TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, or How I stopped worrying about the space-time continuum and learned to love discontinuity
This review about a novel concernTO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, or How I stopped worrying about the space-time continuum and learned to love discontinuity
This 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.
"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.
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