It’s been a long time since Connie Willis, author of To Say Nothing of the Dog, has come out with a book. She’s been working on a book about World War II for years, and it is finally finally out. It was so large that it had to be divided into two volumes, in fact. Blackout was released in spring and the conclusion, All Clear was released this week.
Today I’ll be talking about Blackout. This review contains some spoilers for Blackout, but (because the mysteries are fairly crucial ones), I have tried hard not to include any spoilers that go through to All Clear. All spoilers (which are general and I hope minor) for Blackout are beneath the jump cut. If you want to know whether you might enjoy Blackout and haven’t yet bought it, or if you bought it but kind of gave up because you became confused, bored, or puzzled, here’s what I loved:
Blackout is about war. Not war in the trenches, which is ably covered elsewhere and which I hope (fervently) that I will never see, but a war at home. It is about the civilian side of war, where everyone, in a sense, becomes a soldier. It covers the Blitz in London and it covers the Evacuation of the children to the country, and it covers that most amazing of events the evacuation at Dunkirk, where the British Expeditionary Force was rescued by a lot of Sunday sailors and fishermen. (If you don’t know about this, go find out. It always makes me cry.)