"Doomsday Book" Finished Reading (Spoilers)

[Jon]

Post here if you've finished reading Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Post a link to your review.

Beware! There be spoilers possible here. As a courtesy to those who may accidentally visit this thread before finishing their read, please mark spoilers (view spoiler)[using the spoiler tags (see 'some html is ok' link for instructions and help) (hide spoiler)].

[Kerry]

Sorry to sing the same tune over and over, but Jon, you need to close the spoiler tag again.

[Jon]

Kerry wrote: "Sorry to sing the same tune over and over, but Jon, you need to close the spoiler tag again."

Got bit by the bolding. Should look better now.

[Kim]

Here's my review http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I don't normally write reviews but I'm starting to try :)

[Jon]

I finished my re-read today at lunch. I'll refrain from re-writing (or actually writing) a review until the end of the month. I'd still rate it at least a four star book (my first read was definitely a five star read). Some of the surprise was missing the second time around, even nearly twenty years later.

[Lara Amber]

I finished it last night and loved it. I'll work on a review.

[Qylie]

I think the book was slow to pickup. I felt like it has/had good character development so that helped keep my attention but the story was slow. At 50% we are basically where we started plus a few more sick ppl.

[[deleted user]]

Welp.

Guess I'll be going against the grain here. I didn't really care much for the book. Not that it was bad, but it was just 'ok'.

Didn't come off as 'special' or anything. The story was just...

Why wasn't there a single cell phone in the entire god damned thing? Sure, they all have video phones(and time travel!), but god forbid someone invent a technology where people could have a phone with them everywhere. Nope. We have to have someone sitting by the hi-tech video phone in case someone calls. Most of the present day stuff was someone trying to call someone else, or bitching about not being able to reach someone else, or complaining because they couldn't get a hold of someone else. It's 2053, a time of time-traveling historians, and they are balked in their efforts by lack of cell phones...

Also, the whole 'present day' epidemic... Was anyone else thinking "uh...maybe it's from the dig?" the entire time while they were all trying to track down contact lists and whatnot?

Meh.

[Phoenixfalls]

Ala wrote: "Why wasn't there a single cell phone in the entire god damned thing?"

Well. . . because it was published in 1992, and probably written a couple years before that. When I was watching Zach Morris lug around his giant blocky cell phone on Saved By The Bell, it never occurred to me that one day very soon we'd be in constant contact with everyone on the planet. Just one of those cultural blindspots, y'know, that're crystal clear in hindsight. . .

Also, "The whole 'present day' epidemic... Was anyone else thinking "uh...maybe it's from the dig?" the entire time while they were all trying to track down contact lists and whatnot?" didn't strike me as at all false, because people are exposed to random shit ALL THE TIME, and generally dead things are DEAD, as in no microbes either (obviously when they're long dead, not when they're recently dead).

But of course, everybody's got different things that bug them and that they simply cannot accept as a given in the narrative. These aren't my things, because I still don't carry my cell phone most of the time (I HATE that everyone expects to be in constant contact with me!) and as I mentioned in some thread or another I studied public health in college so I can bring up lots of real-life examples of times people just didn't see the proper vectors when tracking down a new scary disease.

Sorry none of that worked for you! :)

[[deleted user]]

Maybe it's just me, but even back then I had an inkling of cell phones eventually being a big thing.

Hell, in 92 I had a pager so people could get a hold of me and I knew people who had car phones. So extrapolating from there to cell phones isn't that big of a stretch. Or at least, shouldn't be.

As for the dig thing, I have absolutely no knowledge of medicine whatsoever. I don't know a t-cell from t-mobile. But I can tell an obvious story device when it's right there in front of me. And that's just how this part came off.

[Sarah]

At the time the book was written, cell phones were not yet ubiquitous. It's easy to say in hindsight 'oh, they should have extrapolated' but it would have been just as easy to extrapolate super-beepers or something. Connie Willis fixed the fact that her future had no cell phones at the beginning of Blackout, when she explained them away in one line.

I'll add that cell phones are AWFUL from a plotting point of view. If everyone can reach everyone all the time, a lot of drama disappears. It's way more interesting to have two people talk -or fail to talk - face to face than to have both of them in separate places chatting for multiple scenes. That also creates point of view problems since any non-omniscient narrator would only be able to paint one side of the conversation (and the second voice). That's why Buffy the Vampire Slayer's writers went out of their way to ignore cell phones as long as possible. When they finally did give them to the characters in the seventh season, they deliberately sent a character into a reception-less basement.

