- Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Books (1 Dec 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0553575384
- ISBN-13: 978-0553575385
- Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 2.8 x 17.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 115,410 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
To Say Nothing of the Dog is a science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel, complete with epigraphs, brief outlines, and a rather ugly boxer in three-quarters profile at the start of each chapter. Or is it a Victorian novel in the guise of a time-travelling tale, or a highly comic romp, or a great, allusive literary game, complete with spry references to Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Its title is the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's singular, and hilarious, Three Men in a Boat. In one scene the hero, Ned Henry, and his friends come upon Jerome, two men, and the dog Montmorency in--you guessed it--a boat. Jerome will later immortalise Ned's fumbling. (Or, more accurately, Jerome will earlier immortalise Ned's fumbling, because Ned is from the 21st century and Jerome from the 19th.)
What Connie Willis soon makes clear is that genre can go to the dogs. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fine, and fun, romance--an amused examination of conceptions and misconceptions about other eras, other people. When we first meet Ned, in 1940, he and five other time jumpers are searching bombed-out Coventry Cathedral for the bishop's bird stump, an object about which neither he nor the reader will be clear for hundreds of pages. All he knows is that if they don't find it, the powerful Lady Schrapnell will keep sending them back in time, again and again and again. Once he's been whisked through the rather quaint Net back to the Oxford future, Ned is in a state of super time-lag. The only way Ned can get the necessary two weeks' R and R is to perform one more drop and recuperate in the past, away from Lady Schrapnell. Once he returns something to someone (he's too exhausted to understand what or to whom) on June 7, 1888, he's free.
Willis is concerned, however, as is her confused character, with getting Victoriana right, and Ned makes a good amateur anthropologist--entering one crowded room, he realises that "the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over." Though he's still not sure what he's supposed to bring back, various of his confederates keep popping back to set him to rights.
To Say Nothing of the Dog is a shaggy-dog tale complete with a preternaturally quiet, time-travelling cat, Princess Arjumand, who might well be the cause of some serious temporal incongruities--for even a mouser might change the course of European history. In the end, readers might well be more interested in Ned's romance with a fellow historian than in the bishop's bird stump, and who will not rejoice in their first Net kiss, which lasts 169 years! --Amazon.com
Synopsis
Ned Henry shuttles between the 1940s and the twenty-first century while researching Coventry Cathedral for a patron interested in rebuilding it until the time continuum is disrupted.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This book is a hoot! Time-travel romantic comedy, with literary allusions stirred in to taste. Most of the characters are stereotypes, but not badly-done, and I'm glad she's rationed the effusions of the mawkish Victorian maiden.
I could guess some but not all of the plot, and when I realised who the Victorian maiden was going to fall in love with—and why she had an aesthetic epiphany about the bishop's bird stump—I was hugging myself with delight as I saw the plot unreeling before me. In fact, like the ideal of a Golden Age mystery novel, it's very fair in putting out the clues, but for a lot of the time the reader is as bemused as the characters.
There are a succession of very Wodehouse-esque butlers who manage to be entertaining (in a dignified manner) throughout.
Animal-lovers will also enjoy this story; Willis has a light but accurate touch with both the dog and cat characters, and the reaction of the time-travelling protagonist to hearing his first purr is particularly nicely done.
There is only one thing that seriously annoys me about this book, which is the poor use of British English. It won't necessarily annoy the sort of Americans who aren't aficionados of British culture, but I'm not sure if they're the intended audience. Also, younger British people may well have watched enough American films and television that American turns of phrase come naturally to them. Any Brit of 30 or older, however, may be slightly jolted out of the willing-suspension-of-disbelief approximately once per page by the American usages (and let's face it, in this sort of fantasy-pastiche-comedy the w.s. of d. needs careful handling). I spent the first half of the book wondering if the protagonist was meant to be an American, then decided that the language was meant to be future-UK-English-more-influenced-by-American-than-at-present, and finally realised that she hadn't quite got it right when, in the Victorian setting, the peppery old Colonel, the credulous matron and the eccentric old Professor all use American turns of phrase. It's distracting because, in a time-travel story, anachronisms and social or verbal details are often part of the plot. She's done very well with a lot of it: verbal tics appropriate to the ex-military old gentleman, the Professor with a monomania, the poetic young gentleman and the mawkish maiden are all put in—which means it startles the reader when they all use 'gotten' and 'go [verb]' instead of 'go and [verb]'.
