Most of this book was four stars for me but then it went and got clever. It ended up being completely brilliant and I got some excellent laughs out of it, especially the end.Poor Ned Henry has a severe case of time lag and he's been to way too many jumble sales. He's taken nearly 15 trips back to the 1940s to find the Bishop's Bird Stump and he's having no luck. Desperate to avoid Lady Schrapnell he goes to Mr. Dunworthy who promptly sends him back to the Victorian Era to have a bit of rest. He meets up with his contact... eventually... and then they spend most of the book frantically trying to make sure that Tossie marries Mr. C. to stop the space-time continuum from being destroyed.There are literary references galore and it creates an especially delightful homage to Agatha Christie and classic detective fiction. It was an extraordinarily fun book.This is my third book by Willis and considering that I've given them all 5 stars, I'm wondering why in the hell I'm not dropping everything to read more! She's brilliant and wonderfully funny.

Ah, I was so bummed when this book was over, I would have gladly stayed with these characters for at least a month, that's how delightful they were. Even when Willis writes about the more annoying characters, it's with such bonhomie they become like irritating family members that you hope will leave soon but they are still family so you're stuck with them, and after they leave you can have a good laugh and roll your eyes at their antics. And I miss Cyril and Princess Amahajumed the most, I wish I could take them home with me!Another great one from Connie Willis. Much lighter of heart than Doomsday and Passage. The only reason I'm not giving this a 5 is because I also just finished Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud, which I am floored by and think is a Masterpiece. Timing is everything!

Disclaimer: written as a reader, not as author.Plot summary: Future Oxford academics need money to fund their research into time, so they make deal with the devil, who is known as Lady Schrapnell, an American woman of steel will and much money. Lady Schrapnell has read a diary of her great grandmother, in which this respectable lady chronicles a life-changing visit to Coventry Cathedral. The diary deeply affects Lady Schrapnell and she decides to create a perfect replica of Coventry Cathedral. She travels to Oxford, throws buckets of money around, and strong-arms the entire historical department into jumping back and forth in time trying to nail down every detail of no longer existing Coventry Cathedral. Ned, a young historian, is one of those unfortunates. Time jumping carries certain risks: the more you jump, the more confused you become and at the start of the narrative Ned is thoroughly befuddled. Unfortunately, Lady Schrapnell doesn't believe in time sickness and keeps sending him on jumps.It soon becomes apparent that one of the historians created a paradox and now Ned is sent back to Victorian times, both to fix the paradox and to hide from Lady Schrapnell while he recuperates. He ends up going boating on the river with a nice Victorian chap and wacky misadventures begin. The book is excellent, witty, smart, charming. An homage to Jerome K. Jerome's THREE MEN IN A BOAT, it has all of the hilarity and befuddled silliness of the original. I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys time travel, Victorian time period, and humor. There is a light romance, eccentric professors, and a cute kitten. There is also some heavy duty physics and explorations of chaos theory, which are very cleverly camouflaged. It is written beautifully.Things I didn't quite like:Worldbuilding-wise things didn't always make sense. Cats are extinct in the future due to a feline pandemic, except that cats are routinely vaccinated against distemper and given how much we love them, I find it difficult to believe that all of the cats died before we found a cure. The future itself seems a bit thin: references are made to new things, but I never quite got a sense of the time period Ned is actually from, which is mid twenty-first century. It doesn't seem to be that advanced or that far removed in time and has very little flavor to it.Sometimes comedy and wit took front seat to character development, which resulted in a novel being populated by familiar, funny character types rather than individual characters. Lady Schrapnell is an archtype of a rich woman who can't take no for an answer, while the entire future history department is a collection of adorably absent-minded professors and long suffering grad students, who are letting her do whatever she wants and are afraid of her. There is an empty headed cute English miss, a besotted but goodhearted Victorian fellow, and equally familiar, intelligent and willful female historian. Yes, it is a farce - it's meant to be - but occasionally I felt like the actors in this comedy of manners had melted completely into their roles and the individual personalities were a little bit lost. To reiterate, an excellent read.

