Reading log: Blackout/All Clear

[toorsdenote]

My mother recently started a blog about books she's reading, and while I am not likely to write book reviews with that level of thoughtfulness, I thought I could use this heretofore underutilized blog to jot down notes on what I read.

My first books of the year were Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis. Both books are set in the same universe as one of my favorite books of all time, Doomsday Book -- which is to say, the world of c. 2060, in which Oxford grad students study history by making field trips using a time machine. While Doomsday Book is set mostly in the Middle Ages, Blackout/All Clear are set in World War II England.

I'd never though much about the Londoners who didn't evacuate during the Blitz. It's hard for me even to imagine the mindset that would allow you to wake up every morning and go in to work as a shopgirl on Oxford Street while every night your neighborhood is being bombed. Wouldn't you leave? Even if you didn't know anyone outside London or have a job lined up, wouldn't you try heading somewhere else and figure you might be homeless but at least you'd be alive? When I mentioned this to a friend he said, Staying in London wasn't brave; it was stupid. I hadn't actually suggested that it WAS brave; I don't have any idea what to consider it. I just think it's crazy that people are so adaptable we apparently get used to living in war zones.

The other notable thing about these books is that they're looooong. 1147 pages total. That's more than half the TOTAL number of pages I managed to read last year.* So I guess I'm off to a good start.

* At least, if the only books I read were the ones I read on my phone (i.e., The Remains of the Day; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; Hyperion; The Graveyard Book; Never Let Me Go; and Wicked). I may have read other ones on actual paper, but I don't remember.

Comments

[ikeepaleopard]

Important question: You've read To Say Nothing of the Dog, right?

What I said on Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7519231-all-clear

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have. Freaking bird stump.

That link didn't work for me but I stalked you on Gooodreads and found your review. I agree. Alf and Binnie were great. My main annoyance about the characters was that I never totally kept track of which one was Polly and which was Eileen; their personalities seemed pretty interchangeable.

The main negative reaction I had to the book was as follows. I left it out of my post because it is a MAJOR SPOILER. If you really and truly believed that (a) you were doomed to die soon in a horrible way and (b) your continued existence made it more and more likely that your friends would have to die... um... wouldn't you off yourself? I'd like to think I would. It just seemed really hard for me to figure out the character's motivation (see, I forget if it was Polly or Eileen) for going to work and living life if she really thought every interaction she had might doom people to die.

[ikeepaleopard]

Oh I always copy the wrong link from there. For those playing along at home http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/127415095

Yeah, I had trouble keeping track of which of them was which, and switching between real names and pseudonyms didn't help.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_tove/]

That question is what I rushed over here to ask!

[(Anonymous)]

I too mixed up Eileen/Polly/ 2 other names. The horrible kids could have been drawn from the life, though, from two slum kids I knew a generation later, except that I don't think their future was very rosy. I loved the books though I think she needs a ruthless editor. My main style problem with Connie Willis is that she seriously overuses the characters' running around uselessly for the wrong things. Annoying.

I read it thinking of what my family was going through in and near Coventry when I was an oblivious baby. We did leave! Streams of people walked away from Coventry after the bombing- and people walked out from Warwick, looking for family members. I don't think many people actually got killed compared with London and Liverpool. My mother moved to Warwick, where her father lived and she had grown up. She had worked until marriage, as a shop girl in my granddad's shoe shop. Then we got evacuees- not a nice experience (I remember some of that). But my aunts, who owned their own houses, I think, didn't leave. One was unharmed, and one had a bit of blast damage. House, job, friends... plus I think humans have a great ability to think the bomb will always hit someone else. Have you been out in a car recently? That was one hazard we didn't have during the war!

Welcome to the online book club, Marjorie. I look forward to reading some of the same books.

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you had evacuees. Other children? Do you mean in your home, or in the neighborhood?

The car analogy is a good one. It took me this long to respond to your reply because we drove an hour out of town this afternoon to look at some ice sculptures. Risking life and limb to see ice sculptures is at least as silly as risking life and limb to keep working at Selfridge's, isn't it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. I remember a woman who was always sitting by the stove - I think she let my mum do most of the work- and she was knitting for a baby who I don't remember. There was a big (6?) boy who tormented me: I remember him putting snails down inside the back of my dress. Maybe oral history doesn't really add much to ordinary history!
Shmuel- I think there was a large element of refusing to be intimidated by Hitler, even when people really expected an invasion. Stubborn lot, the Brits.

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but I think that staying in London during the Blitz had more to do with damn-fool stubbornness, the British attitude that No-Matter-What things MUST Stay the Same.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_tove/]

It seems likely to me that there were people who cared about their material possessions (didn't want to lose things to looting) and didn't think the odds of actually dying were that high. People can be very delusional about the odds of dying when it's in the abstract. Why would anyone ever drink and drive, or have unprotected sex with a stranger, otherwise?

I think you're right, though, that the British cultural attitudes towards familiarity might have been a factor; specifically, they might have helped people sustain their beliefs about not dying. If we stay here and pretend that nothing's changed, then nothing can really change, right?

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I don't think that drunk-driving or unprotected sex are valid examples really, because in both cases, certainly with DUI, one has ALREADY been "carried away" and lost their ability to reason. Being Drunk MAKES you feel fine about yourself, so "Hell yeah, I can drive!"

I'm thinking how the British response to pretty much ANY thing is "Have a cuppa Tea, dear".

If we're talking books, another reference to this British bullheadedness, would be in Kurt Vonnegut's most excellent Slaughterhouse-Five. I can't find the exact quote, but there is a conversation with the British Officer POWs, and they [being POWs, living in a slaughterhouse basement while the Allies firebomb the hell out of Dresden] go on and on about the importance of maintaining an exact routine, and the special importance of "regular BMs".

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, Marjorie, we had evacuees. I remember a woman who sat by the stove, knitting, while my mum did the work. I don't remember her baby/toddler whatever but I do remember her big boy(6?) who tormented me. He put snails down the back of my dress. He loved to make me scream. Just flashes as I was very young. So much for the treasures of oral history.

And yes, the brits just toughed it out. As people in war zones do. Cuppa tea does help!