Oona Out of Order: Margarita Montimore

This story starts on New Year's Eve 1982; at the stroke of midnight, Oona will turn 19. She expects to be making a decision about whether to go to school in London the next year or stay in Brooklyn and tour for a year with the band she and her boyfriend are in. But when midnight comes, Oona is jerked out of her current situation. She awakens in a lovely house, in her 51st year. She is appalled to see how old she is, and that she is overweight. 

Oona is living one year of her life at a time, but out of order (hence the title). She has awakened in 2015. Fortunately, there is a man waiting there for her to explain the situation, and she is living in a gorgeous home. The man is Kenzie and he introduces himself as her personal assistant and friend. She freaks out and he does his best to calm her down. 

After that, every year at midnight on New Year's Eve, the same thing happens; Oona either jumps ahead to a future year or goes back to an earlier year that she has not experienced before.  It makes poor Oona very cranky to be jerked off to a different year in her life every New Year's Eve.

This is a time travel book, but there is no explanation of why this phenomenon is happening to her, thus it is more fantasy than science fiction. I enjoyed this a lot while I was reading it; I gave it five stars, and I still think it deserves that rating, but I am pretty generous with my ratings. So as far as entertainment value goes, it did very well. 

Family is a recurring theme in this book. Of course, I loved that part of it. Most of the time I liked Oona's mother Madeleine and Kenzie better than I liked the lead character. Oona is often bratty and immature. She may look older at times but she hasn't had that many years of actual living to mature. 

I was frustrated that not that many years in Oona's life are covered. In a way, each year was approached as if it was a short story and you are getting a glimpse of her life. But because she has no memory of any year that she leaves behind... the reader sometimes knows more that she does. 

In summary, I liked the premise of this book and it was fun and the writing was well done. As with many time travel books, I was confused at times. It was 340 pages long and it was the rare book that I wish was much longer.

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Publisher:  Flatiron Books, 2020.
Length:      336 pages
Format:     Trade Paper
Setting:      New York City
Genre:       Fantasy / Time Travel
Source:     I purchased my copy in 2024.

A Rip Through Time: Kelley Armstrong

 

This is the first book in a time travel trilogy by Kelley Armstrong. The main character in this book is a female police detective, Mallory Atkinson, from Vancouver, British Columbia, who is visiting Edinburgh in 2019 because her grandmother is very ill.  While out jogging in the evening, she tries to help a young woman in the streets who is being attacked; at that point she is transported to another time, which she later finds out is Edinburgh in 1869. For the rest of the story, Mallory's focus is on trying to figure out what happened and how she can return to her own time. 

Soon she learns that her consciousness is in the body of a very attractive young house maid who works in a house owned by a young doctor, Dr. Gray, and his sister, Isla. This is what she sees when she looks in the mirror:

"The girl—young woman, I should say—is no more than twenty. Honey-blond hair that curls to midback. Bright blue eyes. Average height with curves not quite contained by the corset over my chest. Not me."

There are a lot of convenient coincidences. A policewoman from 2019 transported back to Edinburgh 150 years earlier is very lucky to end up in a situation that she did. The owner of the house she is working in is an undertaker who has gone to medical school, and his major interest is investigating deaths (cause of death, etc.). He has a friend in the police who can give him access to bodies for research in some cases. His sister runs the house; she is a chemist who cannot work in her chosen field because she is a woman. All of this gives her opportunities and access that she would not have had in other households. However, I easily accepted these coincidences because the story was so interesting and fun.

My thoughts:

• Mallory tells the story in first person present tense narration. I usually like stories narrated by the main character and it works well here. I usually don't like the use of present tense in fiction, but I am getting used to it.
• The characters are very well done, and the women in the book are strong characters, not afraid to assert themselves. Mallory has to be careful with her behavior because she knows that no one will believe that she is actually from 150 years in the future. She must act subservient like a maid would, and do all the work a maid does, after she recovers from the attack.
• I like time travel books a lot, and this one was a good read and educational. I learned a lot about Edinburgh and Scotland in 1869. 
• As far as I could tell, the author did a good job with the setting and atmosphere in Edinburgh in 1869. On her website, Armstrong has notes for the sources she used in research for this novel.

