Now more than ever, I am recommending that everyone I know listen to this book. It is an amazing, satisfying, beautiful and terrible story mostly about a time traveler who is trapped in a small medieval village that is stricken by the plague. Meanwhile, current day Oxfordshire is also suffering from an especially virulent flu and attendant quarantine. The book was written in 1992 and much of the action takes place in a squalid, medieval village and yet it is all terribly timely. The characters and setting are beautifully written and this is one of the most moving books I've ever had the pleasure of reading or listening to.
Three more selling points for this great book: 1) I love a good, long book from Audible and "Doomsday" is a wonderful 26 hours and 30 minuets of listening to one of my favorite narrators, Jenny Sterlin. 2) "Doomsday won a Hugo Award in 93 and Nebula Award in 92 and 3) Connie Willis has written another book with some of the same characters that is much lighter in tone yet still very worth reading and a good way to recover from the terrible, searing beauty of "The Doomsday Book". That other book is also available on Audible :"To Say Nothing of the Dog"
Listen to "Doomsday" first, save "To Say Nothing of the Dog" to cheer you up and you can then finish off with Jerome K Jerome's sweetly funny "Three Men in a Boat". There- I've just come up with a great plan for your next 50 or hours of Audible listening. You can thank me later. After you've thoroughly enjoyed all of these amazing books.

The science fiction elements are few but required as they are the bits that allow the story to be. The people are the bones that walk the story forwards. An interesting presentation (flashing back and forth between times and situations) of memorable characters.

I loved this book! I listened to another Willis book "To Say Nothing of the Dog" (also an award winner) and enjoyed it immensely. Then, I debated downloading this one. The terrible reviews almost stopped me - but I'm so glad I didn't listen to them. I imagine fans of action/adventure-oriented Science Fiction would not appreciate it. However, if you like more character-oriented scifi, historical novels and British literature, you are likely to enjoy this as I did. I agree that the narration isn't especially outstanding, but I found it perfectly adequate. The characters are very well-developed and many are truly lovable. Try it!

Doomsday Book isn't meant as an adventure story or as extrapolative scinece fiction -- and it doesn't succeed on those levels. What it does, superbly, is to explore how people and societies respond to plagues and similar events; to compare the medieval and modern in interesting and insightful ways. It's no accident that this was written in the late 1980s (published in 1992) as HIV was spreading in the US.

Unfortunately, the reading does the book a great disservice. The pacing of the book is slow; fine, that's deliberate, but the reader takes the whole thing _down_ a notch to a pace best described as languid, and it simply can't support that treatment -- not to mention that it plays havoc with the modern sequences, which should have a more pressured pace.

This is probably one of the worst books I have had the unfortunate pleasure of downloading. As one reviewer pointed out, it was a great idea, but dreadfully executed. I also agree with some of the other critiques that this book was poorly written and was in serious need of a better editor. From a science fiction point-of-way, I kept yelling at the characters for their stupidity and the author's lack imagination or depth. Here are some prime examples:

1) The author can imagine time travel in 2050, but when it comes to telecommunications the only advancement is landline videophones. This is extremely irritating since a good part of the story takes place in the future with a pandemic over the Christmas holidays and communication is a central dilemma. Yes, we had cell phones in the 90s when this was published.

2) Who in their right mind would send someone back in time and only have one person on staff that could understand the technical readouts to see if the transfer/event was successful or not? It was so frustrating to keep hearing one of the main characters go on and on about finding out if their time traveler was okay or not because the only person that knew was conveniently ill.

3) The heroine of the story was setup as being extremely intelligent, but why would you go back in time and not bother to find out what year it was? Why would you not practice using your language translator ahead of time? Why would you plant a tape-recorder under your skin to record your observations, but not a tracking device?

My recommendation, don't waste your time