To Say Nothing of the Dog was delightful, especially reading it so quickly after the extended bleakness of Doomsday Book. I liked the latter, but To Say Nothing of the Dog had humor, levity, and, importantly, seemed much more edited.
The story follows Ned Henry, a future historian who, along with the entire time travel research group at Oxford, has been enlisted by a demanding, omnipresent, and stubborn benefactor to rebuild the previously destroyed Coventry Cathedral in Oxford. Why, you ask? Well, her great-great-great grandmother had written a diary entry back in the Victorian era about how a visit to the Cathedral, and in particular, witnessing a particular piece called the “bishop’s bird stump,” had changed her life. This wealthy benefactor, in a brilliant display of the capricious whims of the rich, decided that nothing less than an exact replica of the building would be suitable to pay homage to the memory of her ancestor’s epiphany. So, the historians have been tasked with leaping back in time to various points in the Cathedral’s history to collect data on the architectural and decorative details, and, in particular, to locate the bishop’s bird stump, since it appears to have been lost in time.
All these jumps back have left Ned with a nasty case of “time lag,” a pernicious version of jet lag that has a bunch of humorous cognitive symptoms in addition to just being viciously tired. Knowing that he won’t get to rest even for a second while the bishop’s bird stump is not found, the benevolent Mr. Dunworthy — the very same as in Doomsday Book — sends Ned on one more jump to the nineteenth century so he can get bed rest for two weeks while he hides in the past.
Of course, it’s not so simple. As soon as he arrives, he finds that he seems to be at the center of either causing or fixing an incongruity that should never have been allowed by the established laws of time travel. The offense? A living creature — a cat — was brought forward with a historian, and “significant” objects such as living animals are not, under any circumstances, supposed to be mobile passengers between eras in time. So much for bed rest, Ned Henry.
I will level with you: I feel rather time-lagged myself, and only the smallest spark of obligation is forcing me to keep present(ish) on my reviews. So, regrettably, I don’t have a lot of clever words or carefully thought-out explanations for why I so enjoyed this book. I just found it very charming and smart; I liked how it read kind of like a farcical play, and I liked the complex theories and proofs that were laid out for how time works and corrects itself against paradoxes.
Even while I was reading Doomsday Book, my first Connie Willis, I had trouble with a lot of it, but I still thought, “I get Connie Willis.” She has such a recognizable voice, as witty as I’ve ever read, with an understated intelligence that is even more impactful for not seeming like it’s trying too hard. This book sealed the deal, as it goes all-in on the irreverence and wry humor that popped up in Doomsday Book but were ultimately quelled by the subject matter. So, yes, I enjoyed To Say Nothing of the Dog very much.