Armstrong is a Canadian author, and I am always looking for Canadian authors to read. Since this story is set in Edinburgh, we don't get a Canadian setting, but I have read two books from another one of her series, the Rockton series, set in the Yukon territory in Canada.

I read this book on my Kindle; it was the third eBook I read this year. I have the 2nd book in this series as an eBook also and I would like to read it by the end of the year. 

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Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2022
Length:       352 pages
Format:      eBook
Series:        A Rip Through Time #1
Setting:      Edinburgh, Scotland
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      Kindle Unlimited.

Short Story Wednesday: "Fire Watch" by Connie Willis

My short story for this week is the title story from Fire Watch by Connie Willis. 

I have read (and reviewed) all of the four novels in the Oxford Time Travel series: Doomsday Book (1992), To Say Nothing of the Dog (1995), Blackout (2010), and All Clear (2010). Those books are set sometime around 2050, when time travel is possible and used by academics to study the past. "Fire Watch" is a novelette that preceded those books; it is set in the same time and its main character, Bartholomew, is a historian sent back to London in 1940, during the Blitz.   

Bartholomew has been training for years to go back to the time of St. Paul, the apostle, and due to some confusion, is assigned instead to go to St. Paul's Cathedral during the Blitz. He will volunteer for fire watching on the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. The trip will be considered his practicum, and he has two days to learn about London during the Blitz before he leaves. That is not enough time to prepare so he supplements his research by using memory-assistance drugs to put information into his long-term memory, for access when needed. He is extremely unhappy about the change in plans and doesn't even get a clear understanding of his goal for this "mission."

The story is written in diary format with an entry for many of the days in the three month period that he is in London in 1940. This works well because the reader is as much in the dark as Bartholomew. A minor drawback is that the time travel mechanism is not described at all, although the story makes it clear that Bartholomew travels back in time and that he is a part of a group that does this regularly. That did not bother me but might be a problem for readers not familiar with the series.

I enjoyed reading this story tremendously. I like reading about the Blitz and I think the depiction of that time and how it affected people was very well done. This story made me want to go back and reread all the books in the series, even though each book is at least 500 pages long.

"Fire Watch" was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction (Feb 1982), and was later reprinted in this collection in 1985 and in many anthologies. It won the 1982 Nebula and the 1983 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. It is available to read online here. 

Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Toshikazu Kawaguchi

This lovely little book is about a tiny café in Tokyo which has been serving a special coffee for more than one hundred years. Visitors to the café can also take advantage of a special service; they can travel back in time under specific conditions. There is limited seating in the café, one small room with three seats at the bar and three small tables that each seat two people. I am willing to try any book that includes time travel, and this one was perfect for me.

The novel is divided into four sections, each about 60-70 pages long. Each part has connections to the others. The sections of the book are: "The Lovers," "Husband and Wife," "The Sisters," and "Mother and Child." So you can see that each time travel event explores relationships. Except for the first part, each one has a very emotional story to tell. I was most affected by the second part, "Husband and Wife."

This is a time travel book but very different from others I have read. Compared to time travel where the concept is explored in depth, this novel only gives us a few small doses of time travel. The time travel in this book is made for personal reasons, not for scientific or historical research. There is no machine or scientific invention that controls the time travel, or study or preparation to get ready for the actual trip back into an earlier time. Once you visit the café, if you follow the rules and convince the staff to facilitate the trip, it can happen. 

There are, however, a lot of rules and limitations, and those who want to time travel are informed of these before they start. Whether they will follow the rules is another issue.

