DB: Full book discussion. Spoiler subject line inside

[John (Taloni)]

Mostly spoiler protected to be polite to email readers...

First, the kinda-spoiler subject line: (view spoiler)[Doomsday Book: By Connie Willis or Debbie Downer? (hide spoiler)]

Finished the book yesterday. It was light and moderately funny through the first two thirds. The ongoing gags about toilet paper, bell ringers and what the heck a trunk line is worked okay, if a bit over done. And then the serious started to hit.

Major spoilers inside...
(view spoiler)[So I'll just jump right to the end. Everyone dies. That's why they could land without paradox, because no one who saw them lived. It was death, death, death and more death. A plate of death with a side of death, death on top, crispy potato fried death, and some shaved death on top. Death comes by with a pot to fill the cup: Would you like some more death? Er, no thanks, looks like I've got plenty of death.

I started to feel like I was reading a Black Death version of the Monty Python "Spam" bit with everyone chanting "death death death death" instead. Except there's no "lovely death, wonderful death." Or perhaps it's Oliver Twist with bowl in hand asking, "Please sir, may I have some more death?" But this time he'd be answered "yes," because there's death all over.

Or Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, except that instead of the Black Album he's holding the Death album, and saying "It's like, how much more death could there be? And the answer is none more. None...more death."

But wait, it's all okay, see, because this time they were loved and - NO! Save them! *big arm wavy motion towards victims* Save them! You have a time machine! Take them forward, put them on an island so they don't impinge on history, but do something!

Bleah, bleah, bleah. I suppose I can see the artistry in construction, but I am not feeling it.

This is my second Connie Willis book, the other being the also death laden "Passages." I am done reading Connie Willis. Yes, she's won awards up the gazoo, but I can't deal. (hide spoiler)]

[Colin]

Well, yes. I can certainly understand where you're coming from, which is largely why I cast my vote for To Say Nothing of the Dog in the original poll. It's much more lighthearted.

(view spoiler)[Having said that, I thought that the historical sections of the book did a decent job of humanising the experience of the plague - giving it much more impact than a textbook description of symptoms and transmission vectors would.

Balanced against the farcical elements and caricature characters in modern day Oxford, I enjoyed the overall effect. (hide spoiler)]

[David H.]

Yep--people were obsessed with wanting to read the "first book in a series," but To Say Nothing of the Dog is way more fun and lovely. Also, cats may or may not show up in that one. :)

[Ivy]

I was one of the folks that voted for this book. I was so excited it was picked. Got the audiobook from my library and enjoyed the first third, although it seemed a bit long winded. About two days later I found out I had a large tumor that may or may not be cancer. A week of tests and sleepless nights followed yet I somehow managed to keep listening. The ovarian tumor was removed on Friday and it was benign...but I absolutely could not read this in the hospital. My good news made the ending of this book seem even more tragic, and all the little miscommunications were no longer amusing. Glad to check another book off my bucket list, but this was probably the worst book I could have chosen at this particular juncture of my life.

Verdict: Read only if you’re in good health

[Phil]

Wow, I'm glad things worked out well for you Ivy.
As far as the book goes (view spoiler)[ the deaths didn't bother me much except for the priest but what finally broke me was when Colin and Dunworthy were in the past and knew it was Kivrin when they heard the church bell. Until then I wasn't sure she was going to make it. I cried like a little girl, and that's a insult to little girls, and was glad I finished it at home instead of at work. (hide spoiler)]
On another note, isn't it funny how for decades science fiction writers have seen the future of personal communications as more complete/complicated with video phones while in reality society has chosen to go simpler/less complete with short text messaging. I wonder what that says about us. Well not about me; I still prefer to talk on the phone.

[Imbunche]

Mybe it makes me sound heartless, but I was more bothered by how riddiculous it was (view spoiler)[ Mammalian influenza virus can only survive hours outside of the host, avian influenza a bit more, up to maybe few weeks in the right conditions. but not over 700 years! If that was to be true every archeaologist would be catching some virus or other. (hide spoiler)]

[Bruce]

John (Taloni) wrote: "It was light and moderately funny through the first two thirds. The ongoing gags about toilet paper, bell ringers and what the heck a trunk line is worked okay, if a bit over done. And then the serious started to hit."

I thought the balance was striking, kind of like in a horror flick where everything is light and fluffy and friendly until bam, the thing hits. (view spoiler)[ The overwritten first two-thirds set me up as a sitting duck for the death. (hide spoiler)] Interesting plot device. I'm not sure if I've ever read anything quite like this before.

