Blackout, a science/historical fiction novel, was released last week. It is the first in a two-part book series.
Imagine a future where time travel is a reality, and historians don’t merely study history – they live it. In Blackout, the first part in a two part series by Connie Willis, historical fiction and sci-fi collide. Three young Oxford historians are on assignment to World War II era Britain – Polly is a shopgirl during the London Blitz, Merope is masquerading as Irish maid Eileen and overseeing evacuated children in the north, and Michael is sent to Dover as an American reporter to observe heroes at Dunkirk. Home is 2060 Oxford, England, and the three are under the tutelage of a Mr. Dunworthy, who sends his students through to various points in time to work on their theses and observe history first hand. Travel is done via a mysterious net, historians sent through to drop points safe from observation and the only thing one need look out for is slippage – when one comes through at their destination a few minutes or hours late. Historians can’t change the past, and divergence points – key points in history – are off-limits.
Things for Polly, “Eileen” and Michael, however, aren’t exactly going to plan. Scheduling is a mess, with historians’ trips being rescheduled, reordered, or canceled altogether. Once they do go through to their respective points in Britain 1940, little things go wrong. The three experience extreme slippage – including one being five days off – and their drops are being temperamental. Author Connie Willis creates suspense via chapter alternating point-of-view and time, as we see Polly, Eileen and Mike encounter unexpected circumstances. However, characterization is thin, despite historical detail and suspense being rich.
Blackout is no doubt an intricately researched, lushly detailed work. Willis’s writing has an immediacy in action scenes that truly transport the reader to the streets of London during a Blackout Blitz attack or to busy happenings of a house in the country. World War II England comes to life in an extraordinary way, but there’s a lot of muddle, too. We experience the action through the eyes of the three protagonists, yet Willis tells us very little about them. Polly, studying the London Blitz by posing as a shopgirl, is the most likeable, though we know nothing about her – she has no back story, wishes or particular defining characteristics, other than having an over-eager 17-year-old suitor, Colin, back in Oxford 2060. The same issue effects other main characters, Mike and Eileen. Other than Eileen’s fervent wish to be assigned to VE Day and Mike’s rightousness about his assignment drop being rescheduled, we know nothing about them, and it can be hard to distinguish them, particularly between the women.
Polly observes at one point that historians must be so focused on the present and their assigned identity that who they are and where they come from fades into the background. This is all well and good for time-traveling historians, but for the reader’s it’s a bit of a cop out. We’re in Polly’s head, yet we learn absolutely nothing about who she is, where she came from or what motivates her.
The alternating POV storyline works to great effect in some passages, and much more poorly in others. Willis is weaving a puzzle to be solved in the second book All Clear, but with a six month wait for the conclusion, many passages and characters set in 1944 make no sense – who is Mary Kent, stationed as an ambulance driver, or Ernest Worthing, who tromps into a muddy field and sets up inflatable decoy tanks? Read the rest of this entry »