I felt good, upbeat and happy, while reading this novel, especially at the end. I read one section every night, and looked forward to returning to the story the next day. The story was sad at times, but overall it was optimistic and positive. I liked the characters, they seemed real to me, and I enjoyed getting to know them for a little while.

This novel highlighted for me how much our own attitudes and background determine our reactions and what we consider appropriate or useful behavior. So although I disagreed with or was confused about choices some of the characters had made, I did not feel judgmental about them. This book also confirmed that I like time travel in any form. 

The story is an adaptation of a play written by the same author, and sometimes that shows. The action is limited to the café, even the time travel event. The story has also been adapted to film. I found the story both entertaining and thought provoking.

This was my first selection for the Japanese Literature Challenge 15.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Hanover Square Press, 2019 (orig. pub. 2015)

Translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot 
Length:       272 pages
Format:       Hardcover
Setting:       Tokyo, Japan
Genre:        Fiction, time travel
Source:       From my TBR shelves. Purchased in 2021.

Short Story Wednesday: I Love Galesburg in the Springtime by Jack Finney

Long ago I read Time and Again by Jack Finney. I loved it. But I haven't read anything else by that author, until now. My husband has a good collection of books by Finney, so I decided to try one of his short story books for Short Story Wednesday.

I read the title story from I Love Galesburg in the Springtime in the morning and liked it; I took the book up to read in bed that evening and finished the book before I went to bed. 

All of the twelve stories in the book are magical, with unexpected, lovely endings. A few included some variation of time travel, and all had some fantastic element, although the setting is our everyday world. The stories in this book were published between 1952 and 1962,  and most were published in McCall's magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, or Playboy.

Overall I see this as "feel good" reading, although at least two stories left me in tears. I don't mean that they are light reading, but that I felt entertained and uplifted in some way by each story. But I can see that some of them could be interpreted in different ways.

The short story, "I Love Galesburg in the Springtime", is about a small town saving itself from being paved over and becoming completely modern. Galesburg is a real town in Illinois and Jack Finney attended Knox College there.

I enjoyed every story in the book but these two other stories  were ones I especially liked:

"The Love Letter" is told in first person by a young man who buys a desk with a secret drawer, and finds an old letter in the drawer. He finds an extraordinary way to communicate with the letter writer.

"Hey, Look at Me" is the story of an author whose knows without a doubt that someday he will write great books and be a renowned writer. He dies young, before he can accomplish this. This one is also told in first person, this time by a book critic. The setting is Mill Valley, California, where Jack Finney lived when the story was written.

-----------------------------

Publisher:   Simon and Schuster, 1963. 
Length:      264 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Setting:      US
Genre:       Fantasy, short stories
Source:      Borrowed from my husband.

Bookshelf Traveling for Insane Times — from my Son's shelves

Judith at Reader in the Wilderness has started a new meme: Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times. The idea is to look through a bookshelf or a bookcase or stacks of books and share some thoughts on the books. You can find more details here and here at Judith's blog.

When I started writing this post it was my son's birthday, so I decided to share some books I have borrowed from my son to read.

First is Westside by W. M. Akers:

This one came out in 2019 and my son read it before publication.

The Kirkus review says of Westside: "Akers’ debut novel is an addictively readable fusion of mystery, dark fantasy, alternate history, and existential horror." It is set in an alternate 1920s Manhattan.

Description on the back of the book:

Blending the vivid atmosphere of Caleb Carr with the imaginative power of Neil Gaiman, Westside is a mystery steeped in the supernatural and shot through with gunfights, rotgut whiskey, and sizzling Dixieland jazz. Full of dazzling color, delightful twists, and truly thrilling action...

Sounds interesting. I should be reading it in April.

And then...
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

In March 2019, I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by the same author.  The story starts out seeming like an ordinary detective story with strange characters, but also has ghosts and time travel. It was weird and confusing, and I loved it. I did not even try to review it.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, first published in 1988, is the 2nd book in the Dirk Gently series, and I assume it will similar and just as much fun.

