Black Out
All Clear

Connie Willis

Warning - Do not read Black Out if you don't have All Clear close at hand. It's one story in two books, and there is no resolution in Black Out - just lots of questions.

At Oxford University a time travel machine is available for historian students to go to the past and learn about an event or time period first hand. Mr. Dunworthy has been in charge of the project for years. In 2060, there is a great deal of interest in World War II.

Eileen O'Riley is a maid in a country manor in early 1940 that housed evacuated children. She especially wants to see VE Day at the end of the war, but Mr. Dunworthy has denied her that visit. This is her first time in the field. She needs to be more experienced before he would consider that.

Mike Davies wants to study the unsung hero. He wants to visit Dover in May, 1940 when all the fishing boats went to Dunkirk and rescued thousands of English soldiers when Hitler took France. He wants to visit Pearl Harbor, the second bombing of the World Trade Towers (9/11) and the Pandemic in the 2020's. He is set to leave for Pearl Harbor first when the schedule is changed. Despite his American accent implant, he goes to Dover first.

Polly Sebastian has already been to VE Day. Now she wants to witness the London Blitz. She has studied when and where the bombs fall from it's beginning in September through December, 1940. She only plans to be there for six weeks, but Mr. Dunworthy insists she take lodging at an address that is never bombed during the whole war and work at a department store with the same limitations. She is to stay away from the tube stations that were bombed. Polly feels he is being over protective, but agrees before he changes his mind.

Mary Kent travels to the ambulance runs in eastern England when the Germans start using the automated bombs near the end of the war. While trying not to change the past, she saves the life of a pilot. Should she have? Could it change the outcome of the war?

Ernest Worthington is in England in early 1944. He is involved with the unit that supplies misinformation about the build up of the invasion on D-Day. He inflates rubber tanks, plays a patient for a visit by the Queen, and writes messages. Or whatever else he needs to do. He also writes messages to be found in his own time, not knowing if any will get through.

Eileen has to deal with two young hoodlums, Alf and his sister Binnie. If there's trouble in the neighborhood, they've caused it. When other children are called back to London by their parents, Alf and Binnie stay. They follow Eileen when she tries to sneak off to her time drop when she needs to return to her present or send a message, making it difficult for her to do what she needs to do. The drop won't open if there are other people around. As she is finishing her assignment and is ready to return home, children start returning to the country manor. Then Binnie gets the measles and the whole house is put under quarantine.

Mike is dropped thirty miles away from Dover. While trying to make arrangements to get there, the military calls for fishing boats. But one is ignored because of its age and the age of its captain. Mike is hoping the Lady Jane can take him to Dover to watch the flotilla going across the channel. Instead, he falls asleep on the boat. The stubborn captain sails to Dunkirk without knowing Mike is on board. When Mike wakes up, he discovers he is at Dunkirk helping with the rescue.

Polly arrives a few days after the beginning of the blitz. She finds a place to live with a stingy boarding house owner. She hoped to find work immediately, but it takes a few weeks. She spends every evening in the church basement shelter while the German bombers fly overhead and drop their cargo on London. She is able to witness how the Londoners handle the German Blitz.

No wonder the tale is in two volumes. Look how long just the set up takes! Of course things go wrong. After people get to their posts, the drops close. They're stuck in World War II. With time travel, someone should have picked them up at the proper time whenever the problem is fixed. But no one comes. Instead, they find themselves 120 years in the past hoping that they will get home somehow.

The books are fascinating. Any historian will appreciate all the research Connie Willis has put into Black Out and All Clear. She goes into detail on how people survived through those times. The misinformation section (Ernest Worthington) secrets weren't declassified for years after the war. While I knew there was misleading information spread about the impending D-Day, I never had heard of the great lengths they had gone to. At Christmas, 1940, the department stores sold out of everything and had to bring out old stock, including left over Victorian clothes. I knew children had been evacuated to the countryside. I didn't know that many returned to London before the Blitz, then were sent back to the countryside again. I also never knew that a ship of evacuated children going to Canada was sunk by the Germans.

Willis' writing brings the reader in to the day to day stuff. The reader sees more than "Polly worked in the hosiery department" but instead learns about wrapping parcels, customer service, ringing up sales, and all the little things that go into a sales clerk's normal day. Willis shows the frustration the characters feel when something doesn't go right and their despair when they realize they are caught in London in the early 1940's. Willis knows how to make her characters every day humans. Anyone who has worked extensively will recognize Alf and Binnie - the children you know will end up in jail as adults.

But...at times the details are too much and you just want the book to get on with it! The chapters jump from character to character and time period to time period. It takes almost the first half of Black Out to finally keep all the story lines and characters straight. Half way through All Clear I wanted to jump to the end to see how everything is resolved. It's a good thing I didn't, because there are still secrets that affect their projects in the past. There are areas that could be edited out. Yet by the last quarter of the book brings all the loose threads together, including ones the reader didn't know were loose threads until they're put into the final tapestry. By the end of the books, the reader has found another great story from Connie Willis.

It took Willis eight years to write these books. When you look at them, you can see that research is one of the reasons they took so long. Let's hope the next one will be done sooner.

Notice:  Non-graphic violence