Blackout

Connie Willis

This book was a slow starter. I almost tossed it a couple times in the first third. In the year 2060 time travel has been invented, is controlled by the historians at Oxford, and is used to send students back in time to observe first person, significant historical events. The time continuum somehow does not allow historians to alter the past. It does this by not allowing them to travel to places that they could cause problems that can't be fixed. Several historians are traveling back to World War II England to observe different aspects of life during the war (e.g. shop-girls before and after the beginning of the Blitz, ordinary people becoming heroes in the evacuation of Dunkirk, life in the country with the hundreds of children evacuated from London, etc.). Once these historians are on assignment, and we stick with their stories, the book becomes fascinating. It really is interesting what can be learned from observation of the mundane that was not likely ever recorded in any history book. Willis does a great job of painting the portraits of routine wartime life in England.

My biggest disappointment was to get to the end and find out that this was a two volume novel. Stay tuned for All Clear to find out what happened. You can't read just this book. Either don't read it, or plan to read both. Since I plan to read both, I will rate it...

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