The tale revolves around three main protagonists: Merope Ward, who, as Eileen O’Reilly, becomes a nanny in a country manor, taking care of evacuated children; Polly, who, as Polly Sebastian, ends up working in a London department store; and Michael Davies, who unwittingly gets involved in the mission to rescue stranded soldiers on the shores of Dunkirk.
Eileen is continually trying to return two rather trying children to their mother, and encounters one frustration after another in the process. Quite apart from the challenges in reuniting Alf and Binnie to their mother, involving everything from messed up train timetables to rubble-strewn streets and an absent mother, there are the difficulties she encounters trying to return to the drop (the portal back to 2060 Oxford).
Polly spends much of her time in bomb shelters and underground stations during The Blitz. En route, she encounters a group of men and women with whom she forms a bond. Not the least of these is the Shakespearian actor, Sir Godfrey, who takes quite a fancy to her. Sir Godfrey put me in mind of the roaring Thespian portrayed by Albert Finney in the movie, The Dresser, and his impromptu performances make for light relief for the group while they are hiding from Hitler’s bombs.
Mike Davies, who had been aiming for Pearl Harbour, finds himself hospitalised near Dover, the result of an injury during the Dunkirk troop extraction. Mike’s major issue here is the dread that, by acting to save lives he has unwittingly altered the course of history. One of the key principles of time travel in Connie Willis’s approach is not to make any changes to a “divergence point” (a major historical event). But, of course, that’s precisely what Mike seems to have done.
The time-travelling historians need to find their way back home, and spend some part of the first volume trying to do just that. In common with some other Willis novels, their attempts are continually being thwarted. As with Willis’s novel, Passage, for example, in which The Titanic and a modern hospital are somehow in a parallel continuum, blocked staircases, jammed doorways, wonky timetables and some fundamental communication breakdowns between people conspire to confound the desired results. Ms. Willis pulls off the remarkable trick of extracting more high tension from a collapsed stairwell or a locked door than anyone else, (Hollywood blockbusters included), can manage with a high speed car chase or a raptor pursuit.
Over and over, I found myself either breathing, “Oh, my God” as the characters become trapped in an impossible situation, or laughing out loud at comic moments which veer wildly between subtle wit and slapstick.
In the second part of the novel, All Clear, the situation, if anything, gets worse for the characters. They can’t seem to get back home, no matter how hard they try. Not to mention the ticking time bomb, a few years hence, where Polly has time travelled under a different identity. And, if she is unable to return home, the consequences of being present in the same time zone as another version of herself doesn’t bear thinking about.
As a tribute to the courage and heroism of ordinary people during the second World War, the novel is faultless. And the details of day-to-day life on the home front and the way people behave under pressure at such times are impeccable.
Now and then, I have to say, I found the thwarted missions slightly frustrating. No one ever seems to succeed on even the most minor level. “For want of a nail,” as the saying goes. It would have been good if, just once in a while, a character setting out on a task actually fulfilled it without the continuous hiccups. It’s Willis’s style, though, and the larger wonders and delights of the book far outweigh this little niggle. I suspect she wants readers to really feel the frustration and tedium – if that’s the case, she has succeeded!
Even if you’ve never read Connie Willis, or any science fiction for that matter, but enjoy dramas such as Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife, Brideshead Revisited and the like, you’re bound to love this book. While I’ve focussed here more on the domestic drama aspects, this is, though, very much science fiction of the highest order.
For such a long novel – around 1,200 pages – it’s a fast read. Connie Willis has a crisp, precise writing style in which not a single word is wasted. She never tries to be clever – though she is extremely clever – and always writes in plain English. The sparest of descriptions allow us to see and experience the scenes vividly, while giving us plenty of space for our own imagination. This is true literature – compulsive, emotional, political, acerbic and joyful all at once, with crystal clear prose that sucks us through the pages with a speed and an energy that most writers, regardless of genre, would envy.
For more information on Connie Willis’ Oxford time travel series, try the author’s blog.
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Review by John Dodds
John Dodds is the author of The Kendrick Chronicles crime novels (Bone Machines and Kali’s Kiss , the first two in the series are out as audiobooks from Blackstone Audio. They are narrated by Robin Sachs, a British actor who has appeared in countless films and TV series, including Babylon 5, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Galaxy Quest and more).
John has also written numerous short stories, three of which received honourable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology (St. Martin’s Press). One of his stories was selected for the Scotland on Sunday/Macallan short story competition anthology, Shorts V, and another evolved into a theatrical monlogue which was performed at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh’s showcase even, The Monday Lizard event.
Some of his work is available in podcasts, such as Tales to Terrify, Crimewav, Starship Sofa and (forthcoming) Crime City Central. Under a pseudonym, JT Macleod, he has written a collection out from Melange Books, USA of historical/paranormal/erotic/romance stories called “Warriors and Wenches” His most recent work is the first novel in YA steampunk series called “The Mechanikals,” (published independently through Smashwords) and is currently writing his third Kendrick Chronicles novel, “Babylon Slide”. John was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland and now lives in Bulgaria.
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