“To Say Nothing of the Dog; or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last” by Connie Willis

     "Why did you call the maid Colleen?"

     "It's her name," she said.  "But Mrs. Mering didn't think it was fashionable for a servant.  Too Irish.  English servants are what's in vogue."

     "So she made her change it?"

     "It was a common practice.  Mrs. Chattisbourne calls all of her maids Gladys so she doesn't have to remember which is which. 
Weren't you prepped on this?"

     "I wasn't prepped at all," I said. ...

     She looked appalled. "You weren't prepped? Victorian society's highly mannered. Breaches of etiquette are taken very seriously." She looked curiously at me. "How have you managed thus far?"

     "For the past two days I've been on the river with an Oxford don who quotes Herodotus, a lovesick young man who quotes Tennyson, a bulldog, and a cat," I said. "I played it by ear."                 

Ned and Verity in "To Say Nothing of the Dog," Connie Willis

It seems I’m all about things “Three Men in a Boat.” I downloaded this book from audible.com intrigued by the time travel in Victorian times. I found that “Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog),” a 1889 book by Jerome K. Jerome about a humorous boating holiday on the Thames, was an inspiration for Willis’ book. So, I downloaded Jerome’s book from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.com) and read some. Today I found Jim Tidsall has a blues album “Three Men in a Boat” with a track “Not to Mention the Dog.” The influence of Jerome was unmistakable, so here we are listening to blues and writing a blog entry.

In Willis’ book, Ned Henry is working as a historian at Oxford University in the year 2057, where scholars use time travel to study the past. The time travel headquarters have been commandeered by Lady Schrapnell, who is trying to reproduce the Coventry Cathedral as it was before the Blitz in 1940. She has everything she needs except a monstrosity of a vase called the Bishop’s Bird Stump and sends historians jumping all over time to learn of its whereabouts and its significance in the life of the Cathedral and the life of her ancestors.

Verity Kindle is stationed in Munchings End, 1888, to find and read the diary of Tossie Mering, a great grand-something of Lady Schrapnell and whose life was changed after seeing the Bishop’s Bird Stump for the first time. Violating protocols and endangering the time continuum, Verity brings a cat through the “net” from 1888 to 2057. Fearing the worst, Ned is sent to take the cat back to 1888 and reverse any discrepancies that might cause a disastrous change in history. He and Verity navigate the social life of the Victorian Era; solve the mystery of Mr. C, the man Tossie is supposed to married but who seems to have disappeared into the continuum; look for the Bishop’s Bird Stump; and figure out why Finch, another time-traveling historian, is serving as the butler at a nearby mansion.

Historians in both 1888 and 2057 argue about what caused Napoleon to lose at Waterloo, and the study of the minute details that may have caused that result are a symbol of the larger effects of small changes on the time continuum. Ned and Verity use the techniques of Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes and Peter Wimsey to solve the various mysteries. Those references lead us to understand the nature of the various crimes – that the real crime is not the crime we are trying to solve and, of course, the butler did it.

I enjoyed the romp through the Victorian countryside, including the trip down the river ala Jerome meets “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” I’m a fan of time travel, and its use as a plot device was interesting and not tired or distracting. The surprises that come later in the book are not too far afield to be a stretch, but still are a little jarring. On the other hand, there were dry patches in the listen where I wished the book were not so predictable at times. In all, it was a fun read.