Minimalist Story-telling

May 2024
Doomsday Book - Connie Willis – Gollancz, 2012
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The author, as I have remarked before, has a writing style similar to minimalism in modern music, by which I mean that her characters find themselves circling in repetitive situations as the plot slowly develops. This is also true of her shared world of books featuring time-travelling Oxford academics, which repeat tropes (researchers getting trapped in the past) and characters (such as Professor Dunworthy) from book to book, whilst doing something different each time thanks to the varying historical periods visited and the theme that each book has. This one is the first of the full length novels set in this world, and has the advantage of freshness as a result.
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