Connie Willis

Doomsday Book is brilliant, beautiful, and one of my very favourite novels. This was my third time reading it. a beloved book to fight in the battle against severe depression. It helped a lot.

Oxford medievalist Kivrin has worked hard to obtain permission to time travel back to 1320 England. She has learned Middle English and Latin, grown her hair long, studied herbal remedies, fashioned era-appropriate clothing, and received a series of vaccines that keep her safe from medieval illnesses. Nonetheless, she arrives in the Middle Ages terribly ill and near death. Her battle against dying, and then her struggle to be accepted as an upper-class woman who has lost her memory (a ruse), take up one part of the narrative. We also watch present-day Oxford, where a severe virus causes the university city to be quarantined, and where retrieving Kivrin from the long-distant past is impossible.

I love the detail of this book. Each time I've read it, I've been amazed at Connie Willis' ability to create two imaginary worlds, both of which seem vividly real. I love the characters, particularly Father Roche and young, spoiled Agnes, who clings onto Kivrin as best friend and mother-subsitute. She is a willful child, but loveable all the same. Everything is so well researched - the food, clothes, social lives, disease, religion - all of it.

So vivid are the characters that I got way too attached to them, even the third time through, when I know the fates of each of them. If you are the sort to cry at books, I recommend bringing a box of tissues for the last hundred pages of this one.

I feel somewhat healed, the result of a book where healing is much sought-after. Perfection. This book is as near to that as any novel I've ever read.… (mais)

First - this book is not great, it has plot holes. It has things that don't make sense if you look at them more than a moment. And it is cheesy - so so cheesy. But, what it is is fun. Connie Willis is a master of dialogue, and this book is no exception. Not many authors can throw together a maid of honor, a conman, an alien conspiracy theorist, a Western movie buff with an RV, and someone good at cards, and actually make it work. Add in a lost tentacle alien, and you get something that works, but It shouldn't.

This is a book that isn't great - but it is fun.… (mais)

I had a few problems with this book, but not because the American Civil War is an unfamilar subject (being British, I am far more familiar with the English Civil War which took place in the 17th century).

The male protagonist is Jeff, an historical researcher who works for a somewhat eccentric novelist called Broun. Broun is currently reworking a novel about a young man called Ben who was a participant in a Civil War battle. Broun can't let the novel go and is reworking it despite it being set in galleys (this being the pre-digital publishing days, changes at this stage were very expensive and could be charged to the author). Meanwhile he also shows interest in rekindling an old project around Abraham Lincoln, and he sets Jeff various tasks: to find out about Lincoln's supposed presient dreams about his own assassination and to find out where Lincoln's young son was buried before his body was disinterred to be buried alongside Lincoln after the latter's death.

Broun invites an old room-mate of Jeff's to the prelaunch party for his novel, wanting to question him about dreams. Richard is now a doctor specialising in sleep disorders and he brings with him a young woman called Annie, passing her off as his girlfriend when really she is his patient. It soon transpires that he has been committing various breaches of professional conduct, by sleeping with her among other things. Annie comes across from her first appearance as rather a basket case and didn't win my sympathy when she systematically destroyed an African violet. She is in Richard's "care" because she has been having disturbing dreams, and when she tells Jeff about them, he recognises elements pertaining to General Robert E Lee. Soon it transpires that she is having dreams for Lee who suffered from insomnia, somehow between time periods or - more unbelievably - that she is helping him dream and therefore atone or somehow come to terms with his having led so many young men to their deaths. But he is having these dreams after he is dead. And this ends up being linked with Lincoln, in the sense that his dead son was sending him dreams it seems..

Apart from the unconvincing nature of the underlying premis, another major problem is the characters, especially Annie who is by turns irritating and a doormat. She is not only subservient to Richard who has been drugging her without her permission - and with disastrous results it later transpires - but also to General Lee, when she later refuses to stop dreaming for him out of some inexplicable loyalty. In the scenes between her and Jeff, I found her reminiscient of an emotional vampire, as he falls for her but ends up as a caregiver rather than lover. Richard meanwhile inexplicably veers from one self-serving and beligerent stance to another, with no real explanation of why, other than he is fanatically determined, for no given reason, to stop Annie dreaming at all costs. This is the plot device that drives Jeff to take Annie on the run to get away from him, but the whole thing remains very unbelievable.

Another major issue with the story is the elephant in the room: slavery. Even I know that the American Civil War was fought over that, with the North opposing it and the South wanting to retain it, presumably for economic reasons. Despite the whole novel revolving around the Civil War - including extracts from Broun's novel slotted in when Jeff and Annie spend part of their time away proofreading it (!) - there isn't one single reference to the subject. No slaves are shown in the novel within a novel even in scenes where they might be expected to appear such as when Ben is being treated in a southern states hospital. The complete absence of the reason why the whole war was being fought was akin to writing a novel set in WWII Germany without showing a single Jewish character. So I found that extremely odd. Presumably it is because showing slavery would intefere with the portrayal of Lee as a sympathetic character, given that he is leading a fight to retain such an awful system. Instead he is portrayed as loyal, dutiful and someone who inspires deep loyalty from his troops, plus is kind to horses.

Each chapter is prefaced with some information about Lee's favourite horse, Traveller, and I did find that interesting though the horse's ultimate fate is sad. However it is downright odd that at the end of the book Jeff is viewing himself as Traveller and Annie as Lee. It was a very odd ending. It is also very odd that the book disappoints expectation by not really being about Lincoln's Dreams at all, but about Lee's.

So given all these problems, I can only rate this as a rather disappointing 'OK' read - 2 stars.… (mais)

2.25 star average per story. What a disappointing collection - especially since these are supposedly the author's best!

Willis is a wordy writer, so I think that short stories simply aren't the format in which she shines brightest.

Add to that the profanity (including many instances of the names of God/Jesus used disrespectfully), the not-so-subtle jabs at Christianity in general and Creationists in particular, and the political preaching, and this is just a mess of a book that made me like Willis a whole lot less.

- A Letter From the Clearys: 1.5
- At the Rialto: 3.5
- Death On the Nile: 3.5
- The Soul Selects Her Own Society: 2.5
- Fire Watch: 3.5
- Inside Job: 2.0
- Even the Queen: 1.0
- The Winds of Marble Arch: 1.0
- All Seated On the Ground: 1.5
- Last of the Winnebagos: 2.5… (mais)