To Say Nothing of the Dog: or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis
434 pages
Published 1998
Read from November 16 to November 19
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Time travel and the comedy of manners are made for each other. I never realized it until this book. Willis avoids the tonal problems that made Doomsday Book so uneven, skipping the melodrama and Meaningful Sentiments and emphasizing the wry humor of misunderstandings and harried heroes questing across time and space to locate a hideous Victorian objet d'art. Complication piles upon humorous complication, interweaving Agatha Christie-esque detective work with Victorian courtship, reminding me once more of Peter Ackroyd's thesis on the English taste for surface complexity and elaboration. Thoroughly satisfying.
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