To Say Nothing of the Dog: Connie Willis (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

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The BBC has broadcast on radio a number of dramatisations of the story, including a musical version in 1962 starring Kenneth Horne, Leslie Phillips and Hubert Gregg, a three-episode version in 1984 with Jeremy Nicholas playing all of the characters and a two-part adaptation for Classic Serial in 2013 with Hugh Dennis, Steve Punt and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

Gita sul Tevere is an Italian humorous book inspired by this famous English novel. [ citation needed] Say Nothing presents a complex plot, in which complications follow organically from the actions of characters and result in logical, if sometimes unforeseen, consequences. The story touches upon the capabilities of surveillance techniques, computers, iPads, cell phones, and other technical devices, and involves detailed discussions of hedge funds, legal documents, laws, and jurisdictional issues that all demand the reader’s close attention. Central issues of the novel—the exposure of the culprits, the rescue of young Emma, the strained relationships that arise among various family members during the crisis, and fallout from judicial actions Scott was forced to take that may adversely affect his career—prevail throughout. Parks is skilled at effectively managing multiple subplots. As tension ratchets up, hidden facets of the characters are revealed, making them more flawed, more human, and more engaging. As Scott and Alison’s relationship unravels, they become increasingly irrational and paranoid. They accuse one another of terrible things, creating a wedge between them that may be too large to overlook when the crisis is resolved.

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I haven't read "Three Men in a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog!" by Jerome K. Jerome - a genuine Victorian comedy that apparently inspired Willis stylistically - but I can say that this book would definitely appeal to any fans of Victorian fiction (experts in the field would, I'm sure, 'get' many things that I missed), as well as classic mystery fans (Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie are referenced more than once), and, of course, sci-fi/time travel aficionados. 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. P.S. The best review you will ever read for this book is here. You are quiet welcome, Comely Decapods Mine.

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. This is the second story about the Oxford Time Travel Institute. It is only loosely connected to the first, namely through Mr. Dunworthy, whom we know from book 1. And wasn't I glad about that (the first book and I didn't get along too splendidly).Finally, in 2057, just in time for the celebration of the cathedral reconstruction, the location of the Bishop's bird stump proves to the historians and scientists that, in certain scenarios, objects can be brought forward in time which heralds a renaissance in recovery of historically lost, destroyed, or extinct objects. Judgments made by people of later periods almost always differ from the ideas of earlier eras. For instance, when Terence and Ned are on the river together, Ned admires the beautiful, unspoiled scenery, while Terence laments how industry has, to him, ruined the landscape. The architecture Ned and Verity admire, Mrs. Mering and her friends dismiss as "medieval," which, of course, it is, literally as well as figuratively. The artwork Mrs. Mering and her contemporaries admire, Ned and Verity and their peers dismiss as cluttered, sentimental, and, in essence, ugly. The reader is led to agree with the travelers from the future and Baine that Victorian artwork such as the bishop's bird stump is unattractive, because they are sympathetic and the reader agrees with other judgments they make. As a novelist cannot show his or her audience an object but must describe it, Willis does everything in her power to convey the message that the bishop's bird stump is bad art: the sympathetic characters criticize it while the unsympathetic characters rave about it; the description itself, highlighting its crowded nature and mixed themes, agrees with our usual notions of aesthetics; and even though the multiple scenes are meant to be representational, no one can agree on what a given scene is meant to portray. In addition, episodes where the author recalls how his Aunt Podger used to take a week long refuge at her mother’s place when Uncle Podger donned the role of a handyman trying to fix “little” things in the house or how the making of Irish Stew from all the leftovers compelled Montmorency to add his bit by bringing a dead-water rat, brims with utmost hilarity. Jerome, Jerome (1909). "Author's Introduction". Three Men in a Boat (2nded.). Bristol: J W Arrowsmith. ISBN 0-9548401-7-8. The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom Jerome often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional [2] but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog". [3] The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. [Note 2]

Principally, to Jerome K. Jerome's still-hilarious Victorian travelogue Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). While boating down the Thames (with two other men and a dog). The principle characters of that story make an appearance as they pass Ned Henry going upstream. Ned and Verity organize a fake seance to empower Tocelyn's mother—a fanatic of spiritualism—to take the family on a visit to the Coventry Cathedral. In any case, nothing “life-changing” appears to happen to Tocelyn during the visit. The main remarkable moment happens when Tocelyn contends with the family's butler Baine about the stylish intrigue of the bishop’s bird stump. Tocelyn and Baine thusly have a second encounter in the garden of Munchings End and the two choose to run off to the States. Greater-Scope Villain: Of a sort. Near the end of the book, TJ's analysis discovers that the entire Second World War was apparently part of a long chain of Contrived Coincidences intended to fix some kind of massive temporal anomaly somewhere in the middle of the 24th century.I've always thought of this one as the "funny one" and the antidote to the beautifully heartbreaking DOOMSDAY BOOK. But here's the thing: the book is shorter, it's lighter in tone, but it's not one whit less complex. If anything, it might be more complex. 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. The novel's name is a reference to the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's Victorian comic classic Three Men in a Boat, to which is makes a few references. Belligerent Sexual Tension: Baine and Tossie seem to be completely at odds until the very end, when they get together.

In the near future, time travel has been discovered. It's being used by a wealthy society dame, Lady Schrapnell, in her well-funded pet project - to restore Coventry Cathedral, destryed in a WWII bombing raid. Her time-travelling agents live in fear of her harridan-like ways, especially Ned Henry, who's been assigned to ascertain exactly what happened to the Bishop's Bird Stump (a particularly grotesque and rococo piece of Victorian art). The comic flavors can be tasted from the beginning, especially when the author introduces the three central characters:- concerned, but because I have less detailed knowledge of the Victorian period than of the medieval one,To Say Nothing of the Dog is not a laugh-a-minute book, it is not a complete success as a comic novel, but neither is it a failure. More importantly, as a lighthearted time travelling sci-fi novel it is worth a read. Just don’t go into it with the wrong expectations. Peter Lovesey's Victorian detective novel Swing, Swing Together (1976), partly based on the book, featured as the second episode of the television series Cribb (1980). Jerome, Jerome (1982). "Afterward". Three Men in a Boat, Annotated and Introduced by Christopher Matthew and Benny Green. Michael Joseph. ISBN 0-907516-08-4. George:- a banker and of whom Jerome says, “George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two” In an unusual twist, Willis also uses the first-person point of view as an interesting occasion for stylistic variation. As it turns out, one of the symptoms of severe time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality—a characteristic shared with the Victorians. Thus, when Ned waxes eloquent on, for example, the beauties of the river Thames, it sets the scene by describing the physical setting, reminds the reader of Ned's timelagged state, and also corresponds with the prose style of the period. Fortunately, Ned's eloquence is only set off sporadically during the period when he is most time-lagged. Willis could, of course, have used this style throughout in third-person point of view, but the unfamiliar florid, wordy prose style would be difficult for most modern readers to tolerate in such large amounts.