time lag. By the time he gets to 1889, he's forgotten his destination and what he was to return. Well, here's a pretty howdy-do. Of course, who should he run into but Jerome K. Jerome and his boating pals. Comedy ensues.In the meanwhile, Lady Schrapnell, who is wealthier than any human deserves, has determined that she WILL have Coventry Cathedral restored just as it existed before it was bombed during WWII. Almost every historian has been assigned to the task of dropping back to make sure that things are done correctly. There's one slight problem. There was the "Bishop's Bird Stump," which seems to have gone missing. The problem is no one knows what the heck it looked like.Historian Verity Kindle who specializes in 1930's mystery fiction is sent back to read one Tossie Mering's diary, Tossie, an ancestor of Lady Schrapnell spoke of an event which caused her to elope with "Mr. C. who believes it may contain a clue as to what happened to the bird stump and what it looked like.Verity complicated things by unwittingly bringing Tossie's Cat back to 2057 where cats have become extinct. Prince Armujand, yes, that's his name, cute as he is, has to go back. That's a darned shame because everybody in 2057 at the time continuum project wants one.Will Ned remember what he's returning and where it belongs? Will Tossie be united with Prince? Will Tossie elope to America with the stranger, Mr. C? And just what the heck was that Bishop's Bird Stump?Think of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." Mix well with "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, toss with H.G. Well's "The Time Machine," and serve immediately.I won't tell you about the Bishop's Bird Stump, but it couldn't have been uglier than those clunky shoes of my wife. Of course, Victorian bric a brac could be so darned gauche.Time travel? Check. Adventure? Check. Romance? Check, check. Comedy of errors? Check, check, check. Comedy of Manners? Are you kidding me? People NEVER change! Time Travel? Oh, yeah. Puppies and Kitties? Got them, too.Rating: 4.5
We all like a good laugh don’t we? But for me comedy works best in TV shows or movies. Humour in print works best in shorter formats, like cartoon strips or magazine articles. I tend to find “comic novels” (not to be confused with graphic novels) problematical. The trouble is I keep expecting to laugh at every page and that is a tall order for the authors. I don’t expect to be thrilled by every page of a thriller or to be scared by every page of a horror novel so I don’t know why I have such a high expectation of comic novels. Just a personal quirk I guess. Consequently I tend to be less interested in comic novels because I find very few of them consistently funny through out the book.To Say Nothing of the Dog is a comic sci-fi novel, and it is a good one. It is not in the same league as Douglas Adamsor Robert Sheckley mind bendingly funny sf but it is a pleasant read and the humour works well enough from time to time. The style of humour is reminiscent of classic comic novels by P.G. Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde. Of course the title of the book is a tribute to Jerome K. Jerome’s classic Three Men in a Boat, a book I kind of dislike (review). I found it to be tedious, tame and almost mirth-free. Probably not Jerome’s fault it just did not work for me. Having read “Three Men” out of curiosity and as a sort of preparation for reading To Say Nothing of the Dog my subsequent dislike of it does not bode well for Connie Willis’ book. On the other hand I totally love her Doomsday Book, one of the finest sf books I read in the past few years. To Say Nothing of the Dog is part of Ms Willis' loosely connected Oxford Time Travel series which includes Doomsday Book but the tone is very different. While Doomsday Book is intense and tragic To Say Nothing of the Dog is almost entirely breezy. I persevered through the less than riveting first few chapters and eventually settled into enjoying the book.It would be a mistake to expect To Say Nothing of the Dog to be a sci-fi version of or tribute to Jerome’s book. Ms. Willis is clearly influenced by more diverse material than just one book. Her love for the crime fiction of Agatha ChristieAnd Dorothy L. Sayers is also evident. Best of all she did not neglect the sci-fi aspect of it, the book went on to win the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999, and also a Nebula Award nomination.What raises To Say Nothing of the Dog far above Three Men in a Boat is that there is more to it than just trying to elicit laughter. There is the intriguing logic and logistics of time travelling which Willis beautifully worked out. The characters are also generally amiable and as something of an anglophile myself I enjoy the British culture references like jumble sales, the “tube trains” and the Jeevsian acerbic butler dialogue.My only complaint is that for the most part there is very little sense of urgency to the proceeding (until the last two or three chapters). The lighthearted tone is maintained throughout the book and the story moves amiably at a leisurely pace. This led to my initial feeling that the novel is too tame, the stakes are too low. As it turn out all of time and space continuum is at stake and a sense of danger eventually appears toward the end as the main characters’ strive to repair “incongruities”, which is Willis’ term for time travelling paradoxes. I like that she is using a different term for these paradoxes from the standard time travelling stories it somehow makes the story seem more believable.To Say Nothing of the Dog is not a laugh-a-minute book, it is not a complete success as a comic novel, but neither is it a failure. More importantly as a lighthearted time travelling sci-fi novel it is worth a read. Just don’t go into it with the wrong expectations.(3.5 stars)
What do You think about To Say Nothing Of The Dog (1998)?
