November 15, 1940: Coventry Cathedral is full of smoke and rubble, and Ned Henry is looking for the bishop’s bird stump, which is a Victorian vase, which he needs to find because Lady Schrapnell, who is rebuilding the cathedral in time for the 125th anniversary of its destruction, wants to know exactly what was in it when it burned, so she can reproduce it all, every last bit. Ned’s been on twelve “drops” from the 21st century into the past in the last week, and it seems he’s suffering from time-lag, though of course he doesn’t realize it (“Time-lag victims never think they’re time-lagged,” he says, as he worries about whether one if his companions is time-lagged and how he’ll get this companion to acknowledge it.) Ned’s pulled back to 21st-century Oxford to recover, but realizes Lady Schrapnell will never let him rest. So he’s sent off to the Victorian era to recuperate … but also to sort out a bit of a problem that another time-traveling historian has started.
I haven’t read Three Men in a Boat, which informs the structure (and humor) of this book, but even so, I found it very funny. Here’s Ned, talking about his upcoming trip to the past: note that a tendency toward the maudlin is one of time-lag’s symptoms:
The Victorian era. Long dreamy afternoons boating on the Thames and playing croquet on emerald lawns with girls in white frocks and fluttering hair ribbons. And later, tea under the willow tree, served in delicate Sèvres cups by bowing butlers, anxious to minister to one’s every whim, and those same girls, reading aloud from a slim volume of poetry, their voices floating like flower petals on the scented air. “All in the golden afternoon, where Childhood’s dreams are twined, In Memory’s mystic band—” (pp 29-30)
It’s not just funny though: there are also satisfying descriptions of Oxford, of the Thames and the Charwell and Christ Church, England in June, boats on the river, and an English bulldog—a very funny English bulldog who snorts and snores and walks crooked. There’s a lot of pondering about how history works/how the world works. And there’s a time-travel/mystery/suspense plot that’s exciting enough that, once I got into it, I really didn’t want to put the book down, because I was having so much fun keeping up with all the misunderstandings and misadventures and twists.
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