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All Clear
by Connie Willis
by Connie Willis
All Clear, or, I'm An Historian, Get Me Out Of Here!
What I really found lacking in this novel, and in Blackout All Clear 1, was an overall sense of being in another time. I know I was reminded of the fact of it on every single page for a thousand pages (“THIS IS TIME TRAVEL! I am AN HISTORIAN and THIS IS TIME TRAVEL!”), but I never got a real sense of it. Maybe this is because the Oxford of 2060 is very sketchily painted? I have no sense of home for any of the characters, and therefore no real sense of their being displaced, apart from their obvious discomfort. (They remind me of emoting Sims, frantically scurrying around and waving their arms in cyberspace.) There was a quotation in Doomsday Book to the effect, What if God wants to help us but can’t get to us -- what if God is permanently separated from the world He created by something more terrible than Time? It brings tears to my eyes even badly paraphrased. What could be more terrible than Time? That dreadful gulf, the doom of us all? I got a pretty good sense of the horrors of being bombed in All Clear, but until the last 200 of the duology’s 1000 pages I got no real sense of the finality of Time.
And for most of the journey I missed it desperately. It’s what I want in a time travel book; it’s the whole point of a time travel book. A sense of the past, a sense of longing for the past, and the impossibility of ever really touching it no matter how close you get or how important it is to you -- the danger inherent in living too much in it and the fact that you can’t change it, even if you want to. Doomsday Book had all of that; Blackout All Clear 1 and All Clear don’t.
I also don’t get much sense of place throughout the book. It’s a very generalized sort of “wartime England” which I find quite difficult to visualize (it’s also peppered with Americanisms). Jarringly, in marked contrast with the vagueness of the local landscapes (either green and rural or grey and flattened), the lengthy action in St. Paul’s Cathedral is described in loving and occasionally excessive detail. This doesn’t make me go, “How well St. Paul’s comes to life here!” so much as, “This is the only place in England the author has ever visited!” Clearly she has done her research on Underground shelters and upmarket London department stores, and has access to a comprehensive list of bomb sites. It is probably the case that I know more about England in WWII than yer average reader, and am cursed with noticing--ahem--discrepancies. But the spotty and occasionally inaccurate historical background really began to wear me down after a while, and took some of the enjoyment out of my reading.
It also bothers me that I can’t think of a single instance throughout the duology where a, pardon me, an historian EVER makes an observational note on paper or records an event electronically (coded messages limited strictly to “helphelphelp” don’t count as research notes). One of the highlights of Doomsday Book is Kivrin cradling her wrist recorder and thinking, “I am here in place of those that I love.” (I’m quoting from memory -- I read it in 1993). She’s got it all down. She has done her fieldwork in spite of the dangers involved, and she never loses sight of what her job and mission is. Who’s that devoted to his or her work in All Clear? As far as I can tell they’re not even equipped for taking notes.
I’ve read and enjoyed other Connie Willis books. These two have received such all-round spectacular reviews, both professional and personal, that I was expecting something… well, neater. Overall I found the duology sprawling and disorganized. I might have enjoyed it more if my own expectations hadn’t been set so high.
P.S. To the editor: I don’t understand why these two books aren’t 1) the single book the author originally intended, and 2) 700 pages shorter.
P.P.S. To my fellow readers: I will never take any of your recommendations seriously EVER AGAIN. :p
P.P.P.S. There’s a pretty good parody of Blackout All Clear 1 over here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
P.P.P.P.S. If you liked Blackout/All Clear, go read everything Robert Westall ever wrote, starting with The Machine Gunners.
What I really found lacking in this novel, and in Blackout All Clear 1, was an overall sense of being in another time. I know I was reminded of the fact of it on every single page for a thousand pages (“THIS IS TIME TRAVEL! I am AN HISTORIAN and THIS IS TIME TRAVEL!”), but I never got a real sense of it. Maybe this is because the Oxford of 2060 is very sketchily painted? I have no sense of home for any of the characters, and therefore no real sense of their being displaced, apart from their obvious discomfort. (They remind me of emoting Sims, frantically scurrying around and waving their arms in cyberspace.) There was a quotation in Doomsday Book to the effect, What if God wants to help us but can’t get to us -- what if God is permanently separated from the world He created by something more terrible than Time? It brings tears to my eyes even badly paraphrased. What could be more terrible than Time? That dreadful gulf, the doom of us all? I got a pretty good sense of the horrors of being bombed in All Clear, but until the last 200 of the duology’s 1000 pages I got no real sense of the finality of Time.
And for most of the journey I missed it desperately. It’s what I want in a time travel book; it’s the whole point of a time travel book. A sense of the past, a sense of longing for the past, and the impossibility of ever really touching it no matter how close you get or how important it is to you -- the danger inherent in living too much in it and the fact that you can’t change it, even if you want to. Doomsday Book had all of that; Blackout All Clear 1 and All Clear don’t.
