to say nothing of the dog by connie willis

Ned, unfortunately, has made so many “drops” in the quest for this item (usually traveling back to attend innumerable jumble sales) that he is suffering from “time-lag”. Perfection in this case requires locating (somewhere in history) the bishop’s bird stump, which went missing after the bombing in 1940. Her motto is “God is in the details”, by which she means everything must be perfect for the consecration of the cathedral, coming up in a few weeks. Lady Schrapnell is a perfectionist (to say the least) who has corralled the entirety of Oxford’s history department to aid in her quest to restore the cathedral to its former glory. Its restoration is opposed by various groups, with many feeling that the enormous expense could be put to better use. At some point in history the cathedral was razed in favor of a shopping mall. Lady Schrapnell is an enormously wealthy American-born aristocrat who is behind the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral in the modern day (that is, in 2057).

Ned’s mission is at the behest of a holy terror named Lady Schrapnell. In fact the provenance of the name is explained late in the book, and the object itself operates as a sort of MacGuffin throughout the story. Ned is on the hunt for an object called “the bishop’s bird stump”, which I assumed was some sort of obscure Britishism that this American couldn’t understand. The story opens in 1940 with Ned Henry, a time-traveling historian (and our narrator), sifting through the rubble of Coventry Cathedral, which has been bombed by the Luftwaffe. Due to a factor referred to as “slippage”, a traveler will inevitably be sent to the wrong time or place to prevent him or her from taking any action that could change the past in any substantive way. It was quickly discovered that it was of limited use, except perhaps for historians eager to observe events up close, as the universe had natural corrections that it could and would enact in order to, say, keep one from going back in time to pick the winning lotto numbers or to kill Hitler. Time travel technology was developed years before, but the practice of time travel itself has fallen out of favor somewhat. It’s also one of the most delightful books I’ve read in quite a while. TSNotD is not a romance, but it does contain a dash of romance as well as enough of an historical setting (it’s a time-travel fantasy) to make it appealing to those of us who like to live in the past when reading.

I believe I’ve been hearing good things about To Say Nothing of the Dog for about as long as I’ve been a part of the online romance community. Jennie A Reviews Fantasy / Genre classics / Humor / Time-Travel / Victorian 35 Comments AugREVIEW: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

To say nothing of the dog by connie willis