One book review at 1001 Book Reviews said that both books need to be read twice to understand them, and I am sure I will be doing that.

Also ...
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

This is what I know about this book:  It is a young adult novel first published in 1962 and deals with time travel. It is the first book in the Time Quintet.

Kelli Stanley, author of the Miranda Corbie series set in San Francisco in the 1940s, says:

A Wrinkle in Time is essentially science fiction. But it uses questions about science to delve into metaphysics, spirituality, and the human condition.

I think that is all I need to know going into it, and I am looking forward to reading it.

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

There are four novels in Connie Willis's Oxford Time Travel series and all of them are very long books. After reading Doomsday Book in November 2017 and To Say Nothing of the Dog in December 2017, I put off the last two, Blackout and All Clear, until later in March. The two books are really one book in two parts so I did end up reading both of them together, between March 24th and April 6th. It was a wonderful read, very emotional at the end.

The story is centered on three time travelers. They are historians who have assignments to go back to specific events in World War II in the year 1940. The time and place they come from is Oxford, England in 2060.


Rather than focus on the story. I am going spend more time on the characters.

• Eileen O’Reilly (real name Merope Ward) works as a maid in a manor house in Backbury, Warwickshire. Her assignment is to observe children evacuated from London.
• Mike Davis (real name Michael Davies) is sent to Dover, to observe the evacuation of servicemen from Dunkirk. He has been implanted with an American accent for a trip he planned to Pearl Harbor but his assignment is switched, so he poses as an American reporter.
• Polly Sebastien (real name Polly Churchill) works as a shopgirl in London during the Blitz. She has been supplied with lists of places that were bombed during the Blitz over a specific period of time so that she can avoid those locations.

The story revolves around these three people and they eventually meet up in London. There are three other characters with smaller but important roles that I enjoyed:

• Colin Templer previously appeared as a young teenager in Oxford in Doomsday Book. At the time the book begins he is a bit older, 17, and has a crush on Polly. 
• Mr James Dunworthy, who is on the teaching staff of Balliol College, Oxford University, provides tutoring to the historians prior to their assignments, and appears in all of the books in the series. He is in charge of making the time travel assignments and has been moving them around for a reason that has not been shared with the historians or the reader. When things start going wrong, Mr Dunworthy decides to go to 1940 himself.
• Sir Godfrey Kingsman was not a time traveler but one of the "contemps," a person who belongs in the time that the historians are visiting. Sir Godfrey is a classically-trained Shakespearean actor who befriends Polly in an air raid shelter. They develop an attraction and affection for each other even though there is a very large age difference.

There are confusing elements: The historians have multiple assignments in the past, and in each trip to the past they have different names to fit in with the time period. Throughout the book we read about various time travelers and in some cases the real identity of the time traveler is not clear. This did not bother me, but it could be confusing and frustrating. I also think it was intentional, so I just went with the flow.

I liked All Clear better than Blackout, and it wasn't just because Blackout ends with a cliffhanger and there is a real ending to All Clear. In the first book there was too much repetition of and emphasis on the thought process of the historians, a quibble I also noted in my review of Doomsday Book. They worry all the time about the predicament that they are in AND they don't tell their fellow historians their concerns. It is like a soap opera. And both parts were too long. But I have no regrets about the two weeks I spent reading these books.

Those are my only criticisms of Blackout / All Clear and overall I loved the books. I think that the author does a great job with the characterizations. I was especially fond of the main characters but there are many, many small parts in these books and several of those minor characters still stick with me. I see Connie Willis's time travel series as re-readable and I am sure I will be doing that someday with these two books because of the picture of the UK during the Blitz. I will be able to slow down and savor them because I won't be worried about the fate of the characters.

