Product Description

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 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.  

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15060 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-01
• Released on: 1998-12-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.com
To Say Nothing of the Dog is a science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel, complete with epigraphs, brief outlines, and a rather ugly boxer in three-quarters profile at the start of each chapter. Or is it a Victorian novel in the guise of a time-traveling tale, or a highly comic romp, or a great, allusive literary game, complete with spry references to Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Its title is the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's singular, and hilarious, Three Men in a Boat. In one scene the hero, Ned Henry, and his friends come upon Jerome, two men, and the dog Montmorency in--you guessed it--a boat. Jerome will later immortalize Ned's fumbling. (Or, more accurately, Jerome will earlier immortalize Ned's fumbling, because Ned is from the 21st century and Jerome from the 19th.)

What Connie Willis soon makes clear is that genre can go to the dogs. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fine, and fun, romance--an amused examination of conceptions and misconceptions about other eras, other people. When we first meet Ned, in 1940, he and five other time jumpers are searching bombed-out Coventry Cathedral for the bishop's bird stump, an object about which neither he nor the reader will be clear for hundreds of pages. All he knows is that if they don't find it, the powerful Lady Schrapnell will keep sending them back in time, again and again and again. Once he's been whisked through the rather quaint Net back to the Oxford future, Ned is in a state of super time-lag. (Willis is happily unconcerned with futuristic vraisemblance, though Ned makes some obligatory references to "vids," "interactives," and "headrigs.") The only way Ned can get the necessary two weeks' R and R is to perform one more drop and recuperate in the past, away from Lady Schrapnell. Once he returns something to someone (he's too exhausted to understand what or to whom) on June 7, 1888, he's free.

Willis is concerned, however, as is her confused character, with getting Victoriana right, and Ned makes a good amateur anthropologist--entering one crowded room, he realizes that "the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over." Though he's still not sure what he's supposed to bring back, various of his confederates keep popping back to set him to rights. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a shaggy-dog tale complete with a preternaturally quiet, time-traveling cat, Princess Arjumand, who might well be the cause of some serious temporal incongruities--for even a mouser might change the course of European history. In the end, readers might well be more interested in Ned's romance with a fellow historian than in the bishop's bird stump, and who will not rejoice in their first Net kiss, which lasts 169 years!

The New York Times Book Review, Gerald Jonas
No one mixes scientific mumbo jumbo and comedy of manners with more panache than Willis, who ... is in one of her lighter moods in this novel.

From Booklist
What a stitch! Willis' delectable romp through time from 2057 back to Victorian England, with a few side excursions into World War II and medieval Britain, will have readers happily glued to the pages. Rich dowager Lady Schrapnell has invaded Oxford University's time travel research project in 2057, promising to endow it if they help her rebuild Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by a Nazi air raid in 1940. In effect, she dragoons almost everyone in the program to make trips back in time to locate items--in particular, the bishop's bird stump, an especially ghastly example of Victorian decorative excess. Time traveler Ned Henry is suffering from advanced time lag and has been sent, he thinks, for rest and relaxation to 1888, where he connects with fellow time traveler Verity Kindle and discovers that he is actually there to correct an incongruity created when Verity inadvertently brought something forward from the past. Take an excursion through time, add chaos theory, romance, plenty of humor, a dollop of mystery, and a spoof of the Victorian novel, and you end up with what seems like a comedy of errors but is actually a grand scheme "involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork." Sally Estes

Customer Reviews

A Sci-Fi Classic that Lives up to its Reputation
TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG is considered one of the best sci-fi novels of the last several decades, and I can see why. Connie Willis does a great job here of blending multiple genres, including sci-fi, romance, a comedy of manners, and alternate history. Once this novel gets moving, it's quite hilarious as well. I'm amazed TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG works as well as it does, and it's a remarkable achievement.

This book does start quite slowly, and I found the first fifty pages or so to be a struggle. Too many characters and strange concepts are introduced at once, which makes for a confusing experience. But once the characters are transported to Victorian England, the story finds its rhythm, and it becomes quite engaging and enjoyable.

TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG isn't for everyone. Willis is clearly an Anglophile, and enjoys writing about the silliness of day-to-day Victorian life. She is also an intellectual who is fascinated with history, science, and philosophy. If you don't share her passions, it's possible that you may find this book rather dry in certain sections. This novel does tend to split people, although most people I know really enjoy it.

This is considered by many to be Willis' best novel, and I encourage all fiction lovers (not just SF ones) to give TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG a try.

A rare gem
I wish l lived in a parallel universe where every book in the world was written by Connie Willis. And, if possible, was a prequel or sequel to To Say Nothing of the Dog.

Denied that, I'll just continue with my life, reading the book again from time to time just in order to remind myself how witty, multi-layered and joyable a work of science fiction can be. It's a masterpiece, and to quote the Man in the Black Mask looking at Inigo Montoya's blade in the Princess Bride, "I have never seen its equal".

It's one of the best time travel books I've read; Willis' explanation of how the universe allows time travel is so brilliant that at times I think it's actually true.

It's also one of the best detective stories set in a sci-fi environment I read. Asimov did it many times, but never to this extent.

It's also a charming love story.

It's definitely a tome of knowledge on day to day life in the Victorian Era, making you wonder if this wasn't the best time you could have ended up in if your time machine left you stranded.

It's also the funniest fiction book I ever read. In fact, To Say Nothing of the Dog is so full of wit, humor, intelligence and charm that if someone photos you as you're reading, chances are the photo will come up with you having a grin on your face.

Bottom line: this is a must for every sci-fi reader. Unless you're completely lacking a sense of humor and devoid of any shred of intelligence, you will LOVE this book.

A Rare Pleasure
To Say Nothing of the Dog is an extremely entertaining and very fun read. This book is an odd hybrid - a cross between hard (time travel) sci-fi, historical (or should I say, hysterical) fiction, and good, old fashioned mystery. It is classic time travel verses paradox book. It is a laugh-out-loud comedic romp through the Victorian era, with an extensive collection of literary allusions. (Most are recognizable; a few you need to look up. But I like that in a book - when it makes me go learn something.) It is also a traditional "whodunit" mystery...with the traditional culprit, of course!

Connie Willis has created a true treasure. Fast paced and full of laughter, the plot is top-notch; the characters are well developed, memorable, and extremely enjoyable; the writing is crisp and clever. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a page turner from beginning to end. I could not put it down.

I first heard of this book on an Amazon forum where the participants were discussing sci-fi favorites that they re-read for comfort and pleasure. This book appeared on numerous lists, so I felt I had to give it a try. I am so glad I did. It has become an instant favorite. One I KNOW I will re-read again and again.