I read Connie Willis' Doomsday Book over Christmas a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, but had not read anything of hers since. Despite loving her other novel, however, I really wasn't sure about To Say Nothing of the Dog at first. The setting and some of the characters are shared between the books, as is the theme: the dangers of time travel. The tone of the two books, however, is very different; Doomsday Book is what I would call 'straight' sci-fi, whereas To Say Nothing of the Dog is altogether more ridiculous. Initially, the humour grated on me a little, but I soon found myself getting sucked in and things settled down after a few chapters. I'm glad I stuck with it, as it was the most enjoyable book I've read for ages.
As mentioned above, things felt a little hesitant at first, as if Willis wasn't entirely sure she wasn't going to play the book straight after all. The first few jokes felt a little forced, and the writing none too fluid, but after a few false starts and a couple of chapters she found her style; which quickly developed into a pitch-perfect farce on time travel stories and victorian society. The humour was mild, beautifully timed, and often delightfully unexpected; every opportunity for comic misunderstandings between time travelling historians and eccentric Oxford Dons being ruthlessly exploited. This was in no small part because of a perfect cast of characters: completely ridiculous, sometimes incompetent or overbearing, but altogether human and, for the most part, thoroughly likeable.
As the plot developed things inevitably became more and more absurd. One of the strengths of the book, however, was that despite how silly things became towards the end, Willis still managed to imbue the whole proceedings with a slight sense of plausibility and dramatic tension. It was like reading a P.G. Woodhouse story where you can't help feel anxious about how Bertie Wooster is going to extricate himself from yet another engagement, despite it being for the most part exclusively his own fault.
I have not laughed so much reading a book in a long time, and would thoroughly recommend it to others. Dogs called Darwin jumping out of trees and capsizing boats were a particular highlight; as was the cat, Princess Arjumand who, despite only ever saying "More" or "Mreeow" was one of the better developed characters I have encountered in fiction.
