Author(s): Connie Willis

Fiction

In the second book of Connie Willis' brilliant Oxford trilogy, Ned's holiday in Victorian England becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers, and the mysterious bishop's bird stump. Ned is suffering disorientation, maudlin sentimentality and a tendency to become distracted by irrelevancies: classic symptoms of excessive time travel. And no wonder. Oxford's history department has just pulled him out of World War II and Ned's barely had time to wash off the gunpowder when he has a straw boater shoved on his head, a carpetbag in his hand and is thrown straight into Victorian England. For a holiday. But an impossible accident makes it hard to relax. Ned's holiday becomes a mad struggle to put together a historical jigsaw puzzle involving a cat, a diary, young lovers and the mysterious bishop's bird stump. If he can't make all the pieces fit it could mean the end of history itself. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a delightful and intriguing mystery spanning almost two centuries.