Monday, August 31, 2015

To Say Nothing of the Dog: a very short review.

What started out as a book to take on my backpacking trip turned in to a two week obsession, but now I've finally finished Connie Willis's marvelous To Say Nothing of the Dog.

The book somehow combines historical fiction, romance, mystery, and adventure into a time travel novel about the London Blitz, with generous amounts of Coventry conspiracy and how decoded Enigma messages were always concealed by sending a recon plane to try to conceal the fact that the codes were broken.

Oh, somehow that all makes it sounds dry and not any fun at all.

It's more like: what would a time travel book be, if it was written by P.G. Wodehouse?

Or, of course, by Jerome K. Jerome?

Well, it would be Connie Willis's joyful To Say Nothing of the Dog, a light but lovely masterpiece that stands up very well 20 years after it was first released.

And now, back to my other reading...

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