Blackout by Connie Willis

[lightreads]

Blackout by Connie Willis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


More in the line of Doomsday Book. History students from 2060 Oxford pursue their studies through time travel, this time to the blitz.



I would be so bad at time travel. Willis has this incredibly busy, fussy, flustered style, all run to the lab! three overlapping conversations! run to the library! get a form signed! Time travel! Bombs falling! Missing lipstick! It can be very funny in places, and incredibly evocative of Oxford academia in particular (I should know, though for fuck’s sake, we had cell phones when I was there in freaking 2004, what is wrong with these morons in 2060?) And the whole thing is about the chaotic system of timelines, with the usual attention to the slide from historian-observers to living participants that she’s always done well.



But it just drives me bonkers, and now I know why. Insight courtesy of an lj comment – the whole thing is like one long anxiety dream. Yes! Jesus! Thank you! Willis goes into this extended riff where all two characters need to do to fix things is have a five minute conversation, but one gets spotted by a friend, and there’s a crowd, and a train, and the siren goes, and then – and then it’s fifty pages later, they still haven’t had the fucking conversation, and I’m grinding my teeth and flashing back to one of those dreams where I just! Need! To catch the train! It’s so important! But I never make it! The entire book is one giant anxiety dream, and there’s only so much being funny can do about that.



But anyway, yes, bad time traveler. Because these books are about discrepancies in events, and a changing chaotic system, and the historians spend the whole time worrying that they’ve changed things. If it were me, I would eventually snap, marshal everything I’d ever studied about the contemporary event, line up all the real-time participants and be all, “you! Stand over there! You! Get ready to make this speech right here! You! Out, you aren’t supposed to be here! No talking while history is happening!” And now you know everything you ever really need to know about me.



Anyway. I actually had some pretty big problems with this book. Really questionable pacing, and of course the structure, which is not so much a duology as what you’d get if you split one book in two like a child whacking an earthworm with a shovel. Seriously. We’ll see what the second half does, but for now, hrm *twitch*.





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Comments

[readerjane]

(an anxiety dream)

OMG you are so right! Anxiety dreams, yup. And Doomsday Book is the redemptive one, and To Say Nothing is the farcical one, and Passage is the eschatological one...

Looking forward to this. I wonder if it will feel any different if I'm aware it's an anxiety dream going in.

[lightreads]

I know! I got that off someone else, and I was like yes! Exactly!

The second half is somewhat less so, at least.

[firecat]

I thought Willis's anxiety dream writing style worked really well in Passage because of the "near-death" and "disaster" themes, but it hasn't worked for me in her other books.

[lightreads]

Hmm, good to know. I have Passage slated as my next Willis anyway.

[afrikate]

This is my first Willis, and I enjoyed it very much, though I think I dealt with the constant anxiety by mainlining it. Just started the sequel and it's much the same. I need SOMEONE from Oxford in 2060 to do SOMETHING, just to show they are working on it. I may snap if that doesn't happen soon.

[lightreads]

You may like To Say Nothing of the Dog a lot. I did. It has very similar anxiety inducing qualities, but it's so much more lighthearted that it just bounces off me.