To Say Nothing Of The Dog -

Connie Willis

Bantam

1998

434 páginas

14h 28m

ISBN-13: 9780553099959

On the surface, England in the summer of 1888 is possibly the most restful time in history - lazy afternoons boating on the Thames, tea parties, croquet on the lawn - and time traveler Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling back and forth between the 21st century and the 1940s looking for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's only the latest in a long string of assignments from Lady Schrapnell, the rich dowager who has invaded Oxford University. She's promised to endow the university's time-travel research project in return for their help in rebuilding the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years before.But the bargain has turned into a nightmare. Lady Schrapnell's motto is "God is in the details," and as the 125th anniversary of the cathedral's destruction - and the deadline for its proposed completion - approaches, time-travel research has fallen by the wayside. Now Ned and his colleagues are frantically engaged in installing organ pipes, researching misericords, and generally risking life and limb. So when Ned gets the chance to escape to the Victorian era, he jumps at it. Unfortunately, he isn't really being sent there to recover from his time-lag symptoms, but to correct an incongruity a fellow historian, Verity Kindle, has inadvertently created by bringing something forward from the past.In theory, such an act is impossible. But now it has happened, and it's up to Ned and Verity to correct the incongruity before it alters history or, worse, destroys the space-time continuum. And they have to do it while coping with eccentric Oxford dons, table-rapping spiritualists, a very spoiled young lady, and an even more spoiled cat. As Ned and Verity try frantically to hold things together and find out why the incongruity happened, the breach widens, time travel goes amok, and everything starts to fall apart - until the fate of the entire space-time continuum hangs on a seance, a butler, a bulldog, the battle of Waterloo, and above all, on the bishop's bird stump.

Resenhas (3)

4 (Muito bom)

Uma deliciosa viagem no tempo!!!

Como sempre, temos mais um livro incrível de Connie Willis. Com um humor descontraído ela nos mostra as complexidades intrigantes do revisionismo histórico. Neste livro acompanhamos Ned, que tem uma tarefa aparentemente simples (recuperar um curioso artefato vitoriano conhecido como "toco de pássaro do bispo" para a restauração da Catedral de Coventry), mas acompanhamos uma série de desventuras tão hilárias quanto instigantes.

Connie Willis está absurdamente cômica neste livro, repleta de personagens excêntricos, brincadeiras espirituosas e uma série de situações improváveis ​​que surgem quando o passado e o futuro colidem. Mas também nos mostra os percalços de viajantes do tempo ressaltando uma noção simples, porém poderosa: mesmo a menor interferência na história pode resultar em consequências significativas, às vezes catastróficas. Esse equilíbrio entre detalhes históricos rigorosamente traçados e os absurdos da burocracia na viagem no tempo acrescenta profundidade magnífica ao livro.

É uma mistura magistral de humor, intriga histórica e as peculiaridades da viagem no tempo.