I also don’t get much sense of place throughout the book. It’s a very generalized sort of “wartime England” which I find quite difficult to visualize (it’s also peppered with Americanisms). Jarringly, in marked contrast with the vagueness of the local landscapes (either green and rural or grey and flattened), the lengthy action in St. Paul’s Cathedral is described in loving and occasionally excessive detail. This doesn’t make me go, “How well St. Paul’s comes to life here!” so much as, “This is the only place in England the author has ever visited!” Clearly she has done her research on Underground shelters and upmarket London department stores, and has access to a comprehensive list of bomb sites. It is probably the case that I know more about England in WWII than yer average reader, and am cursed with noticing--ahem--discrepancies. But the spotty and occasionally inaccurate historical background really began to wear me down after a while, and took some of the enjoyment out of my reading.
It also bothers me that I can’t think of a single instance throughout the duology where a, pardon me, an historian EVER makes an observational note on paper or records an event electronically (coded messages limited strictly to “helphelphelp” don’t count as research notes). One of the highlights of Doomsday Book is Kivrin cradling her wrist recorder and thinking, “I am here in place of those that I love.” (I’m quoting from memory -- I read it in 1993). She’s got it all down. She has done her fieldwork in spite of the dangers involved, and she never loses sight of what her job and mission is. Who’s that devoted to his or her work in All Clear? As far as I can tell they’re not even equipped for taking notes.
I’ve read and enjoyed other Connie Willis books. These two have received such all-round spectacular reviews, both professional and personal, that I was expecting something… well, neater. Overall I found the duology sprawling and disorganized. I might have enjoyed it more if my own expectations hadn’t been set so high.
P.S. To the editor: I don’t understand why these two books aren’t 1) the single book the author originally intended, and 2) 700 pages shorter.
P.P.S. To my fellow readers: I will never take any of your recommendations seriously EVER AGAIN. :p
P.P.P.S. There’s a pretty good parody of Blackout All Clear 1 over here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
P.P.P.P.S. If you liked Blackout/All Clear, go read everything Robert Westall ever wrote, starting with The Machine Gunners.
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Reading Progress
| 02/19/2011 | page 1 |
|
0.0% | "it's here!" |
| 02/21/2011 | page 29 |
|
5.0% | "it is a crying shame these weren't cut back to a single book. there is SO MUCH padding." |
| 02/21/2011 | page 50 |
|
8.0% | "HAHAHAHAHA I guessed Phipps's airfield before any of the historians, I AM SMUG!!!!!! (I had to work at it NEARLY as hard as Polly)" |
| 02/23/2011 | page 91 |
|
14.0% | "haha, I was right about the airfield. wow, good thing the Germans don't know about Alf's incredible map. In *my* 1940 ordnance survey road atlas the estate is marked in 6 point type in the fold of page 93/94 and it isn't even near any town of note (not to mention there aren't any airfields marked). don't quite understand how eileen managed to spot it." |
| 02/23/2011 | page 129 |
|
20.0% | "i'm so confused i have to stop reading and do something else for a while.... Dunworthy reminds me SO MUCH of Cadogan/Buckmaster in Wish Me Luck, trying to arrange Lysander pickups for his agents in France." |
| 02/24/2011 | page 188 |
|
29.0% | "Hah! I was right about Polly. (I'm sure I'm not the first.)" |
| 02/24/2011 | page 189 |
|
29.0% | "incidentally I know more about V1s than Connie Willis,which is annoying." |
| 02/25/2011 | page 265 |
|
41.0% | "a bookstore just fell on mike. I hope he's squashed." 2 comments |
| 02/26/2011 | page 282 |
|
44.0% | "why does it never occur to any of them that maybe they HAVE to be there -- that their putting out a fire or saving someone's life is already PART OF TIME because they were there when it happened? That they can't change time because they are part of it, and there's no such thing as a discrepancy? (I don't know if it's true or not, in this world or theirs. But why doesn't it OCCUR to ANY of them?)" |
| 03/05/2011 | page 411 |
|
64.0% | "In their despair at the idea of changing events enough that Hitler might win the war, I don't think these people are giving the Red Army quite the credit that it deserves." |
| 03/07/2011 | page 560 |
|
87.0% | "oh, so in addition to being INTERMINABLE, this book also turns out to be DEPRESSING???? where is this "All Clear" of which they speak?" |
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Estara
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Mar 10, 2011 05:33am
I won't be reading this anyway, but I very much liked your review, because it was a) entertaining and b) clearly pointed out why you didn't like the book as much as you had hoped.
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Elizabeth wrote: "i left out a lot of whining about the narrative style."I read the Blackout review you linked to and that tells me enough about the characters to not really care about the narrative style ^^.
