Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

I didn’t particularly enjoy reading Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. She held aspects of the plot and context back from the reader way too long for how heavily foreshadowed they were. She brings up a lot of ideas in this book, and she brings most of them up in interesting ways. However, while I respect some of what she does here, I also think she didn’t use her ideas perfectly. So, let me start with two things to praise unequivocally, then get on to the muddled critique.

Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose. She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.

Like Small Gods, Willis shows the good and bad of Christianity even-handedly. From Mrs. Gadson reading passages about pestilence to influenza victims, to the Bishop’s envoy’s party’s casual sexual harassment, Christianity doesn’t get a free pass from Willis. Yet she also shows Father Roche and Dunworthy and Mary all leading Christian lives full of charitable acts—even putting their lives at risk for others. I find this nuanced approach thought-provoking, which is what I want.

I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.

My final unreserved praise for this book is that this new technology is just that: technology. Time travelling capabilities, inherently fantastic technology, come off common place. The people around it show some differences with us, but they’re still people, and they treat it sort of nonchalantly. It has limitations still, like cell phones sometimes being out of reception, you can’t just time travel willy-nilly. The professors are to varying degrees befuddled by it, but largely they treat it nonchalantly. It seems pretty honest to how people treat technology and I found it well communicated.

Apocalyptic was very likely the correct term for his even thinking he could rescue Kivrin, Dunworthy thought. He was worn out by the time Colin got him back to his room, and his temp was back up. "You rest," Colin said, helping him into bed. "You can't have a relapse if you're going to rescue Kivrin."

I think the central theme of the book is love for humanity, or charity. Many of the characters are examined in light of their selflessness. Not only the main characters, Kivrin, Dunworthy, Roche, Colin, and Mary; but also the secondary characters like Mrs. Gadson, William, Sir Blewitt, Montoya, and the bellringers. Where the main characters are unambiguously oriented on the welfare of others, these secondary characters follow paths that they view as attending to the welfare of others, but that conflict with the wills of others. And that’s a major sticking point for me, as well as a tactic I respect: no character is evil. Her characters all try their best. Some are more selfish than others, sure, but by and large sticky situations result from miscommunications and mistakes more than nefarious purposes. This means that there is little tension in the book—at least between characters. No central antagonist foils the characters, Just misunderstandings and mistakes. This isn’t necessarily a poor tactic, I like books that assume evil people think they’re doing good, but it doesn’t play well here because Willis focuses on so many ideas that there is little chance for tension to grow.

“You can’t go back,” Gilchrist said. “Haven’t you heard? We’re under quarantine, thanks to Mr. Dunworthy’s carelessness.”

It seems like a second theme shows the problem of the existence of pain to Christian theology. These ideas about what love is and how to show it, mixes with ideas of ease-of-life and leaves at least Kivrin questioning faith. Yet the central takeaway comes to the black plague being the theological underpinnings of atheism, and Willis doesn’t let this particular cat out of the bag until way too late in the novel for any depth to be reached here. Again, I like this theme, but it just doesn’t occupy enough of the book to be engaging.

It was impossible to imagine it overrun with the plague, the dead carts full of bodies being pulled through the narrow streets, the colleges boarded up and abandoned, and everywhere the dying and the already dead.

I don’t really understand what the future portions try to communicate. The past seems to be what Willis wanted to write here, at least she seems more excited to write the past, as it comes off more engaging. But then there’s this future section that mirrors the black plague. And it doesn’t really make sense to me as a writing tactic because I can’t tell what Willis tries to say with it.

None of the things one frets about ever happen. Something one's never thought of does.

In short, great premise, poor book. It held way too many cards too close to the chest for far too long. The first time Willis said that Kivrin is going to 1320, and it’s a good thing she’s not going to 1348 when the black plague hit, I agreed. The second time she did, I knew she was going to 1348, not 1320. Yet it takes half or more of this book for the characters to realize what Willis has already heavy-handedly hinted to the readers. That’s a bit too much reticence with the plot for my tastes, and it helped the book lack tension, lack teeth. How can you pull the teeth from the black plague? Willis seems to have done it—by confusing the narrative with an uninspiring epidemic tale in some future that’s unfocused, and by holding her cards too close for too long. Overlong for the conclusions drawn. Similarly, the character development’s flatness hindered this book’s power—and their general annoyingness sapped enjoyment. I end up respecting and decrying almost everything Willis does here. To the point that I’ll probably read another book in this series, but not right away. I want deeper character depth.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he began in Latin.
He hadn't sinned. He had tended the sick, shriven the dying, buried the dead. It was God who should have to beg forgiveness.
"—in thought, word, deed, and omission. I was angry with Lady Imeyne. I shouted at Maisry." He swallowed. "I had carnal thoughts of a saint of the Lord."
Carnal thoughts.
"I humbly ask pardon of God, and absolution of you, Father, if you think me worthy."
There is nothing to forgive, she wanted to say. Your sins are no sins. Carnal thoughts. We held down Rosemund and barricaded the village against a harmless boy and buried a six-month-old baby. It is the end of the world. Surely you are to be allowed a few carnal thoughts.