I don't think it's the business of the writer to Know Everything, of course, but it's sad to see a flaw like this getting in the way when a decent copy-editor could and should have fixed it—and God is in the details, as one of the characters remarks, and the writer should be aiming at affectionate-hommage rather than a theme-park version of British culture.
I'd give it five stars (not timeless-lit-classic but excellent-example-of-its-kind) if I wasn't so annoyed by the distracting language.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This book is good fun. I do not normally read science fiction but I enjoyed exploring some of the implications of time travel with Willis. It is a bit slow to get going and I nearly gave up a couple of times, but it is worth hanging in there as once it does get going it sweeps you on at a rollicking pace. I get the impression that Willis did some pretty extensive research into Victorian England, and on the whole it is convincing. At the same time I think some of the characters are stereotypical caricatures of the English as seen by Americans, but this is a humourous book so why not? Occasionally their language sounds more central USA than central England - such as Baine the butler using 'momentarily' to mean shortly, not the English usage of the word. Some of the antics of the animals are also a bit fanciful, but the story is probably more fun for it. On the whole a very enjoyable read that will certainly make me look out for more by Willis.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
In the 2040s, time traveller Ned Henry has been charged with the unenviable task of helping to recreate old Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed in the Blitz. He has to search for a bizarre object called the Bishop's Bird Stump, an ornately carved font, which is vital to the recreation of the cathedral. Complications arise when a fellow time traveller, Verity Kindle returns from the Victorian era inadvertently bringing a cat with her (cats are extinct in the 2040s).Ned has to jump back to Victorian times to help her put things right before history is irretrievably altered. Things get even more complicated when a charming but exasperating young Victorian lady called Tossie becomes engaged to the wrong person, and Ned and Verity have to try and get her matched up with the right one. But who is the right one? This book has a very complex and ingenious plot, interesting characters, and lots of humour. Will you guess the identity of Mr C before it is revealed? utterly gripping from beginning to end. i dropped my copy of this book in the bath and ruined it, I had to order another one, but it was well worth it. And I wish I had a Bishop's Bird Stump!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Superbly Funny Time Travel Adventure
"To Say Nothing of The Dog" by Connie Willis is a novel that was recommended to me last year after I read and enjoyed another of Willis' novels, "The Doomsday Book". Read more
Published 2 months ago by Killie
wonderful experience in all things English
Connie Willis's new novel "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is once again a wonderful experience in all things English, in fact, even more so than "Doomsday Book". Read more
Published 10 months ago by Frank Bierbrauer
Hardcover? Really?
Five stars for the book, one star for the hardcover edition.
The book is one of my favorites, a very funny romantic story about 21st century time-travelers in Victorian... Read more
The book is one of my favorites, a very funny romantic story about 21st century time-travelers in Victorian... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Yooden
Historians Out Of Time
Connie Willis has produced an intelligent, very entertaining time travel mystery story.
The book is set in a near future where time travel is possible but is used only... Read more
The book is set in a near future where time travel is possible but is used only... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Plausible Denial
What a contrast.....
.....to The Doomsday Book. Whilst I really enjoyed the latter, I have to say I found this a bit special - the humour and pastiche on Victorian country house life, the Victorian... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Blencathra
To Read It You Must Be Barking!
WHAT A HOOT!
Having read so many time travel novels I approached this comedy caper with more than a little trepidation.
No need.
What FUN! ....What LARKS! Read more
Having read so many time travel novels I approached this comedy caper with more than a little trepidation.
No need.
What FUN! ....What LARKS! Read more
Published on 31 May 2009 by Mr. John Frank Herbert
Disappointing
I was disappointed by this, and gave up after 130 pages. It rambles on pleasantly but doesn't seem to go anywhere. Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2009 by archies dad
connie willis' best
This was the first book by Connie Willis I read, and it was recommended to me because of other purchases (e.g. Jasper Fforde).
This is a brilliant, fascinating read. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2006 by M. Øynes
victorian age meets the future
As Ned Henry is sent back to victorian times to right a wrong (one created by the people of the future), he is highly time-lagged. Read more
Published on 17 Nov 2005 by bookaholic
"in media res"
We are always in the middle of things and things are always in the midst of what we do. Thomas Carlyle writing in 1829 in The Signs of the Times argued, "It is no very good... Read more
Published on 26 May 2002 by J. Stobart
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