April 2019 Book Club: Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy
Content: Pertaining to the 1400s- A couple is caught having sex in the barn, A 50 year old man lears at and gropes a 12 years old girl he is betrothed to.


For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin - barely of age herself - finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

This was our book club book for April. I'll be honest and say that I went into this book pretty uninterested. I had seen this book before and the blurb didn't sound very exciting. It's weird how my gut instinct on whether or not I will like a book is usually right. This time was no exception. My biggest issue with this book is that it's so incredibly boring. There are pages upon pages of nothing happening, of people trying to get in touch with other people and not being able to - people tied to landlines no less. This was published in 1992. Cell phones existed and were on the cusp of becoming a common thing. You would think that this author would have had the foresight to include some sort of mobile communication in this book. There are also pages upon pages of trying to find a drop spot; trying to get the opportunity to speak with someone in person; wondering what type of illness people are coming down with, and how they got it; and last but not least, wondering if there will be enough toilet paper to last out a quarantine. This all goes on for 400 plus pages until something finally starts to really happen.

This is a time travel book so there are two different time periods represented here. There is the future one where historians have the ability to time travel, and where they sent an inexperienced young woman back to the 1400s. Unfortunately, this part of the book felt like it was getting in the way of the more interesting part, which was the part back in the 1400s, where our time traveler Kivrin is. I also need to say, that although this part of the book is supposed to be set in the future where time travel is possible, it doesn't feel like it's set in the future at all. In fact it barely felt like it was set in the decade the book was written. The part of the book set in the 1400s was slightly more interesting, but unfortunately, other than Kivrin - who I thought was crazy for wanting to go back to the 1400s in the first place - there is no one that I felt attached to. There were maybe three other characters that were mildly likable. Even the children that Kivrin is put in charge of annoyed me. I did develop some sympathy for Rosamund much later in the book, but it was too little too late.

The book does indeed improve greatly after the 400 page mark and I did begin to see how the contrast and also similarities between the past and present were used by the author in the story. The differences in how they dealt with the epidemic in the present and the plague in the past were interesting. The modern day people worrying about toilet paper when they didn't even have clean rags in the 1400s drove the point home. Then there is the point illustrated about how people behave the same way no matter what time period they are from. Just about every character from the future had one that mirrored him or her in the past behavior-wise. As interesting as those things were, the book still was boring, and it was a real slog to get through. I actually ended up feeling kind of depressed after reading it.

In the end I think I can see what the author was trying to do, but the execution was terrible. I don't know why this won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Other than someone traveling back in time, there is no science fiction or fantasy in it. I would say it's more historical fiction with a small fantasy element to it. If you love historical fiction you might like this book, unfortunately it didn't work for me.