[Evangeline]

I finished the book yesterday. The beginning was alright, but once I got further I found the book more enjoyable. I honestly liked Mr. Dunworthy's storyline a lot more than Kirvin's. I figured hers out less than 1/3 into it, and was just reading to see it play out.

[Fredrik]

I liked the book, though the caricature portrayal of the present day characters made those parts pretty exasperating. Following the escalation of the influenza epidemic paired with the onset of the plague made for a very tense reading experience, however, and on balance, it worked.
The present day parts also seemed oddly old-fashioned; they read more like something from the 1950s than the 2050, let alone 1992. If anyone agree, do you think this is a stylistic choice or an authorial quirk?

[Bruce]

Fredrik wrote: "The present day parts also seemed oddly old-fashioned; they read more like something from the 1950s than the 2050, let alone 1992. If anyone agree, do you think this is a stylistic choice or an authorial quirk?"

I agree, it also felt to me like the 1950's projected into the future. I haven't read enough of Willis, though, to conjecture if it's a choice or an author quirk.

[Vanessa]

Just finished yesterday. (Kindle version is sent back to Los Angeles library system, if anyone is still waiting). I really enjoyed it, though I really struggled at the end as John (Taloni) did with (view spoiler)[ death, death, with a side of death. When little Agnes died I really couldn't handle it. And then I thought Rosemund would live but then...no. The only one who *might* have lived is Maisry when she ran away on the horse. But even that we don't know, and to be honest she wasn't one of my favorite characters. Also the poor cow! I felt bad for the cow. (hide spoiler)]

I also agree with Fredrik and Bruce that the future did seem quite antiquated. I checked to see when the book was writing about a third of the way through and was surprised it was from 1992. I was expecting the 60s at the latest.

Overall though, I really enjoyed her writing and her character development (even though a lot of the characters were petty and unlikeable). And even though (view spoiler)[ almost everyone dies. Even Mr. Gilcrist and Great Aunt Mary, who died off page, which was a contrast to the graphic detail of how everyone died in 1348, (hide spoiler)] I looked forward to reading it and finished it in record time for me. I'll read more of hers, but maybe her lighter fare next time.

[John (Taloni)]

^I am glad you enjoyed it. The ending just threw me so far it wrecked the book. I saw it coming a good 100 pages off and dreaded getting there.

On the plus side, you may have read the copy I returned! I made like a good library reader and sent it back as soon as I was done.

On the subject of better endings, I was thinking throughout of a Poul Anderson "Time Patrol" story, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth." It's in Time Patrol #2. Anderson did a number of these stories and they wound up in collections.

Now I flat out love "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" but I will note that it's best read after you've already read a few other of the stories for background, and they are uneven. But this one...a member of the Time Patrol has a child with someone in the past, and spends centuries of timeline trying to find a way for their descendants to live without wrecking the future. Time travel done right.

[Rick]

I've not read this ( I started it years ago and DNFed it, lost the copy and I don't need a downer of a book right now) but I'm curious - how was this antiquated? If it's just the lack of tech then as someone who was very much an adult in '92, I'll just say that there were basically no cell phones then and almost no one had email.

[Todd]

I finished it last night, and I have to admit I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I don't necessarily disagree with the negative comments above. I will say (view spoiler)[ a) I was half expecting Kivren to end up bringing one of the two girls back with her, or failing that, some sort of scene of her at the end going to the dig and finding Agnes' bell or cart...but it just sort of ended.
And b) What was the point of Basingame(sp?) . I mean it was weird not only that he was gone and incommunicado the whole time, but that everyone kept bringing it up until the very end of the book, but we never find out anything.
It was like an un-fired Chekov's gun to me, to the point where I started suspecting Roche might actually be him mid-way through the book.
(hide spoiler)]

[Isak]

On the whole I liked it, can't think of anything ells quite like it.

I think there was a line somewhere about Mr. Dunworthy getting depressed as a result of the influenza but towards the end he almost seemed to be bipolar. (view spoiler)[Was that supposed to be an effect of his relapse? (hide spoiler)]

[Brendan]

I thought the book really picked up in the final third. It went to the conclusion you were expecting but left some seeds of doubt that the author would throw in one more gut-punch. I liked the children characters in this book so much more than any adults, which is a rarity for me.

