Kim's Reviews > To Say Nothing of the Dog

Two weeks ago I'd not heard of Connie Willis or of this novel. It came into my life because I randomly clicked through to this article in The Guardian when I was looking for something completely different. Had I done my random clicking pre-Goodreads, I may well have passed on this novel, because "science-fiction fantasy" does not describe the kind of novel I generally read. But these days I'm much more adventurous, so I jumped right in.

What fun this was! It's a time travel story that (sort of) makes sense, a farce, a romp, a screwball comedy, a comedy of manners, a romance, a mystery and a homage to Three Men in a Boat. It includes some truly hideous Victoriana, the burning of Coventry Cathedral, a dog and a cat, an eccentric Oxford don, a boat, a butler and allusions to writers including Shakespeare, Tennyson, Agatha Christie, Lewis Carroll, and Dorothy L Sayers (which was particularly special for me, because I'm a Dorothy L Sayers nut!). There was even a reference to The Princess Bride, or at least I think there was. (view spoiler)[ A character saying "As you wish" more than once to a young lady struck me as a clue. (hide spoiler)]

I absolutely loved reading this, all the more so because I took the advice of some GR reviewers and read Three Men in a Boat first. It's not essential to do so, but I'm very glad I did. This was the ideal novel to read while on holidays and I want to read it again. Here's to serendipitous random clicking, The Guardian and the expansion of literary boundaries brought to me courtesy of Goodreads.