To Say Nothing of the Dog

I have to credit my husband with finding Connie Willis' gem To Say Nothing of the Dog (#732) in the library stacks.  I adore those Victorian social satires The Importance of Being Earnest and The Admirable Crichton.  If you are a fan (Oh, forgot Lady Windermere's Fan!) of these, even if you don't normally read science fiction, you may find To Say Nothing of the Dog very much to your taste.


Sometime in the not-too-distant future, time traveling historians are being sent back to research the details of Coventry Cathedral, largely destroyed during a Nazi air raid in 1940.  A very determined Lady Schrapnell is the force and financial power behind a project to rebuild Coventry Cathedral in all its glory on the grounds of Oxford.  She has set the date for the new Cathedral's consecration and has assigned the hapless Ned Henry to find a missing artifact: the bishop's bird stump.  Ned has been back to the past so many times in the last few days he's exhibiting symptoms of extreme time lag.  His supervisor decides to send him back to the Victorian era for some well-deserved rest.  He only needs to bring back an item from the past that made it through the time travel net with historian Verity Kindle.  The only problem is that it could change the course of history.  Poor Ned is so fatigued, he misses exactly what it is he's supposed to be bringing back.  Instead, he finds himself embroiled in the affairs of an Oxford student, his tutor boating on the Thames which leads to a chance encounter with a whole household of eccentric characters, to say nothing of the dog, Cyril!


Missed meetings, romantic mismatches, significant dates and the intricacies of Victorian etiquette all contribute to a frothy tale chock full of literary and historical references.  True love does find a way, and in the end, those in the future will appreciate the gifts from the past.  An absolutely delightful read!