[[deleted user]]

Sarah Pi wrote: "It's easy to say in hindsight 'oh, they should have extrapolated' but it would have been just as easy to extrapolate super-beepers or something."

Yes it is easy to say it. Which is why I said it. And would say it again.

And yes she could have extrapolated super-beepers. Or a phone with a super long chord. Or robotic homing pigeons. Or something else similar.

But she didn't.

Instead we get a world with video phones, subdermal corders, and time travel that is devoid of easily accessible communication that ends up making the entire world feel false to me.

And that false feeling annoyed me enough to ruin those parts of the book for me.

[Kerry]

Just curious Ala, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? (You are, of course, perfectly welcome not to answer.)

Myself, being old enough to easily remember the days before cell phones and home computers and all that stuff, I guess I can just switch my brain into a "this is a no cell phone future" place pretty easily. I suspect that for those younger than me, this may not be so much the case.

In a way, it is terribly sad, as some very good books may not survive the coming generation as people such as my son (who is 7) have absolutely no concept of a world without computers, smart phones, the internet etc. It may make it much harder for him to relate to books set "in the future" that are missing such things.

I can think of two specific examples of this that stick with me.

One is Julian May's Intervention which was published in 1987. It starts in the 1940s and extrapolates well into the 21st century. The problem is that - understandably - May misses some really big things like the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. So as excellent as the book is, her future history (which is now the past) fails and throws you out of the story. When I read it in 1987 that wasn't a problem of course, because her imagined future was still the future and her version still could have happened.

The second was Blood Price by Tanya Huff. It was published in 1991 and has the same problem you had with Doomsday Book where there are no cell phones. Again, I never noticed it when I originally read it because I didn't have a cell phone either. But on rereading it in the last couple of years I certainly did notice the lack and I struggled a bit more with story than I did the first time.

[[deleted user]]

I know I come off immature, but I'm actually 35.

So I do remember a time before the internet, before cell phones and pagers. I remember a time before MTV and even before cable tv itself. So I'm there with you on that front.

I don't know if it's simply an inability for me to switch off, the way you can, and be able to just enjoy the story regardless of the inconsistencies. Or if it has something to do with near-future stories in general, or perhaps only time-travel ones that I don't enjoy.

I only know when I don't enjoy it, what takes me out of a story, and what annoys me in writing.

With this book, it's a case of me not believing in this world that's been created. It lacks a realism to me. I'm mainly harping on the cell-phone lack, and the plague-from-the-tomb angle, because they're the easiest targets and will most likely be what I'll remember of this book in the future if/when asked my opinion of it.

There are other issues I have with this book, but those two were simply the low hanging fruit.

[Kerry]

Ala, thanks for answering.

And fair enough. What works for some people doesn't for others. I was just curious as, like I said, I suspect there are things my son won't get as easily in future because of when he grew up, so I wondered if that might be a factor here.

Clearly it's not and that's cool. And hey, to paraphrase the Fourth Doctor (which certainly dates me), what's the point in being grownup if you can be childlike sometimes? I don't find you immature and I didn't mean to suggest that.

[[deleted user]]

Kerry wrote: "I was just curious as, like I said, I suspect there are things my son won't get as easily in future because of when he grew up, so I wondered if that might be a factor here"

I understand completely. I remember reading a book when I was younger, a noirish detective novel I believe. In it, the guy was talking about "Ma Bell" and though I was around at the time it originally happened, I had no clue what he was talking about. I didn't get it until later on.

I figure there will be plenty of things kids these days won't get that we will but that's just the way it goes. Y'know, the whole "uphill both ways in the snow" deal...

Also, I guess I should just give a word of warning to some of you. I don't actually take much very seriously, and my tongue is usually firmly planted in cheek here.

So just take anything I say in a joking manner, as that's what meant. ;)

And if I come across smarmy or snarky or whathaveyou, feel free to kick me.

[Qylie]

Ala wrote: "I come across smarmy or snarky or whathaveyou"
"
But that's why I love you xD

[Qylie]

Red Mars has some of these same technology issues. It is set in the future where we are terraforming the planet Mars, but some of the technology is sorely lacking.

[Joel]

i don't think it is that there are no cell phones so much as willis FILLS the future story with scene after scene of characters being stymied by communication. fine, maybe she is doing it to parallel what happens to kivron in the past. but it didn't need to go on for so long (in the past OR the future).