The most important thing that I took away from this reading experience was its focus on the ordinary people in the UK during the war and the effect the war had on their country and their lives. I have always been interested in this time period, but I had no idea of the extent of the suffering and upheaval in the UK until I read two books by Juliet Gardiner, Wartime: Britain 1939-1945 and The Blitz. I was not a student of history and any history I learned came from the perspective of how the US fit into events. Whether the facts and the terminology are absolutely correct or not, you cannot miss the impact of World War II on the everyday life of people in the UK when reading Blackout and All Clear.

If you are interested in an overview of the mechanics of time travel in this novel, check out Alan J Chick's article on Connie Willis's “OXFORD TIME TRAVEL” SERIES.

See these links for more. Note that most of these reviews have quibbles but still like the book:

• Jo Walton at Tor.com
• Annalee Newitz at GIZMODO / io9
• Alex Baugh at The Children's War

 -----------------------------

Blackout
Publisher:   Bantam Books / Spectra, February 2010
Length:      512 pages 
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Oxford Time Travel, #3
Setting:      England 
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      Borrowed from my husband

All Clear

Publisher:   Bantam Books / Spectra, October 2010
Length:      656 pages 
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Oxford Time Travel, #4
Setting:      England 
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      Borrowed from my husband

To Say Nothing of the Dog: Connie Willis

Ned Henry, a historian working in the Time Travel department at Oxford, has made too many trips to 1940 in search of the Bishop's bird stump, and has been prescribed a week or two in Victorian England to get some rest and relaxation. He thinks he is there to recuperate, but really he has a new mission to pursue, and he has no time to relax.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is at once an adventure story and a romance, with time travel thrown in. It is the second novel in the Oxford Time Travel series. I am reading that series in the order of publication, but from what I have read, the first two novels can stand alone. I read Doomsday Book first. Where Doomsday Book was sad, To Say Nothing of the Dog is humorous with some elements of a mystery and more than one romance.

This book alternates between 2050, when time travel is possible and used by academics for studies of the past, and Victorian times (1888), with a couple of short trips to the 1940's (all set in England). The focus in this book is finding the Bishop's bird stump, which is an ornamental piece that once existed in the Coventry Cathedral. The Oxford time travelers are more interested in learning  history than finding this piece, but they continue the quest for the Bishop's bird stump because Lady Schrapnell's donation will keep the time travel project funded.

I loved this book just as much as Doomsday Book. They each have their strengths. In my opinion, the characterization is not as strong in this book as in Doomsday Book, but there were still very many interesting characters: Ned Henry and Verity Kindle are the primary time travelers in this book, but some of the secondary characters in the Victorian timeline are a lot of fun: Tocelyn "Tossie" Mering, an ancestor of Lady Schrapnell, and Baine, the butler in the Mering household; Mrs. Mering who is into spiritualism, and Colonel Mering, who collects exotic goldfish.

This book is more frenetic, and has much better pacing than Doomsday Book. In fact at times it can get confusing. I may have zoned out during sections of the book, but I had confidence at all times that it would be worth the read and that the story would come together to a satisfying ending. Which it did.

Another thing I especially loved about this book were the animals. A bulldog named Cyril and a cat named Princess Arjumand are very special characters. Although this is a humorous book throughout, it was the scenes with Cyril and the cat, especially toward the beginning of the book, that made me laugh out loud. In the near future world of this book, where time travel is possible but not perfected, cats are extinct. A disease has killed them off. So the time travelers are both charmed by the cat and so unused to the behavior of cats that they don't know how to deal with them.

With regards to the title, there are references to Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat in this novel, but not having read that book, the references did not mean that much to me. There are also references to Golden Age mysteries and to other authors but, to be truthful, I am sure I missed the majority of those references. Regardless I enjoyed the story immensely. I think that the references add another layer of interest for those who appreciate them.

And what comes next? Blackout and All Clear are two very long books that are connected. From what I have read, we once again meet with Dr. Dunworthy and his time travel team and Colin Templar who was just a boy in Doomsday Book. Members of the team go back to various locations and events in World War II. Reading these books will be an ambitious undertaking -- they are both very long -- but I am looking forward to it.