Well, I finally found out what a penwiper is. She started to write and then stopped and frowned at the pen. She pulled an orange dahlia penwiper out of her pocket."What are you doing?" I said."Wiping my pen," she said. She stuck the pen into the dahlia and wiped it off between the layers of cloth."It's a penwiper," I said. "A pen wiper! It's used to wipe pens!"So obvious, in hindsight, and possible in foresight as well, but that's penwipers for you. That's Willis for you, as well, because her foreshadowing is second to none. Chekhov said that, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off," and this is a principle to which Willis clings. She scatters her rifles throughout the book, some glaring and some subtle, and anyone who has read a mystery or a comedy of manners must know the end result -- and yet, Willis makes the journey so absurdly delightful that it doesn't matter that you know what's going to happen.The characters were great, the literary allusions and prolific quotations made me chuckle, and Cyril is clearly one of the great dogs of literature. I folded down some corners:"Did the dearie doggums come to see his Tossie? Did he know his Tossie missed her sweetums Cyril?"Cyril looked appalled.Cyril shoved and shoved again, until he had the entire bed and all the covers, and Princess Arjumand draped herself across my neck with her full weight on my Adam's apple. Cyril shoved some more.(In the preceding quote, replace "Cyril" with "Oscar" and "Princess Arjumand" with "Buster", and you will basically have my nightly sleeping situation.)Mrs. Chattisbourne said, "Tocelyn has just been telling us about your brush with death, Mr. Henry."When I almost said "pregnant"? I wondered.I v. much enjoyed many of the epigraphs as well; one of my favorites was from Wodehouse: "...there is no more admirably educational experience for a young fellow starting out in life than going to stay at a country house under a false name..."Willis describes the bishop's bird stump as a "cast-iron footed pedestal firugeal urn. Or possibly a fruit compote"; I had to look up "firugeal" and discovered that it's not a word.
—Laura
A sparkling, witty, hilarious -- almost joyous -- magical romp. While set in the same time-traveling universe as Willis's award-winning novel Doomsday Book and story "Fire Watch" (one of my favourite short stories, sf or otherwise, ever), this book is like high midsummer to the winter of those stories; the second half of Winter's Tale as opposed to the grim first part. I not only laughed, I snorted, chortled, and on many occasions giggled. This book is obviously as deeply researched as Willis's earlier medieval world (which indeed makes a speedy guest appearance in this book), but wears its learning far more lightly, and it is not just a love letter to the Victorian era but also books, of that and other times -- the Jerome K Jerome from which the title comes, Wodehouse, Wilde, Jowett, Tennyson (whose 'Lady of Shallott' is an important recurring motif), the pre-Raphaelites, the underestimated 'cozy' mysteries from Christie to Sayers, Chesterton, Shakespeare, Grahame -- the literary references average probably at least three a page and that's assuming you can keep up with them all. The ridiculous, even grotesque 'bishop's bird's vase' at the center (or perhaps one should say, off-center) of the story isn't really the point at all -- as Willis told us in 'Fire Watch,' things don't endure; nothing endures, love is what endures, and that is the message of this book, too. A perfect tonic for flagging spirits.
—Moira Russell
First, know that I am deeply biased when it comes to this book: it's got time travel, which I love with a love that is more than love, and it's got Cyril, who I love with a love that makes my time travel love look like a Tuesday afternoon romance. Plus, it's inspired by - and references, oh my god, REFERENCES! - one of my favorite books, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. So, you know, I won't even attempt a qualitative review. I'll just say that this is fun, and funny, and it hits my narrative kinks so hard that I would marry it if there was a church that solemnized bibliopolygamy. This book is a frequent re-read and a joy forever.
—thefourthvine
