Doomsday Book: A time travel novel that will stay with you long after you finish reading

Quite compelling but as the story progressed I found the tension added by annoying characters or unrealistic/farsical scenarios to be rather irritating. Modern Oxford setting strange - like it's set in 1955... but with time travel and video phones! However no mobile phones. This is probably cause a mobile phone would invalidate most of the invented farsical scenarios. Little seemed to happen in first two thirds of book. Pace improves in last third.

If this is a "Masterwork", I'd hate see what they consider just OK. It trails on & on with pointless convolutions around the 14th-century manor, and even more so around 21st-century Oxford; and she has such a tin ear for English, It's obvious she must be a Yank: she thinks hence means hither, thence thither, and aught naught, and that the singular of 'bacteria' is 'a bacteria'. However, at least she can spell practice (noun) and practise (verb). Not so clever, though, at spelling her own works: every now and then we get a "Transcript from the Domesday Book", as written by the heroine, Kivrin; yet the title of the book is "Doomsday Book". Either one is in common usage today, but a little consistency from Ms Willis would surely be desirable. And how can she say, in Chapter 31, "It could not be later than six - the sun was only just above the horizon"? In these latitudes, in early January, the sun does not get "just above the horizon" till after eight.

This is the first book I have read from Connie Willis and I am eager to read more. I was surprised to learn she wasn't English, as she wrote so naturally about England. Unlike Martha Grimes, I might add, American and writes about England so unconvincingly. I loved the plot, loved the characters and loved her writing style. I was transported to the 14th century. A few loose ends...why the language translator didn't work for example, was never clear. I was sad to finish it.