[Lara Amber]

The lack of cell phones didn't bother me, because the exact same problems could have occurred with cells. If the system was being overburdened, or if the government blocked the cell towers to prevent non-official communication with the outside world, it would have the same affect.

[Qylie]

I can't remember and I don't like in New York, but I thought that cell phone communication was still working quite well during 9/11. If during 9/11 cellphones work then it doesn't seam like a huge stretch for us to assume that cellphone communication could/would still be a viable option during this prolonged period of time in London.

I agree that the dirth of communication technologies and inability for everyone to communicate as one of the central problems in this story is annoying as a reader. I felt like we were bombarded with it has a reader.

[Joel]

i think there actually WERE a lot of communication problems on 9/11. but again, the issue i had was that miscommunication isn't very interesting to read about -- it's frustrating. it went on too long and made me dread the future segments.

[Sandy]

In the author's defense, I'm not sure we can count on cell phones in hard times: this quote is from Wikipedia, re immediate aftermath of 9/11. I think the same thing happened after Katrina:
After the attack, the cell phone network of New York City was rapidly overloaded as traffic doubled over normal levels. Cell phone traffic also overloaded across the East Coast leading to crashes of the cell phone network. Since three of the major broadcast networks had their transmission towers atop the North Tower (One World Trade Center), coverage was limited after the collapse of the tower. The satellite feed of one station, WPIX, froze on the last image received from the WTC mast; the image (a remote-camera shot of the burning towers), viewable across North America (as WPIX is available on cable TV in many areas), remained on the screen for much of the day until WPIX was able to set up alternate transmission facilities. It shows the WTC at the moment that power was cut off to the WPIX transmitter, prior to the towers' collapse.
I would hope things will be better in the next disaster, but I'm a little cynical about it.

[[deleted user]]

But that's New York City, population in the tens of millions. Oxford has, what? Half a million, if that?

[Qylie]

That quote doesn't say when things got back to normal. I believe that initially things might have been overloaded but it recovered quickly. Oxford never ever recovers.

[MB (What she read)]

The lack of cell phones didn't bother me. Frankly, I'd expect the future scholars to have something a little better like a subdermal mind-to-mind implant or something. (Like Ender and Jane?) But I'd expect that going back to the past would invalidate that communication device anyway. And, are there any going-back-in-time novels that include the characters being able to communicate? This seems to be a fairly common trope. Maybe I'm wrong or not widely read enough?

I do think that a lack of cell phones in modern Romantic Suspense--i.e where the heroine is inevitably being stalked by the Mad Serial Killer(tm)--is SO much more annoying to me as a reader and moves the book into the Wall-Banger/TSTL category for me.

[Sandy]

Thanks, MB, for pointing out the real failure was between the centuries. I don't remember any time travel where there is communication. Kage Baker, maybe, but her people can only travel one way, which is why they recruit people out of the Inquisition. So even if they had cell phones, and Dunworthy had been able to find the administrator and a tech to open the drop, there was no way Kivrin would have been there. Anachronistic as it might be, I still find myself sympathizing with the characters' sense of helplessness.

[Qylie]

Google just launched the " personal finder tool" for japan. That sounds like something that people could have used in this book if cell phones were down. Maybe it is Willis dearth of creativity that lead to 'the communication' failure in the book.

I do agree with MB about people going into the past and not having a way of contacting them but the oxford communication failure was more annoying for me as a reader.

[Sarah]

I'm not sure it's fair to say she has a dearth of creativity. Cell phones were not ubiquitous when she wrote this book. In Fire Watch, the novella that preceded this book, it was made clear that there had been some sort of cataclysmic event that had affected England. And there would be no conflict, and thus no book, if everyone could find each other instantaneously.

[[deleted user]]

There was a cataclysm that would've explained the lack of cells/other tech? Wish that could've been snuck in somewhere here.

As for no conflict had there been cells/other tech, I'm sure it could've been written another way. Not that I can come up with an example, since I have no ability in that area... :P

[MB (What she read)]

Maybe Willis forgot to put on her Nostradamus hat when she was writing that part?

[Joel]

Sarah Pi wrote: "And there would be no conflict, and thus no book, if everyone could find each other instantaneously."

only because willis wrote it that way. she's the one in control of the plot, the conflict, the book. maybe she thinks repeated scenes of people getting busy signals are interesting. as a reader, i didn't, which is why it was a mixed bag for me.

