It MUST be on your shelf

When I first read Connie Willis's _To Say Nothing of the Dog_, I was driving through Kansas. My mother kept asking me why I was laughing so hard. In a lot of ways, it's difficult to explain the greatness of this book--a lot of people probably wouldn't like it if they read it, or would think it was TOO clever (whoever heard of such a thing?) or too full of bizarre literary in-jokes. I would say that the ideal audience that doesn't realize they've been waiting all their lives to read this book is the underworld of English majors and literature buffs.

However, that said, Willis's novel has a lot to recommend it, even if you don't catch the many veiled references to Tennyson. Willis manages a surprising level of historicity mixed with sparkling wit and a plot of almost mind-boggling complexity. It's always a challenge--an exciting challenge, to re-read this book. So I make a point of doing that at least once a year.

The protagonist and narrator, Ned Henry, is engagingly one step behind for most of the action, set in the late Victorian era, while heroine Verity Kindle suffers only from her extreme attachment to animals and an unwholesome affection for Ned's boater. The supporting characters are amusing, and Willis manages to touch on spiritualism, class boundaries, fate, love, artistic taste, the role of butlers, croquet, and Victorian affection for furniture with equal humor and ease.

The plot is loosely tied with another of Willis's novels, the Doomsday Book, which also deals with time-travel historians researching other eras. Both books are deep in their understanding of history and of the human condition. I'd love to give plot details away, but the book must be read to be believed. I have only these things to say: The Bishop's Bird Stump. Globe-eyed nacreous ryunkin.