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A review by isabellarobinson7
Blackout by Connie Willis
4.0
Rating: 4 stars
Reading this book was a little bittersweet, because Blackout was the last thing I ordered from Book Depository beforeJeff Bozos killed them they closed down. It even arrived after the company had officially shut its doors. Truly, it is the end of an era. Though, it’s not like I could ever forget about Book Depository, not with the hundreds of bookmarks I have of theirs. But anyway. Review time.
Blackout is Connie Willis’ most recent entry into the Oxford Time Travelling universe of Doomsday Book fame. Following in its predecessor’s footsteps, Blackout is a time travelling novel (to no one’s surprise) in which three students from 2060’s Oxford are sent to observe events surrounding and directly concerning the Blitz during World War II in London, England. Of course, this was what they intended to happen, and nothing goes really to plan.
The first of these characters/students is named Polly Churchill (who goes by Polly Sebastian in WWII for obvious reasons) and her story was perhaps my least favourite of the three. Her main area of interest was observing the lives of the general public in central London, and how they reacted to and operated in spite of the incessant German air raids of the early 1940’s. The reason why Polly’s perspective interested me less than the other two was perhaps because her story didn’t really seem to be going anywhere, and was quite repetitive. Work as a shop girl during the day, run for the bomb shelters at night, wake up to various piles of rubble and debris, go back to work… wash, rinse, repeat. I also just didn’t particularly care for Polly as a character.
The second of the three perspectives is Merope Ward (took me a good 30 seconds to remember her name there) who assumes the name Eileen O’Reilly (due to her red hair) when she goes back in time. Eileen is working as a servant in the West Midlands to observe the children who had been evacuated from London as a precaution before the Blitz began. That’s just a roundabout way of saying she was looking after annoying kids. Willis is great at writing irritatingly endearing children. Like, you want to slap them silly whenever they so much as open their mouths, but they are just kids and so they do what kids do. And this is coming from someone who usually avoids them.
The last perspective (and my personal favourite) was Micheal Davies. He was initially supposed to be studying Pearl Harbour, and thus got an American accent “implant”, but had his destination changed at the last minute to the Dunkirk evacuation. The lack of his natural English accent leaving him very few options, he goes by Mike Davis, an American journalist, and ends up on board one of the civilian ships sent across the Channel. While reading Mike’s chapters, I continuously had the Dunkirk scenes from two movies in my head: Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name; and (of course) Dunkirk written, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan. This helped me, as someone who doesn’t visualise things very easily, more closely understand what the characters in Mike’s storyline were experiencing... or, at least, what Hollywood thinks they were.
There isn’t much else to say about the plot of Blackout, because the story is so heavily tied in with the three characters we get perspectives of, the ones I have already described. Overall, I don’t think I liked it quite as much as Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, but that is probably only because Blackout is only half the story. Yes, in true Tolkien fashion, the story Willis was trying to write got too big for a single volume and had to be split in two. Because of this Blackout just ends, and you don’t get any real catharsis. That is not a critique, per se, as Blackout is meant to be read with its “sequel” All Clear directly following. Which I fully intended to do, but stuff got in the way. Well, at least I got this review done, albeit two and a half months late. Eh, such is life.
Reading this book was a little bittersweet, because Blackout was the last thing I ordered from Book Depository before
Blackout is Connie Willis’ most recent entry into the Oxford Time Travelling universe of Doomsday Book fame. Following in its predecessor’s footsteps, Blackout is a time travelling novel (to no one’s surprise) in which three students from 2060’s Oxford are sent to observe events surrounding and directly concerning the Blitz during World War II in London, England. Of course, this was what they intended to happen, and nothing goes really to plan.
The first of these characters/students is named Polly Churchill (who goes by Polly Sebastian in WWII for obvious reasons) and her story was perhaps my least favourite of the three. Her main area of interest was observing the lives of the general public in central London, and how they reacted to and operated in spite of the incessant German air raids of the early 1940’s. The reason why Polly’s perspective interested me less than the other two was perhaps because her story didn’t really seem to be going anywhere, and was quite repetitive. Work as a shop girl during the day, run for the bomb shelters at night, wake up to various piles of rubble and debris, go back to work… wash, rinse, repeat. I also just didn’t particularly care for Polly as a character.
The second of the three perspectives is Merope Ward (took me a good 30 seconds to remember her name there) who assumes the name Eileen O’Reilly (due to her red hair) when she goes back in time. Eileen is working as a servant in the West Midlands to observe the children who had been evacuated from London as a precaution before the Blitz began. That’s just a roundabout way of saying she was looking after annoying kids. Willis is great at writing irritatingly endearing children. Like, you want to slap them silly whenever they so much as open their mouths, but they are just kids and so they do what kids do. And this is coming from someone who usually avoids them.
The last perspective (and my personal favourite) was Micheal Davies. He was initially supposed to be studying Pearl Harbour, and thus got an American accent “implant”, but had his destination changed at the last minute to the Dunkirk evacuation. The lack of his natural English accent leaving him very few options, he goes by Mike Davis, an American journalist, and ends up on board one of the civilian ships sent across the Channel. While reading Mike’s chapters, I continuously had the Dunkirk scenes from two movies in my head: Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name; and (of course) Dunkirk written, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan. This helped me, as someone who doesn’t visualise things very easily, more closely understand what the characters in Mike’s storyline were experiencing... or, at least, what Hollywood thinks they were.
There isn’t much else to say about the plot of Blackout, because the story is so heavily tied in with the three characters we get perspectives of, the ones I have already described. Overall, I don’t think I liked it quite as much as Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, but that is probably only because Blackout is only half the story. Yes, in true Tolkien fashion, the story Willis was trying to write got too big for a single volume and had to be split in two. Because of this Blackout just ends, and you don’t get any real catharsis. That is not a critique, per se, as Blackout is meant to be read with its “sequel” All Clear directly following. Which I fully intended to do, but stuff got in the way. Well, at least I got this review done, albeit two and a half months late. Eh, such is life.