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shezan warned me that this wasn't as funny as To Say Nothing of the Dog, and - well. It isn't.But the last thing I expected was religious fervour. I came away feeling a sort of honour about people who served what they perceived to be god with all their ability, which is not something I feel a lot. Or ever. (Except during parts of Carpe Jugulum.)
'No one sent it,' Kivrin said. 'It's a disease. It's no one's fault. God would help us if He could, but He ..." He what? Can't hear us? Has gone away? Doesn't exist?
"He cannot come," she finished lamely.
"And we must act in His stead?" Roche said.
I mean, this was it. Before the true greed and corruption of the Renaissance and beyond, grubbing in the dirt with the other lowly in the eyes of God was how it worked. (Although I never did find out what Kivrin's stance on God was ... more on that later.)
... he said, without opening his eyes, "I feared you had gone."
She wiped the crusted blood by his mouth. "I would not go to Scotland without you."
"Not Scotland," he said. "To heaven."
This made me cry, and remember the kids who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in - was it France? Or Medjugorie? I read an account of it once (which I got from a monastery, and hence was probably a little biased in their favour - and that of the vision). The simple, innocent, complete belief.
This cloak, in spite of its rabbit-fur lining, wasn't warm at all. How had people survived the Little Ice Age dressed only in cloaks like this? How had the rabbits survived?
That was pretty funny.
I just ... I can't grasp the point of this book. In TSNOTD, it was about the extinction of cats and how tiny acorns grow into mighty oaks and it's always the butler and the interesting peculiarities of time travel. Also romance, which was sadly lacking here. 'Sadly,' because Willis does romance really well when she wants to. A five second interval about Roche's awestruck adoration for Kivrin didn't really fill the hole. Maybe it was about how true historians record history as it happens, no matter the peril to themselves. Yet this wasn't real history - Agnes et al were as much figments of Willis' imagination as everyone else. She went to a lot of effort to set up interesting dynamics in the family only to kill them off, one by one. There was nowhere near the level of complexity in TSNOTD, which was essentially a mystery novel.
Kivrin's motivations were never properly elucidated. I expected some kind of nemesis because she was so keen to go to the Middle Ages - um, why? Of all times? Gross - against Mr Dunworthy's better judgement. The punch of her being sent to the wrong year was ripped away by the blurb - my hatred for blurbs knows no bounds! - so I spent half the book going, 'Dude, I know she's in the middle of the Black Death. Get on with it already.' I have no idea why half a chapter was wasted on the difficulty in getting the translator to work, when it worked fine after five minutes and its dysfunction had no impact on the plot whatsoever.
As well, it wasn't funny, as
shezan rightly pointed out. There was a lot of 'Dunworthy went here and then there and did this and saw Finch and saw Montoya and saw Colin and did something else.' It was ... superfluous, added pages to the book, and in light of the invention of mobile phones and the internet, is a conceit that aged poorly. Not to mention that, because there was so much action, there was relatively little character development. I'll never forget the screamlets from TSNOTD. I spent hours with both Kivrin and Mr Dunworthy, yet I saw nothing of their real thoughts. I wondered if it was going to go in a Kivrin/Dunworthy direction early on, but there wasn't even that. Weird.
Finally, I thought she said in TSNOTD that you could only bring contemporary materials through the net. So why was Colin able to bring a pocket torch, a locator and aspirin to the Dark Ages?
Does anyone know if all her books are about the same people/place/time machine? Not that I mind reading them out of order, I'd just like to know. Now with added spoilers of same!
Previously, on Book Glomp 2008:
Middlemarch | Invisible Monsters | A Thousand Splendid Suns | Love in the Time of Cholera | Oscar and Lucinda | Kim | Breakfast at Tiffany's | Atonement | To the Lighthouse | On the Road | Brideshead Revisited | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Bonjour Tristesse | A Passage to India | Three Men in a Boat | Vile Bodies | Prozac Nation | The Heart of the Matter | Jinx; Airhead
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disappointed - Music:pas de cheval (panic at the disco)
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Comments
No, it's not funny at all, but it was damned good writing. She made me care that these fictional characters, who would be dead by now anyway, had to die.
