Blackout (Connie Willis)

This is half a story, set in the same universe as Willis's Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog (the second half is in the volume called All Clear, which I'll be reading soon). It is a time-travel novel, but it's really more about WWII, the time period visited by the historians from Oxford in 2060. These intrepid explorers get to their various assignments (observing children evacuated to the countryside, ordinary heroes of Dunkirk, and Londoners during the Blitz) and settle in, before things start to go wrong. The book is much too long - there is no need for devoting quite so much time to the paperwork snafus and scheduling headaches at Oxford, or the logistical problems with trying to take a train in wartime England. Willis makes the places and the people seem real, though, so I never quite lost patience with the Keystone Cops feel of things. I look forward to reading the rest of the story soon.