Sunday read: The Doomsday Book

The Doomsday Book
Written by Connie Willis, 1992
578 pages

In the not-so-distant future, time travel has been perfected and is now a viable research route for historians. The Doomsday Book opens with Kivrin Engle, an undergraduate at Oxford, preparing to be sent back in time to 1320 while her worried tutor, Mr. Dunworthy, looks on. After she is accidentally dropped into 1348 (the year when the Black Death hit Oxford), a virus begins to ravage modern Oxford, leaving the city under quarantine and the only people able to get Kivrin back from the middle ages are dying of the disease. Meanwhile, Kivrin has fallen ill with the virus that is ravaging Oxford and is taken-in by a noblewoman and her family. As circumstances in medieval England soon begin to become incredibly dire (for spoiler-y reasons I won’t reveal) Kivrin must find a way to rescue herself and those she loves.

The language of the novel seems, at times, to hit you like a bell. Bells are in fact one of the recurring motifs throughout the novel, whether it be the bells tolling in Oxford for Christmas or ringing for the dead in the Middle Ages. So many one-liners came back to haunt me as I read – each time felt like a punch in the stomach.

One of my favourite parts was Kivrin’s entries into her ‘corder’, a recording device she spoke into by folding her hands in as though in prayer – supposedly to fit in better with the contemporaries she’s being sent to study. The tone of these recordings goes from a basic recording of events to what seems, at times, like prayers, as Kivrin tries to reach someone to help her.

One of my only complaints about the novel – not as much a complaint as an observation – is that the novel was published in 1992, and looks forward to the world of 2055. The world Willis imagines for the future is almost quaint. As a twenty-first century reader, it was a little frustrating to watch multiple characters search for a certain missing character who would have been found a lot faster had he simply had his mobile on him.

What surprised me about The Doomsday Book, considering it’s technically science fiction, was how quickly I was sucked in. There were a few pages of sci-fi discussion that I glossed over (I am never going to be interested in science-y bits in novels. I’m an Arts student for a reason.) but once the story picked up, all of a sudden I had finished it and was looking around completely baffled as to where I was and how I had gotten there. I personally would have liked to have read more about Kivrin and the village she landed in, but despite in depth dwelling, all the characters are fully realized. With a few deft strokes Willis creates lovable, human characters that break your heart.

Definitely not a novel for the squeamish, though.

You might like it if:
1. You liked The Pillars of the Earth
2. You really like medieval history

Probably not for you if:  That movie Contagion about a global epidemic made you want to overdose at the very idea.

Written by Katie Brennan, standing-room-only writer