Blackout

I'm a Connie Willis fan, so when I saw a new book, I grabbed it without even reading the book flap. I was happy to see that she had returned to the world of the Doomsday Book (sort of) and I quite liked the story. I found myself reaching the last few pages and wondering when she was going to wrap it up-- aaaah!! Cliffhanger w/ another book! Luckily, since book two in the series is coming out in the Fall, I won't have too long to wait. If you've enjoyed Willis in the past, you will definitely like this. If you're into "time travel" theories and/or World War II dramas, you will also like it.

Aware this was book 1 of a 2-book series, I had planned to wait until All Clear was out before reading the copy of Blackout I'd bought. Honestly, I just picked it up to look at the jacket copy. Then just to glance at the first few pages, then before I knew it, I was deep into the story and couldn't put it down. Since reaching the end I've found myself thinking it about it often, and not just because I'm waiting for All Clear and the rest of the story. There are many plot summaries here already, so I won't add yet another. I will just point out that this is a beautifully evocative novel. I have read several other novels about the period, but rarely have I felt so drawn in or thought so much about what the experience of the War was like for the average citizen. Willis has an impressive ability to evoke how everyone was involved in the war effort, from annoying hyper-energetic children plane-spotting to charming actors putting on amateur drama productions to help distract people. The characters here, both contemporary and from the 21st Century are memorable, as are their ordeals. Layered over that is the puzzle of what is going on in 21st-century Oxford, and the whole story told with Connie Willis's trademark style and humour. This is a winner, and I impatiently await All Clear.

Summary of "Blackout": This genre-bending novel is about three Oxford historians (Eileen, Polly, and Mike) who travel back in time to study WWII-era Britain, where they subsequently encounter problems ranging in severity from unruly children to potential global catastrophe, all while the Blitz rages overhead. Summary of my response: I really enjoyed "Blackout" and recommend it to others (my boyfriend is reading it as I type); the novel has a few slow spots, but they don't really detract from the otherwise solid and engaging narrative; "Blackout" is remarkably informative without ever feeling didactic - the historical components were fascinating, and well-woven into the story. A more detailed analysis: Several reviewers have said that "Blackout" can be confusing, and I agree. I don't think this is a problem, however, as it seems Willis has purposefully created a sometimes-disorienting reading experience in order to make the characters' own experiences more tangible. If you accept that the novel will sometimes be confusing and go with it (and pay attention to dates and names), a lot of early issues come to make sense; whatever disorientation remains is meant to echo the overwhelming uncertainties Polly, Eileen, and Mike face. This is particularly true in the latter portion of the book, when they go from being (supposedly) detached historians who can bop back to the future and safety whenever they want *SPOILER* to people whose fates are just as unsure as the contemporaries'. This quotation is from Polly's first encounter with the blackout (hardcover page 93): "Night and fog had descended like a blackout curtain. She couldn't see anything. And the planes were growing steadily nearer... she needed to get out of here... but she couldn't even see the pavement in front of her." The book is named after the blackout for a reason: Polly's blackout experiences, and the disorientation she feels when trying to move through bombed-out London, come to represent the challenges the historians face. How do we find a way through darkness riddled with uncertainty and disorienting change? Willis' insightful, well-informed, and hopeful exploration of this question makes "Blackout" well worth reading.

We are losing the people who fought and lived through WWII both on the front and the homefront and with this loss, we are losing the vital importance of that war to the world we live in now; it could all be very, very different. As Mary Doria Russell put it, WWII is that war "which began years before it began and has never quite ended and which provides the pivot point for two centuries." In Blackout, Connie Willis returns to the time travel universe in Oxford made popular by Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, but this time she takes us to WWII England with three historians, one observing the evacuation of Dunkirk from Dover, one observing the thousands of children evacuated to rural England and one working as a shop girl during the Blitz. Willis's research is remarkable and never overbearing; we learn facts about the Blitz and Dunkirk without ever feeling that this has turned from a novel to a dry recitation. And what facts they are! It was vital that the Allied powers win WWII and everything that we and our children know is because this in fact happened, but there were many points at which it might not have happened the way history has it. Willis's time-traveling historians have a lot to contend with, not only the hardships of living as 'contemps' in WWII England, but the fear, becoming more and more pressing as the novel progresses, that their mechanism of time-travel has gone disastrously awry, stranding them in WWII England forever, but even more importantly, allowing them to change the course of history, perhaps to the detriment of the Allies and every person on earth. Before the events of the novel, it was a law of time travel that a traveling historian couldn't change the events of the past, but one of the historians rescues people at Dunkirk, a time-point previously inaccessible for that very reason. The book ends with the three protagonists stranded and a fourth, as yet un-named arriving just as the book ends. Careful readers of this and other Willis books in the same universe will have their guesses as to who this traveler is. The cliff-hanger is not as annoying as other reviewers would have it. In showing us WWII, Willis has given us a more somber version of her time-travel universe; in this book, even more than in The Doomsday Book, what the time-travelers do matters. But Willis's story is also of the everyday people who affected these events and whose sacrifices allow all of us to live as we do. Willis doesn't dwell on this, and instead she chooses to dwell on the heroic in daily life, but between every line is the knowledge of how many people's blood washed the earth to allow a victory in WWII. It is an affecting reading experience and though I miss her trademark screwball comedy of manners, it wouldn't be appropriate here. In short, Willis is reminding us of the WWII that we can never forget, but she is also reminding us of the immense potential for good and sacrifice and nobility that lives in each of us, no matt

A caveat: //Blackout// ends on a monster cliffhanger. Willis returns to the time-travel series seen in //Doomsday Book// and //To Say Nothing of the Dog//. This time, the Oxford-based team of scientists sends three scholars to World War II-era England to observe events and uncover how English people of that time found the fortitude to cope with the violence and fright of the war. Michael Davies, equipped with American accent and naval knowledge, who expected his original assignment of Pearl Harbor, is sent to observe the evacuation at Dunkirk; Polly Churchill is to be a typical shop-girl in a London department store during the Blitz; and Merope Ward (under the name Eileen), is forced to nanny a bevy of ill-tempered children sent to the safety of the countryside by their parents. The three are meant to be mere observers of history, but circumstances conspire to link them irrevocably to those living in the past, one instance of which threatens grave consequences on the war's outcome and the future. //Blackout's// strength does lie in its characters, but more so in Willis's strong and harrowing description of life during London's deadly Blitz. Watching films or documentaries or hearing stories about the incessant bombings of 1940 pale beside what is shown in this book. Besides the bombings, trouble looms when Polly, Michael, and Merope/Eileen cannot find their way back to the future, leaving the three not only stuck in WWII-era England, but also completely ignorant of what's to come. Though classified as science fiction, //Blackout// is more than its genre, and Willis has written one of the strongest, best books of 2010. Reviewed by Angela Tate