I did not go into much detail about the story so if you want to read more about that and read other opinions, see these sources:

• Academic Time Travel at Tor.com
• Clothes in Books
• In so many words
• Becky's Book Reviews
• Simon's Book Blog

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Publisher:   Bantam Books / Spectra, 1998 (orig. publ. 1997)
Length:      434 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Oxford Time Travel, #2
Setting:      England 
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      Borrowed from my husband.

Doomsday Book: Connie Willis

This book is set at Christmas. It may not contain much merriness and the festivities may be muted, but Christmas is there throughout the story.

Doomsday Book is the first novel in the Oxford Time Travel Series by Connie Willis. The story begins in the 2050s when time travel has been successful in some cases, but is in the hands of historians at Oxford University. Kivrin Engel, a student in the Mediaeval History department at Brasenose College, is preparing to go back to the Middle Ages, 1320 to be exact, and Professor James Dunworthy is helping her, even though he thinks the trip is unsafe. After Kivrin has been transferred back in time, the story is told in alternating sections, following Kivrin's experiences in the earlier time, and Dunworthy's efforts to recover her from the past.

As soon as the transfer has been made, Dunworthy suspects there is a problem with the drop. Badri, the technician who handled the transfer, comes down with a serious disease and cannot tell them what happened. Dr. Mary Ahrens who works in the infirmary is a friend of Dunworthy. The disease turns into an epidemic and she is soon consumed with caring for the sick and tracking down the origin of the disease.  Her niece's son is visiting her for Christmas and Dunworthy ends up watching after twelve-year old Colin.

That is the bare bones of the plot, although I have left out any hint of what Kivrin encounters in her travels. I would say about equal time is given to each time period. The book begins a few days before Christmas, so that Kivrin will have identifiable events to determine when she should be ready to be picked up and returned to her own time.

My thoughts:

I loved this book. I liked the characters and the way the story is told. It will go on my shelf of books to reread. Yet the story is not perfect by any means.

Strong points:

• The characterization is very good. In addition to the characters mentioned above, there are many other wonderful characters in both time periods. Both primary and secondary characters are well defined. Various types of relationships are explored with these characters.
• The author conveys the conditions of the Middle Ages very well, and I now want to read more mysteries set in that timeframe. 
• This book has many parts that are just overwhelmingly sad, and that is primarily what I remember about it. But the entire book is not like that; although the events in both time lines are serious in tone there is also humor. 

Weak points:

• Pacing is a problem, especially in the James Dunworthy time period. There is a lot of repetition and stalling. But I still enjoyed reading those portions, just got a bit irritated.

Neutral:

• There is not much explanation of time travel or its issues. I don't think that was the point of this book, but it is worth mentioning. If the reader is looking for technical explanations or discussions, this isn't the book to read.
• I cannot point to any specific issues, but readers have complained about incorrect use of terminology for the UK setting in some of the Oxford Time Travel series. I did not encounter any such criticism of this book. 

I think any reader's enjoyment will depend on what they are looking for in this book. For me, the book was exactly what I wanted and expected, and the good points outweighed the bad, which were merely minor annoyances.

If you are interested in the series, this overview at Alan J. Chick's Pages looks to be a good resource. It tells more than I want to know about the books I haven't read, so I haven't read it all.

This page at Connie Willis's blog gives a more concise overview of the series: Oxford Time Travel Guide.

Doomsday Book was preceded by “Fire Watch”, a novelette, that is the first story in the Oxford Time Travel series. It was first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Feb 1982, and was later reprinted in the collection Fire Watch. I haven't read it and don't know if it is a good place to start, but I have a copy ordered. "Fire Watch" won the 1983 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. It is available online here. Susan D. at Joie de Livre first pointed me to this story.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Bantam Books / Spectra, 1992
Length:      445 pages (of very tiny print)
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Oxford Time Travel, #1
Setting:      England 
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Dust jacket illustration by Tim Jacobus.