Reading: To Say Nothing of the Dog

[white_hart]

I tried reading Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog about thirteen years ago and bounced off it very hard (mostly due to Americanisms and geographical inaccuracies in Willis's depiction of Oxford), but I always had a sneaking suspicion that I'd done it a disservice and, having picked up a secondhand copy last year, thought I'd give it another try.

In fact, I barely noticed the geographical inaccuracies that had bothered me so much this time round. Maybe years of watching Lewis and Endeavour have inured me to the kind of liberties fiction takes to the geography of Oxford. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a comic time-travel romp which also pays homage not only to Three Men In A Boat (as is fairly obvious from the title), but to Golden Age detective fiction in general and Lord Peter Wimsey adn Harriet Vane in particular. It was entertaining and charming, and I particularly loved how well it evoked the lower Thames valley in glorious June weather.

I did think that it felt quite old-fashioned (it was published in 1998, which doesn't really feel like it's that long ago though I suppose it is really); mostly in the lack of diversity of the characters, although Willis's 2057 Oxford also felt oddly dated, with all the senior posts held by men and characters addressing each other formally rather than using first names (and I couldn't understand why no-one seemed to have a doctorate). Also, for a historian, the narrator appears to know startlingly little about history (to be honest, he knows startling little for a member of the general public). But it was a fun, light read when I really didn't want anything too demanding or difficult, and I'm glad I finally read it.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

For a long time, one of the most popular posts in Andrew's blog was a review of a Connie Willis book that was so inaccurate about the geography of Manchester that it had him ranting so much that people were really entertained. I think he nearly threw the book across the room. :) So I guess this is a feature of her books.

[white_hart]

I've been told that one of the others has, among other things, characters waiting for a Jubilee Line train during WW2 (they'd have had a long wait given that the line didn't open until 1979). So I think it is a general problem.

[callmemadam]

Hah! Connie Willis is not alone in making these howlers. I can't remember the book title or the author, but characters caught a train at Blandford Forum years after the station had been closed in the Beeching cuts. It drives me mad, so perhaps Connie Willis is not for me.

[white_hart]

I suppose it depends a bit on how well you know the places concerned!

[legionseagle]

In Doomsday Book you can see London from near Oxford.

[white_hart]

A reflection on the likely increase in urban sprawl over the first half of the 21st century?

[legionseagle]

No: you can see London from near Oxford in 1348

[white_hart]

*facepalm*

[legionseagle]

This provoked me to pull out this on Doomsday Book from 2015

[ankaret]

I nearly sent a train to Southampton Central when it should have been going to the docks in Anna Chronistic 1, and even though I have the cop-out of parallel universes I still go cold when I think about it.

[alithea]

I read it a while back and found it quite entertaining fun. Not knowing Oxford at all, I missed the geographical howlers. I do agree that the writing felt very old fashioned, I assumed it was a deliberate style choice (I'm not familiar with Three Men In A Boat) but you're right that the future setting also felt very dated.

[white_hart]

It wasn't so much the writing style (though I think there probably was an element of Victorian pastiche) as the whole feel of the thing. Possibly it was partly the lack of any questioning of the bucolic delights of a Victorian summer, as well as the future Oxford which felt more like the Oxford of 1980 than now.

[jinty]

Domesday Book has got a British character calling a scarf a 'muffler' - in lots of ways, you can see that CW is not good at getting someone to do Britpicking / error checking for her! That one had me bouncing off the book very hard.

I can really recommend CW's "Bellwhether" which is set in the US and needs no britpicking... :-) and has a cool concept to boot.

[white_hart]

Yes, she really doesn't seem to be good at checking the details!

[inamac]

I understand, from US people who live in the Bellweather locale, that she is just as cavalier with geography and history in that as in her Brit books. She has super ideas, but you have to read them as AUs.

[mrs_redboots]

She's absolutely hopeless at detail. I read a short story of hers, years ago now, which was set in London, and one of the main points of the story was that the hero (allegedly British) couldn't afford dental treatment for his 9-year-old daughter. Put me right off most of her stories (except "Even the Queen", which really makes me laugh every time I read it).

To be fair, she is American and in America, certainly in the 1990s, one did not address University staff by their first names. Also doctors and professors are the other way round. I don't know if you've come across the excellent "Separated by a Common Language" blog, but this post, from some years ago, is quite helpful on the distinctions between forms of address here and there.