I wonder how you read it as a med student? There was this whole thing about doctors and what they could and couldn't do to help people. What was the name of the wonderful doctor back in Oxford? It moves me, how much she loves doctors. It's kind of how I feel about librarians.
I didn't find the book religious so much as vaguely spiritual. I wonder whether Connie Willis is religious, since some of her other books that I've read have had a vague spiritual tinge. I think only To Say Nothing Of The Dog is in the same universe as this one (I also read them out of order!) In Passage, another book of hers I read (with another doctor as heroine) there is a question about life after death and the persistence of the soul. So I wonder. Her books do feel Christian to me, but more in a cultural fabric sort of way.
She certainly understands a lot about medicine and the whole non-explained Pandemic was interesting. It would be pretty awesome to have antivirals at all, let alone ones you can find the serotype for and manufacture in DAYS. A bit over-hopeful, methinks.
I think she realistically presented how people back in the Dark Ages felt about religion. If people believe in an afterlife that's fine - and in god, that's fine - she never thrusts it down our throats, which is good. It's very much 'and this is how the character felt,' rather than 'the author.' Which is probably why she succeeded in moving me.
I don't mind books that make me cry, but I'm really glad she wrote a silly light one in the same universe.
Oh, and went to verify my shaky memory, I found an excellent quote here: http://www.adherents.com/people/pw/Conn
I love how so many of her stories get published online. I always end up reading them in the short story collections, anyway, but I prefer not having to wait.
These are the only two books dealing with the time-travelling historians, but there's a short story called "Fire Watch," which was written before either book and is set in this 'verse. I didn't actually care for it, but if you want to be a completionist, you should check it out. I've heard that she's writing a third book in this 'verse, but I don't know for sure.
I did enjoy Bellwether (in which the heroine studies trends and fads) very much, and I kind of liked Remake (in which the hero removes prohibited content from old movies). Both of them are the kind of books that pop into my head frequently. Lincoln's Dreams was interesting, but it will never be my favorite of her books.
I certainly will read more of her books, because it's not often I find someone as accomplished a writer as she is. Swapped to Doug Coupland atm though, so it's all good. :D
I bought TSNOTD recently, but haven't started it. I read Bellwether and completely loved it though.
OMG MY LOVE FOR TSNOTD KNOW NO BOUNDS. YOU WILL REGRET LEAVING IT TO MOULDER EVEN FOR A SINGLE SECOND! Or. Something.
Her other funny books... well, I can only think of Bellwether offhand, and I was really disappointed in it; very shallow, and while one (again) loves the research, it's more like a cultural manifesto than a cultural satire.
I was just expecting something other than what I got. TSNOTD is so complex and layered and yet at the same time light-hearted and joyful; a real masterpiece. I am kind of boggling that Doomsday won the Nebula and the other thing; what was it about the book that merited it such accolades? I think I missed that.
Finally, I thought she said in TSNOTD that you could only bring contemporary materials through the net. So why was Colin able to bring a pocket torch, a locator and aspirin to the Dark Ages?
Because it wouldn't matter. When you bring all of that stuff to a place where everybody is dead, there's nobody who can see it. IIRC, that's also why Kivrin ended up in the Black Death timeperiod, in a village where everybody died; because that's the closest to time she wanted to go, but the first she wouldn't have the chance to change things to thoroughly.
On another note, Bellwether is fantastic, and Passage is an unreadable mess. At least Doomsday is readable and with nice parts.
~~moving on~
|Meduza|
I'll be reading them all eventually, but forewarned is forearmed!
I didn't think there were any spoilers, but sure I'll warn anyway.
I just assume anyone who's reading the review in the first place will know there's spoilers about it, because it would be hard to discuss it without spoiling it. (Also lj cut!) But there's a warning now, anyway.