[The following might be vaguely spoilerish. Spoilerish if you're like my brother who doesn't want to know a SINGLE THING before he sees a movie, not even a trailer. But there are no real plot details.]
Okay, we're past the plod. Willis has this thing in her books where she likes to make people run around a lot. It's her biggest weakness, and the main complaint about her books by people who really don't like it. The comments on amazon by the 1-2 star people is "repetitive" "tedious" "repetitive" "tedious".
The stuff about WW2 was still interesting, and I care enough about all the non-time-traveling characters that it helped keep my interest, but... since this is a part 1 of 2, I think the Running Around and Around went on longer than it should have. And of course the writing itself is just really good. You get totally transported into this other time and place. And in her comedies, there are so many good jokes and funny characters that I didn't notice the Running Around the first time I read them (Bellweather and To Say Nothing) -- I only noticed it during my most recent re-reads.
Knowing Willis there's probably some artistic-philosophical reason why she writes this way. How she sees history--its dependence on near-misses and chance and such. But that was the central theme of To Say Nothing... so like... I got it already.
It's certainly realistic... like trying to herd 9 managers into one office for a manager's meeting, in a relatively small store. You'd be surprised how long that can take, how much running in and out, looking for each other, paging, near misses, etc.
But just as you want dialogue to be "life like" rather than actually imitate life, so should the Running Around Effect.
The other thing the Running Around does is kind of halts character development, in my opinion. Or at least it does in this book.
Anyway, I've got to get back. I'm at 454 and things have been reaching a Crescendo of Excitement. Must reach the cliffhanger!
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