Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

SPOILERS AHEAD

An exciting adventure filled with the heartbreaking loss of reality. I love the idea of time travel being used by historians to investigate and learn more about the past, and though this book doesn't go too deeply into the science of it all, you get just enough to make the theory plausible.

The real heart of this book is the journeys of pain and loss that the characters go through in both centuries. Through unimaginable loss, neither Kivran nor Mr. Dunsworthy either give up hope. Kivran was as prepared as she could be to travel to the Middle Ages; she knew as much as she possible could about the languages, customs, clothes, and lifestyle. Had she made it back successfully to 1320, the year she intended to visit, who knows what her experience might have been. Instead, a twist of fate in the form of a long-dormant flu virus caused her to end up in 1348, in the middle of the Plague.

Whatever Kivran thought she would learn in the past, it is the people that she met in that time that taught her the most. Although she only knew them for a short time, their kindness toward her and the inevitability of their loss bound them to her in a way nothing but such a traumatic experience could. Until the last breath of Father Roche, Kivran didn't stop trying to save any of them, and though she failed in that regard, in the end, she was a saint of sorts, as the Father kept insisting. Through her knowledge of medicine, she helped soothe their passing as much as she could, but she also insured they would never be forgotten by documenting the end of their lives. From Agnes to Rosemund to Father Roche, she recorded it all, "lest things which should be remembered perish with time." Kivran would be able to testify to not just how devestating the Black Death was, but to the individual care and fortitude of the people it killed, and the priest who did his duty to his congregants when he could have just run away.

I wish the book had gone on a little longer, if only we could see some of Kivran's reintegration into future society. There's no way she doesn't have some sort of PTSD after everything she lived through, and then to come back to all the death at home would be also traumatizing.

The epidemic that the inhabitants faced in the 21st century echoed that of the last in many ways. As one of our modern-day poets has said, "Death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints. It takes and it takes and it takes. And we keep living anyway, we rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes. And if there's a reason I'm still alive when everyone who loves me has died, I'm willing to wait for it." Death took both the sinful cleric and the kind, pious Father Roche. Death took both the prideful Mr. Gilchrist and the compassionate Dr. Ahrens. The struggle that those left behind have to deal with is figuring out how to move on, what to do next. Kivrin in particular is not only mourning people who have been long-dead, but her experience was so singular, it might be hard for anyone to truly understand what she is dealing with.

I'll admit to still being a little devestated by the loss of Father Roche. Part of me still thought Dr. Dunsworthy and Colin would somehow get to the past in time to some how save him, or to bring him in to the future with them. When he actually died, I had to reread that section a few times, because it just didn't seem fair. In the end, though, I guess Father Roche had the best, most peaceful death one could hope for in the Middle Ages: to die in the arms of a saint, with the certainty he would soon be in heaven. I'm still sad, though.

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