[Robobobo]

Sooo, I had a fine weekend, until Sunday, when I decided to finish DB... (view spoiler)[I cry easily when reading a sad book or watching a sad film, so the last 200-300 pages were especially hard. The ending didn't surprise me, I pretty much expected it, but that didn't help, I think I used up twice my tissue ration for this month. That wouldn't have happened, of course, if Connie Willis didn't know exactly how to write likeable and interesting characters. As much as I would've loved to see Kivrin go somewhere else and explore the wider world, I really enjoyed the detailed descriptions of everyday life in a small mediaeval village. What kept me from really liking the book were mostly things already mentioned by others: how long it takes Badri to tell Dunworthy about the problem with the fix, Basingame's abscence, and other things that seemed to be there for plot reasons alone and didn't feel organic. (hide spoiler)]

[Paulo]

I wish I had liked the book more, but I had several issues with it. After the plot takes off, and until 2/3 of the book (view spoiler)[, nothing really happened. It was Kivrin “Where is the drop” and Dunworthy “What was the slippage”, with no progress. The Middle Age part of the book was disappointing due to the lack of illustrative descriptions on how life was at the time, and the future part was full of caricature characters, despite having an interesting epidemic backdrop.

Then Kivrin does miss the drop, and we learn she is in the Black Death, and things seem to improve. It was touching to see all the characters die, and hats off to Connie Willies for dropping all the plots for those characters, intensifying the feeling of lives interrupted. Suddenly I don’t know where the book is heading, and it is a good feeling! Alas, it wears off quickly… Soon a rescue party is on its way, and I can see from miles away the ending – even though I hoped all the way to be surprised. (hide spoiler)]

It also bothered me that Kivrin was such a poor choice to send back in time! Of course, being a woman in the Middle Ages was an issue, but she also didn’t strike me as a competent historian – more like an undergraduate who learned Latin for this mission. And as soon as she was up on her feet, (view spoiler)[ she was so intended of trying to alter the past that I was sure everyone would have to die (I was thinking of an attack on Skendgate, but the plague had the same effect). (hide spoiler)]

And to top it all, what happened to (view spoiler)[Mr. Basingame? I can’t believe Ms. Willies couldn’t spare half a page to explain his mysterious absence. (hide spoiler)] Todd is right, it seems like an un-fired Chekov’s gun.

The real hero to me was (view spoiler)[Colin (hide spoiler)]. Consistent through and through, smart, resourceful, brave! I hope he gets his wish and (view spoiler)[go see the Crusades someday. (hide spoiler)]

[Michele]

What? Basingame is enjoying his Christmas fishing holiday, far away from any source of modern life - like you do when the alternative is to stay at home and murder your relatives/co-workers with fruitcake, due to Christmas carol-induced rage.

Colin shows up again in Blackout/All Clear.

[Colin]

Paulo wrote: "... and the future part was full of caricature characters, despite having an interesting epidemic backdrop."

You say that as if it was a bad thing! I thought that was the best thing about the book.

Every single character was a caricature and I enjoyed reading about the bickering academics, obsessive bellringers, over-protective mothers, promiscuous undergraduates, and so on. Pure comic farce, without which the overall experience of the book would be so grim as to be unbearable.

[Paulo]

Colin wrote: "You say that as if it was a bad thing! I thought that was the best thing about the book."

Perhaps the problem, to me, was not the caricatures per se, but the stark contrast to the main characters. Dunworthy is not witty, not even good humored. Kivrin as well. Most of the time, they behaved humanly, justifiably concerned about the problems they faced.

This contrast felt like they were trapped in a "Monty Python Style" nightmare - people are dying, but all I care about are the bells!

It seemed to me it was intentional, but I disliked the result. It was unclear if I was supposed to take it seriously, or laugh about Kivrin lost in the past.

[Brendan]

The farcical elements fell a bit flat for me. I can definitely see why the author felt she needed some comedy to provide a break from all the dreariness, but Willis doesn't come across as a natural comedy writer in this book.

[TRP]

Overall I enjoyed this book but I had a few pedantic observations and quibbles so I though I'd jot them down.
Turns out I wrote rather a lot and I'm pretty sure I've gone absurdly overboard with this.