[MB (What she read)]

My perspective of Willis' books, (I think I've read them all), is that she used that sense of worry, frustration, fear, disconnection, inability to communicate, and/or control events, and etc. to pull the Reader into the drama along with the characters. So that we're invested. As a writer, it shows that she is a Master. It is quite a feat. I think that's why she keeps winning awards. And it really works for a lot of people--it does for me. BUT if you read reviews, it DOESN'T work for a lot of other Readers. You are not alone, if it doesn't work for you.

I think we're showing exactly this breakdown in our individual reaction to this book.

My perception is that her books either really work or really don't work for readers. (If you love her, you love her! If you just can't take this, I think most of her books won't work for you.) And the 2 books we've read in this Group since I joined it, are her most talked about, awarded, and accessible--for whatever that means to you. Her Time Travel books definitely all have this theme.

[Lara Amber]

Qylie wrote: "Google just launched the " personal finder tool" for japan. That sounds like something that people could have used in this book if cell phones were down. Maybe it is Willis dearth of creativity th..."

You actually expected her to predict apps and real time webpages, etc. 20 years ago? 20 years ago cell phones weren't common, cumbersome, did practically nothing, and weren't cheap. So it could be that in her envisioning of the future world, they might have been abandoned as too expensive, too unreliable, too heavy. There are people when this was written that were 100% sure that laserdisks were the future. That would have been a poor bet to take.

[Joel]

MB wrote: "My perception is that her books either really work or really don't work for readers. (If you love her, you love her! If you just can't take this, I think most of her books won't work for you.) And the 2 books we've read in this Group since I joined it, are her most talked about, awarded, and accessible--for whatever that means to you. Her Time Travel books definitely all have this theme."

while i agree with you by and large, i didn't feel this way about To Say Nothing of the Dog -- perhaps either because it was the first book of hers i read and so I wasn't looking for a formula, so to speak, or because it fit better there, as that book was largely comedic.

there's just something inherently farcical about being stymied again and again by technology (and dunworthy is such a bumbling character) that made these elements in Doomsday Book especially incongruous with the struggles kivrin was facing in the past. i both love and hate willis; i think she is a great writer who really needs to be reigned in just a bit.

[MB (What she read)]

Joel, for whatever its worth, I really liked her books more the second time I read them. It made a huge impression on me the second reading when I could sit back and watch how she 'did it'.

[Joel]

good to know. i still have to read passage and black out/all clear before i try repeating. i definitely want to read TSNOTD again though.

[Michelle]

Hello all! Joining in the discussion now that I've finished the book.

I agree with someone earlier that at 50% you're not really that much farther into the story. I think my favorite parts of the book were the entries into the Domesday Book.

But I think after Christmas 1348 (or would that have been 1347?) things really started to pick up. I don't know what I was expecting necessarily, reading a book about the Black Death. But man, that left me a little depressed. The description of the horror of it all really sank in for me.

I will also agree with someone earlier that I felt frustrated at the length it was taking the 2052 people to realize the source of the disease. I think this is just because as a reader we know that Kivrin was sick but couldn't have had the plague nor anything that was not already in the 1300s. So while I don't blame them for their confusion, it was a point of frustration for me.

I really enjoyed it though and I'm glad I got the opportunity to read it.

[Amanda]

I sympahise with the mixed feelings people have towards this book. When I first started reading, Willis' characters came across as annoyingly unenglish, perhaps even americanised and I struggled with that for a little while, then there was the comic tone in the futuritic sections that seemed completely out of place given the severity of the situation and the fact (as others have copiously discussed) that the first half of the book is rather dull, mostly dealing with communication issues, avoiding William's mother and Dunworthy's secretary moaning about supplies - all of which seemed like pointless pantomime for the real story that was going on in 1348.

But for me The Doomsday Book had a late payoff, the last 200 or so pages pulling me through and demanding to be read. It was as if Willis had finally found the novel within and all the rest was just filler. With some tough-love editing, it could probably have read better even if that meant a much shorter book, but I'm so very glad I took the time to get through it all to reach the end because I found the final experience so rewarding.

[Sctechsorceress]

I, too found this novel a little slow starting, but overall, I liked it very much. The lack of cell phones didn't bother me. That's a little bit because I remember not having them, but more because I can easily see a future in which there are stunning technological advances right next to appalling backwardness. This is especially true given all the references to 'the Pandemic'. This is a future world partially separated from us by a global tragedy.

