From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel… Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He’s been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop’s bird stump. It’s part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi … Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right–not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself. From the Paperback edition.
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The best time-travel book I’ve ever read. I re-read this this one every year, and despite its length I always wish it was longer.
To Say Nothing of the Dog is a funny romp through time travel. Ned Henry is searching for a hideous looking artifact when he and his colleagues realize there has been a historical incongruity committed that could change the entire course of the future. Ned gets sent back to Victorian England to fix the problem. Unfortunately, he is time lagged, confused, not hearing well, and has no idea what he’s supposed to do when he gets there. The rest is (hilarious) history.
Love Connie Willis
A magnificent tale that succeeds at everything it attempts. It is simultaneously a time travel, historical fiction with incredible detail, romance, fun romp, amazing character study, and a book so funny in places that I set it down to laugh. Fantastic story.
I had high hopes for this book, hopes that were roundly dashed by the first couple of chapters, which I found only moderately interesting.
And then it sucked me in but good.
It becomes a fairly brilliant book. There’s nothing wrong with it, and a lot right. Whether you like it will probably just come down to taste. It made me laugh out loud more than once. I loved Cyril the dog. I loved Baines the butler. I may have developed a bit of a crush on Verity. (That has never happened to me before with a character in a book.)
The book radiates intelligence and good humor.
It belongs on your reading list, near the top, I think.
One of my top ten favorite books. Time Traveling, Jane Austen style, this book is brilliant in technique and worldbuilding, and hugely fun. Comic genius. An every five year re-read for me.
No matter how many times I read this, it always makes me laugh. Technically a time travel book, it’s also grounded and whimsical
A delightful blend of Victorian mystery and temporal mechanics.
It took me years to pick up this time-travel SF novel after buying it – I’d heard the author speak at the library where I worked, but had never read her before, and it sat in my collection forever. Then one day I read it, and it blew me away. Layer upon layer of story. Eminently re-readable. Plus a sweet romance. Delicious.
The book was ckeeky and vivd and had a great sci-fi premise, but it also took forever to get around to anything. It sucked me in at the beginning but was a little hard to get through by the end.
Took 7 years to read past the first 50 pages, 3 days to finish. Funny, great book. Connie Willis is a wildly versatile writer with a ferocious talent.
I’m a fan. Read many of her books
I really liked this book…literature without all the pretension.
One of Willis’ best, highly recommended.
Enjoyed twists and turns. Never quite sure where it was going.
British comedic twist on time travel. Very enjoyable.
I enjoyed the humor. A nice mix of the ridiculous and trivial with characters that are very likable.
It is British humor. Not my cup of tea.
Wonderful comedy of manners, complete with attitudinal time-travelling cat and a put-upon bulldog. I’ve read it multiple times and it always makes me giggle. The final reveal of the Lovecraftian horror that is the bishop’s bird stump is masterful and perfectly timed.
Connie Willis is one of the best time travel writers in science fiction. I called this original and it may be for the last two generations who are not familiar with Jerome K. jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. The only quibble is that the book could have used some editing as a tighter book would have been perfect but that is the problem with virtually all science fiction; the editors do not appear to have the courage to delete extraneous or irrelevant material. In any event, the works of Connie Willis are no way near the worst offenders in that regard. I highly recommend all of her books if you are a fan of this genre.