The book was conceived more than a decade before it was published. (view spoiler)[Kivrin Engle and Professor James Dunworthy appear in Willis' short story Fire Watch (published in Feb 1982). It is mentioned in the story that Kirvin has already visitied experienced the Black Death in 1348. For me, this means it's probable that Connie Willis was already planning the plot for The Doomsday Book back then. Perhaps she had already written drafts or parts of The Doomsday Book (possibly in the 1970s) which might explain why some bits of the novel (2050s Oxford) seem anachronistic even for something written in 1993. (hide spoiler)]
Telephones are odd in 2050. (view spoiler)[They appear to be video phones but built on unreliable analogue technology (very 70s/80s - not so much 90s). Also there are no Cell or mobile phones. This is odd because "Brick" analogue mobile phones had been around since the mid-80s and smaller 2G (GSM) digital mobile phones were being introduced from 1991. you might expect her to have speculated about the spread of mobile phones and improvement of the phone network. (hide spoiler)]
Mufflers, the woman is obsessed by mufflers. (view spoiler)[A muffler, in this context, is a narrow (usually) woollen scarf used to wrap a couple of times around the neck and/or face. I've heard the term but I associate it with Victorian novels and film/TV adaptations of Dickens (where it might also be used to hold a top hat on a head). (hide spoiler)]
Inarticulate infirmary. (view spoiler)[While complaining elsewhere about Willis wrongly using Casualties to describe a Casualty Department, I also noted that she never put an article (an or the) in front of the word Infirmary. You can sometimes get away without using an article in front of Hospital so I did sometimes wonder if she had done a search and replace on "Hospital" replacing it with "Infirmary". She might have done this because the hospital in central Oxford is called the Radcliffe Infirmary (now closed but open in 1990s). Unfortunately the Casualty department at this hospital was moved to the larger John Radcliffe (same guy - a wealthy Royal Physician) Hospital in the 80s (certainly before 1989 when the author Colin Dexter sent his detective, Inspector Morse, to the John Radcliffe Hospital with a bleeding ulcer in "The Wench Is Dead") (hide spoiler)]
The Tube? (view spoiler)[The "Tube" is the nickname for the London Underground railway system. The longest distance between stations on the London underground is about 45 miles (Upminster to Chesham). It takes about 2 hours and there are 38 stops. It's another 30 miles to Oxford (Oxford is about 60 miles from Charing Cross in central London). The point is that if it is the "Tube" you'd expect a lumbering stopping service (travelling just over 20mph on average) not an express city-to-city service which existed (and still exists) when the book was written. It doesn't make sense to call this service the Tube. Confusingly there is an "Oxford Tube", it's an express city-to-city coach service that runs about every 10 minutes 24 hours a day and 365 days a year and was introduced in 1987 but I'm fairly sure she's writing about a rail service. (hide spoiler)]
There is no Oxford-Bath road. (view spoiler)[The dig at Skendgate is somewhere near Witney (about 10 miles outside Oxford). the Wychwood forest mentioned in the 1348 bits begins slightly to the North-West of Witney. Both Skendgate and Kivrin's village are also near the "Oxford-Bath" road. This is odd because Bath is to the South-West of Oxford and currently there is no direct road from Oxford to Bath (not even if you look at smaller roads which may once have been ancient major roads), you either head West then turn South or head South then turn West. In each case you are changing onto a different road. The A40 is quite a good candidate for the "Oxford-Bath" road as it runs near Witney and, like a lot of old/ancient roads, along a ridge (look up ridgeways). About 20 miles from Oxford (near Northleach) the A40 crosses the ancient Roman Road called the Fosse Way (now know as the A429 but the route has been used for over 1500 years) and if you turn South onto this road you will end up in Bath. however if you continue on the A40 you will end up in Cheltenham (a small market town in 1348) and then Gloucester (a major city in 1348) so wouldn't it be the Oxford-Gloucester road. Of course Bath might have been more important than Gloucester in 1348 possibly because it was the See of the Bishop of Bath & Wells (about 4th or 5th most senior English Bishop so directing you to Bath from Oxford might be more important than directing you to Gloucester (hide spoiler)]
Something terrible happened to London. (view spoiler)[In Fire Watch (1982) Willis talks about a "pinpoint" bomb which destroyed St Paul's Cathedral in 2005. The Doomsday Book shares this universe and the destruction of St Paul's is mentioned but at least one of the infected people travels from London to Oxford to do their Christmas shopping. Given the relative sizes (London: Population 8.7 million, Area 1,572 km² Oxford: Population 160,000 with 32,000 students, Area 45.59 km²) of the cities and and the greater number, variety and quality of shops in London this seems like a stupid thing to do. Unless, of course, something terrible happened to London. (hide spoiler)]
Not enough people in Oxford.(view spoiler)[Willis drops hints about a pandemic which is in recent living memory in the 2050s (so not the Spanish Flu of 1919) so I wondered if in her universe the world was radically depopulated. There are lots of places in the book where I felt that there just weren't enough people. If we assume a probable population of Oxford in the early 90s as about 100,000 (not including vacationing students) then would a single hospital with (seemingly) a handful of doctors be able to cope with quarantine for that many? We get the idea that a few thousand people are affected by the outbreak of 700 year old flu. This seems to prostrate the authorities but it is only about 2% getting ill so would that be enough to cause chaos? Each college seems to be run by just one professor and his assistant. The students (on average 500-600 per college of 38 colleges) aren't around and the teaching staff would on vacation but the support staff, dozens of them, would still be needed. I realise that I knew the approximate numbers before reading the book but Oxford of the book felt like a place with a population under, say, 50,000 which is a third of the current population. I wonder if Willis' pre-2050 pandemic wiped-out most of the population and that might explain other things like faulty technology, shaky sense of recent history and scarcity of toilet paper. Perhaps the it deprived us of lots of useful, important people (especially in cities) so everything now is run on a skeleton basis.(view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