Surprising as it may be, this is not going to be one of my overly formatted, nonsensical, gif-filled reviews. This will be a long, very boring review that will not do this book justice. Quite a few digressions to be expected, too. There will be no silly fangirling involved either. My love for this book goes beyond that. If I had to choose 3 books to take with me to a desert island this would be one of them. I love it more with every reread. Why? Because it's the improbable mix of three of the things I love the most. And as improbable as the mix is, it works. Because Connie Willis is an amazing writer. No, strike that. Simply saying she's an amazing writer doesn't even begin to cover it. There are not enough words to express how much I love her and every book she ever wrote. I could reread each and every one of them over and over again and never get bored (except maybe from All Clear, which was the sad exception to my I'm-Desperately-In-Love-With-Anything-Connie-Willis-Ever-Wrote-Writes-And-Will-Write condition). To get to the point: Connie Willis = Sheer Brilliance yes, I lied when I said there would be no fangirling to be had in this review. It might not be silly but it's there.At this point you might be wondering what that improbable mix of three of the things I love the most I mentioned above is. Then again, probably not. But hey, I started writing this review so I might as well get on with it. And I guess I should issue a warning at this point, because I'm going to talk about my grandmother. Yes, my grandmother. I never get personal in my reviews but this book wouldn't be one of my all-time favourites had it not been for my grandmother. So I want to tell you a few things about her. Because she's the one who introduced me to those Famous Three Things that make me love this book so much. My grandmother was French Canadian. She was born in 1910 and stayed in love with the 1930s and 1940s of her youth until her dying day. The movies, the stars, the fashion, she loved it all. When I was growing up she had me watch all the screwball comedies she could get her hands on. She had tons of 1930s & 1940s movies on VHS tapes (yes, I am aware that 90% of GR users probably don't even know what those are. But I don't care. And I actually feel pretty proud of being one of this site's dinosaurs) and I would watch them over and over again. And used to wish I'd not been born in the silly 1970s (I mean The Love Boat and disco vs. George Cukor and Cary Grant? Please someone take me back in time). And I wanted to be Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story when I grew up. So that's Famous Three Things #1: screwball comedies.Back to my grandmother. She was crazy about British Litterature. And when I say crazy I mean CRAZY. She loved the classics but the one thing she just couldn't resist? Humour and wit. The first book she ever made me read? Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse. I can't remember how old I was when I first read it but I do remember falling in love with Wodehouse. He's been one of my favourite authors ever since. My grandmother's 1933 copy of Something Fresh sits on my bedside table and whenever I feel down I just open it at random and read a few pages. It works better than all the alcohol in the world. Now there was one book that my grandmother suggested I read that I've always had mixed feelings about: Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. Why is this important? Because the subtitle for this much-loved classic is To Say Nothing of the Dog. Yes, this is where Connie Willis got the title for her book. Jerome's story plays a very important part in Willis' book, too. And Willis' book could be considered a homage to Jerome's. I can't recount how many times I've read Three Men in a Boat in a desperate attempt to love it as much as everyone else does. Sometimes I think it's boring as hell, sometimes I think "hey, I think I get it now" but most times I just find it meh. Now that I've just reread To Say Nothing of the Dog I feel like giving Jerome's book another try. Obviously. I wonder how it will go this time. I'm not keeping my hopes up. Anyway, this was Famous Three Things #2: humorous British Lit.As much as she loved the 1930s and British Lit, my grandmother was a science-fiction buff. Yeah, she was a pretty cool grandma. Her science fiction books? I haven't seen a more extensive collection to this day. And although she didn't actually introduce me to time travel novels, it's my grandmother's love for anything science-fiction that led me to discover that particular subgenre. I was never a fan of space operas and books involving aliens, distant galaxies, androids etc but time travel? I've always LOVED it (digression time: want to read one of the best time travel stories ever written? Read Time and Again. End of digression time). And that's Famous Three Things #3: time travel.So I'm halfway through this review and I haven't said a thing about the book yet. Sigh. I told you this would be long and boring. Let's do a little recap here. We have screwball comedies + humorous British Lit + time travel. And where does that take us? To Connie Willis of course. Because To Say Nothing of the Dog is the perfect mix of all these things. And more. So much more: it's P.G. Wodehouse meets the space time continuum meets comedic romp meets Agatha Christie meets the Victorian era meets Alternate History meets Dorothy L. Sayers meets fantasy of manners meets Everything I've Ever Loved. It's hilarious (well my kind of hilarious anyway), it's clever, it's witty, it's interesting, it's fun, it's thought-provoking and DAMN I still haven't said a word about the story. And I won't either. Just know that this book is about time travel and Victorian society. About chaos theory and bulldogs. About The Battle of Waterloo and hemorrhoids. About the butterfly effect and butlers who read Darwin. About crisis points and the drowning of extinct cats. About the Enigma machine and jumble sales. About penwipers and the least likely suspect. About Ultra and spiritualism. About time-lag and chaperones. About meddling with history and loose lips. About self-corrections and Coventry Cathedral. About space time continuum incongruities and Oxford dons. And ultimately it's about the Bishop's bird stump. But is it really? Maybe not. Everything is relative here. So you'll just have to read the book to find out. If you still feel like reading this book after being put through my review that is. I'm pretty sure the number of people who had this book on their to-read list just plummeted. So just forget you ever read this review and trust me when I say: this book. Read it.Sadly enough my grandmother passed away before To Say Nothing of the Dog was published. Had she had the chance to read it I'm pretty sure she would have LOVED it as much as I do.

What a fun romp through time and space and English history. The "now" setting is 2057, with the rebuilding of the Coventry Cathedral. Oh the steps that are taken in the interest of being artistically correct! Our intrepid time travelers are sent back into history to find/correct/undo or whatever needs be done to prevent or help correct the possibility of dreaded incongruities, all while searching for the Bishop's Bird Stump of the book's subtitle. There are so many incidents that evoke laughs or chuckles throughout the book but I really don't want to spoil the fun. There are mismatched lovers, seances, dark and stormy nights, boat rides on the Thames, jumble sales, cats and dogs important to the plot.Highly recommended for lovers of fun Scifi/fantasy. Rating 4.5