To Say Nothing of the Dog

by Connie Willis

493 pages

English language

Published Oct. 15, 1999 by Tandem Library.

ISBN:: 978-0-613-15242-6

In the second of Connie Willis' brilliant Oxford trilogy, Ned's holiday in Victorian England becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers, and the mysterious bishop's bird stump.Ned is suffering disorientation, maudlin sentimentality and a tendency to become distracted by irrelevancies: classic symptoms of excessive time travel. And no wonder. Oxford's history department has just pulled him out of World War II and Ned's barely had time to wash off the gunpowder when he has a straw boater shoved on his head, a carpetbag in his hand and is thrown straight into Victorian England. For a holiday.But an impossible accident makes it hard to relax. Ned's holiday becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers and the mysterious bishop's bird stump. If he can't make all the pieces fit it …

5 editions

furicle@bookwyrm.social reviewed To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

What a great, fun read!

4 stars

I read her short story "Blued Moon" back in the eighties in Asimov's magazine, and it stuck with me every since as some of the funnest and funniest sci-fi I've read. This book is all that, in novel form.

The romance is weaved right into a great time travel story that pokes fun at everything and everyone. I confess I'm going to have to go back and read it again just pick up the clues I know were there the first time, that I missed while zooming through.

Unless you hate Victorian England, romance and time travel (and maybe even if you do), this is well worth reading.

Sarah Green reviewed To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Review of 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Despite its lackadaisical pace, I was into it. Don’t read too far into how the time travel and discrepancies work, and don't expect the historians to do any kind of realistic scholarly research, because you will be in for disappointment, if that is why you read genre fiction.

I’ve read a complaint or two that Connie Willis has British Victorian dialogue all wrong, which may or may not be accurate. Even if she gets it wrong, though, she is wrong consistently enough to eliminate it as a distraction.

The characters are fleshed through their excellent, tangential conversations, and the tone of the entire book is light-hearted. It is funny in parts, but not forcibly so, as in “funny” novels people have recommended to me. Instead, each sentence, each line of dialogue compelled me to read the next.