[Sa]

I Lem'd it. Couldn't get more Than halfway through it. Every chapter they kept trying to find out what the problem with the drop was, and evrytime, something would popup to prevent them from finding out. It's okay to have a cliff hanger now and then, but not every 10 pages. Between that and the paper thin characters, I got so frustrated I couldn't read anymore.

[Tina]

I liked the book. I liked the way Willis contrasted the two epidemics, medieval and future, and the different ways people tried to cope with the disease in each century.

When Kivrin wanted to go back to the 1300's it seemed like she had a romanticized idea of medieval life, and thought she was well prepared, but then she had to learn quickly it to adapt. (It kind of reminded me of the PBS series "Victorian House" where the volunteers thought they knew how to handle Victorian life and then were a little shocked when they found out it was really hard). Along with a horrible disease, it was even worse than she imagined.

I listened to the audiobook and toward the last 1/3 of the book I found it really hard to take breaks and not push through to the end.

By the way, "mufflers" used to be a very common term for a knitted neck scarf. "Scarves" were the lighter silky scarves women often wore over their head, like the pictures here:
https://www.fabryan.com/history-of-sc...

[Julia]

I was close to giving up on this one. The endless repetitions and how absolutely everything that could go wrong would go wrong wore me down. I could hardly care about any of the characters in the end I just wanted to get it over with.

I’m glad I didn’t because the ending was really powerful, but getting there was a chore. And even though I like the ending, I’m not sure it justifies the absolutely exhausting experience of reading the whole book.

[Richard]

The really slow start almost convinced me to quit. But, by the time I hit the last third I couldn’t put it down. Well, not literally since I did the audiobook. There did seem to be a lot of useless characters and storylines.

[Paulo]

Yurana wrote: "... The endless repetitions and how absolutely everything that could go wrong would go wrong wore me down."

I totally agree with you, Yurana. The ending is pretty good, but by the time you get there, you are so exausted that you'll accept any ending, just to see it finished.

[Patrick]

I don't lem books, but I came close. The priest and the little girl kept pulling me through (honestly the only characters I felt had any depth whatsoever).

And... yeah, not sure I should have kept reading.

[Fredrik]

My opinions on this book are mixed. The Kivrin segments had me engaged from beginning to end, but the present time segments were exasperating to read thanks to the (generally well written) caricature characters almost exclusively defined by their single quirks/obsessions. It was funny, to a point, but it also really felt like the present-day plotline was just running in place doing nothing while waiting for the last act when it was time for the influenza outbreak to begin.
But once we got to that part, it got very tense and I was equally hooked by both timelines. The symmetry between the outbreaks in the past and the present was both effective and well done.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

I finally finished it. It took me about 2 months (well, I was reading a few other books at the same time too). I thought the first half to 2/3 of the book was overwritten and should have been condensed. I didn't mind the humor in the modern day sequences although it wasn't really "funny" - more like somewhere between "tiresome" and "amusing." The phone shortage and toilet paper shortage were puzzling. The Middle Ages sections were more interesting and the best parts of the book, and they set up the ending very well. Willis isn't a great writer, but she pooped out a decent book this time. I gave it 3 stars.