Doomsday Book
Series: Oxford Time Travel, Book 1
By: Connie Willis / Narrated By: Jenny Sterlin
Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
THE best book ever! AND it turns out, it’s an extraordinary audiobook also!
Yup, I prattled on and on and on about how much I loved The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. But do you think you could bear with me for a sec as I say that, as much as I loved that book, Doomsday Book is ADORED!!! Yeah, I’ll be saying it again later, so don’t worry if ya missed that.
One of the best things ever about the whole experience was that I did NOT read the back of the book before going in to read it all. So everything was a surprise, and every twist, every turn, hit its mark. (Note to Self: No, REALLY! STOP reading the Publisher’s Summaries before launching into an audiobook!)
Here’s the story in a nutshell: We’re in England, 2054, where history students study different eras by time traveling back to them. Kivrin is desperate to study the Middle Ages, so she’s been sent back in time to juuuuust before the Black Death.
Just as she leaves, another sort of plague crops up, horrible mortality rate, cripples the modern society that she’s just left behind. So the book is divided into Kivrin’s experiences in a small village during the Middle Ages and what all chaos and heartbreak happens to her friends, and especially her dear Papa Bear of a professor who wants to know only that she’s safe. That she’s in the Middle Ages to begin with? Well, that’s enough to freak him out.
And that’s pretty much it. I’ve read the reviews, and it turns out a LOT of people couldn’t stand that fact, and many of them said that the book dragged and was pointless.
If you’re looking for an action-based book, stay away, run, run, RUN far away! Doomsday Book winds up being a beautiful book about relationships, and about faith, and about seeing the truth and strength in others. I was absolutely speechless when I finished it, felt, quite simply, absolutely gutted (And by the way? I heard an interview with Ms. Willis where she said that she follows a good idea first, creates and plugs in characters last… WOW! Cuz, Oh. My. GOD! The characters in this book are sooo touching, such heartbreakers! Hard to believe).
Jenny Sterling’s narration was iffy for me at first. I thought she sounded a bit too old to be able to carry off some of the characters, especially Kivrin who’s quite young. I was soon pacified, feathers smoothed, as the narration progressed. Sterling wound up being a treMENdous narrator. And I especially appreciated that she delivered the last line of the book perfectly (Talk about a line that devastates/guts!). Plus, that she managed all the confusing language, the different kind of speech and speech patterns of those who lived in the Middle Ages had me sending up mighty Huzzahs in her general direction.
If you do give this book a try, oh how I hope you like it (Dare I suggest: Love it?) as much as I. My husband read it, and I wanted to clobber him because he came out of the last page with a: That was good, what’s on TV? I hope you are enchanted by the things that tie the two eras together. The ringing of bells, the holidays, the plagues, the begging to a god who may not exist, the bravery in getting up and going forward.
The love. The strength.
I cried my eyes out, I tell you! Simply wept them straight out…
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