Bellwether – Connie Willis

Sandra Foster is a sociologist who studies fads; her current research focuses on what triggered the mania for hair bobbing in the 1920’s “despite social pressure, threatening pressure, and four thousand years of long hair.” As if finding the beginning of fads wasn’t hard enough, Sandra is beset by the kinds of disruptions familiar to anyone who works in a large institution – constant management reorganisation and restructuring (resulting in increasingly baroque application forms, ludicrous acronyms, and endless team meetings), and the world’s most incompetent interdepartmental assistant, Flip, for whom any task is an imposition.
When Flip delivers a perishable package to her office, even though it’s clearly marked to Bio, Sandra decides to take it across campus herself – after hours collating articles and prints ads from the 'twenties she needs a break. In Bio she meets Bennett O’Reilly, a chaos theorist who, unable to sustain funding for his original work on river systems is now looking at learning in monkey populations – or will, if his funding application’s accepted. Sandra is fascinated by Ben who, judging by his clothing, seems immune to fads. Perhaps his immunity will help her work out something about how fads spread through groups.
Through a series of complications, including a litany of Flip-related disasters, yet more corporate restructuring and ‘reform’, institutional obsession with winning the lucrative Liebnitz award (that the selection criteria is unknown does in no way prevent management trying to tailor their research toward it), and a misplaced funding application, Ben and Sandra end up creating a joint project, allowing Sandra to observe Ben more closely.
I was immediately drawn into this novel, which opens each chapter with a brief recount of a different fad, from the hula-hoop to virtual pets; this aspect pleasantly reminded me of Westerfeld’s Peeps, where each chapter alternates with discussion about a different parasite, while the academic interest in trends mirrors So Yesterday.
Sandra, who narrates Bellwether, is warm, complex and vibrant, and I found her research intriguing. There are enough secondary plots to keep the story rolling, and the secondary characters are well drawn. As in life, and chaos theory, there is interconnectivity in the story that is not immediately apparent but ultimately rewarding. Even the revelation about how the Liebnitz award is granted, which is obvious mid way through the novel, is satisfying rather than irritating, which is truly difficult to pull off. Willis has once again created a thoroughly enjoyable, unique microcosm that, though shorter and thematically very different from her time travel novels (The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog), demonstrates similar mastery of layered plot, involving characters and deft writing. – Alex