[Tanja]

For me it was not so much the lack of mobile phones that annoyed me, it really was the amount of focus on the many missed calls and attempts at reaching someone that did. I really liked the part of the story that was set during the plague, the future plot didn't do much for me. It was interesting to read about the ways the different times dealt with pandemics, but it really struck something in me, reading the description of the plague in the middle ages. For me the book would have been so much better, if we'd only followed Kivrins POV throughout the book :)

[MB (What she read)]

I just had a thought that I wondered how the rest of you felt about this aspect of the book?

I think the reason that I like and admire Doomsday Book so very much--in spite of its flaws--is because of the way Willis portrays the universalism of human suffering and the way that humans react to it. I can't help but tear up near then end of this book as the Plague takes its full toll even though I KNOW what is going to happen. (And I'm not a particularly emotional reader, on the whole. Neither do I seek out emotional reads--I usually avoid them.)

Also, forgive my lack of literary knowledge. I probably am not explaining this very well. But there are 4 characters that stand out to me. That is Kivrin, a hero in-spite of herself, who is essentially humane. Fr. Roche who is a hero and martyr due to his faith and how he does what he thinks is the right thing to do, Dunworthy who also does his best under incredible pressure but whose main frustration is how LITTLE he can do, and Colin who is a youthful hero, untried but driven.

I agree with what a lot of the commenters here are saving about the Future being less interesting than the past. I think that frustration and inability to get accomplished what they want and need to do focused and increased my reaction to Kivrin's plight. So that didn't bother me as much personally, I guess.

I've always thought that Willis seems to really have a personal knowledge of what it is like to be helpless in the face of another's suffering. (I wondered what she had experienced in her personal life to that concept so clearly here.) I guess that I believe and I think that Kivrin showed that when someone is suffering, and there is nothing else that you or anyone else can do, that the 'right' thing to do is just be there. To do what you can, ease the pain if possible, and witness (although I know that's not the right word.) She's from the future, she's immune, she could walk away or refuse to help. But she doesn't. That is heart-breaking. And SO admirable to me. I guess I think about this in the same way that I admire what the Hospices do for the terminally ill.

[Phoenixfalls]

MB -- That's quite beautifully put. That is exactly what I respond to in this book too.

[Amanda]

MB wrote: "I think the reason that I like and admire Doomsday Book so very much--in spite of its flaws--is because of the way Willis portrays the universalism of human suffering..."

Absolutely. Willis tears down the barrier between the modern and the past by portraying "the universalism of human suffering" as you so perfectly put it, MB. Nothing is so great a leveller as pain.

[Lara Amber]

After reading MB's post I really wish there was a way to "like" posts in GoodReads.

Excellent analysis.

[Amanda]

This is a very genre confused book! It was almost like a medical drama for the most part and I'm not a fan of medical drama. That's probably why I didn't take well to the futuritic parts of the story.

[Coralie]

I would call it genre rich rather than genre confused.

[Amanda]

Coralie wrote: "I would call it genre rich rather than genre confused."

Oh, semantics :P

[Ami]

Finished this afternoon. I liked it overall, but there are a few things I didn't like about it for sure- it was quite slow to get going for one. I get the whole thing aabout the lack of cell phones, but I do think it is interesting how authors write their version of what the future will look like. (I'm probably the only person around without a cell phone, by the way.) So yes, unrealistic communication technology issues had a hand in slowing down the action.

(view spoiler)[One thing that I'm still reeling from is the abrupt shifts in tone. The jokes and hilarity- and it was hilarious, what with horrible Mrs. Gaddson, Fitch and his lavatory tissue problems, Colin and his gobstopper, and My Dunworthy's snarky inner monologue- gave the whole thing a jovial atmosphere, even when people started getting sick. Because of that, I was completely unprepared for it when everybody started dying.

All of a sudden, we went from funny running jokes to death death death. It was like reading a different book. I'm sure the author did that on purpose, maybe to make us feel the extremes more? It was so sad- especially the kids.
(hide spoiler)]

The historical lesson here was that the Black Death was really really horrible. I think I got it.

[Sarah]

For me, the strongest writing is always that which mixes humor into its drama, or drama into its humor. It's like putting a little bit of salt on something sweet: an enhancement. It's something that TV writers do very well: Joss Whedon with Buffy and Firefly and Angel and Dollhouse, Aaron Sorkin with West Wing, etc. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but it's something that really works for me, which is why I love her writing so much.