Bellwether

By: Connie Willis

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award, Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2010

Pop culture, chaos theory, and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula Award - winning author of Doomsday Book.

Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennett O'Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions - with the unintended help of the errant, forgetful, and careless office assistant Flip.

©1996 Connie Willis (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Connie Willis deploys the apparatus of science fiction to illuminate character and relationships, and her writing is fresh, subtle and deeply moving." ( New York Times Book Review)
"Willis's story builds slowly but is realistic and engrossing." ( Midwest Book Review)

So clever!

Seems random in the beginning but coalesces into a cute clever little package. Super funny too! A cross between the office and… I don’t know. Something science-y. Comforting to know that stupidity is rife among “smart” people too.

Solid contemporary fiction

Hints of science fiction in what's primarily a novel about human relationships; genuinely enjoyable and a comfortable amount of thought provoking themes, but not too much, which is appropriate for the novel.

Such a Fun Read!

Solid five stars from me; I loved this book.
Sandra is a psychologist working at HiTek researching how and why fads start. This book was written in 1996, and it was fun re-visiting the trends from the past. Each chapter began with little historical tidbits on fad origins throughout history. I found those very interesting.
Bennett also works at HiTek and is studying group behavior in animals. He is a chaos theorists very much immune to any type of fad. He wears thick glasses and clothes that never match.
This is a fun book more about office antics than science. Working in an office myself, I could totally relate and really enjoyed the quirky characters.
By the end of the book, it begins to make sense how all things are related and tie together. Bennett's chaos theories intertwine with Sandra's fad theories. Friendships are made, secrets revealed, understandings developed.
Narration was so good. I got such a kick out of Kate Reading's interpretation of Flip. Loved it!

Better than I expected

I came into this book thinking I was going to hate it and force myself through it but the story was much better than I anticipated and I enjoyed it so much. As a person who enjoys random facts, the ones dispersed throughout the story were fun and well appreciated.

fun and thought provoking

Connie Willis is a brilliant author and this is pure comedy of errors territory. Enjoy!

Intelligent and fun

Willis’s characters never disappoint. Her plots are complicated and entertaining — and informative without being pedantic. This one, with its characters’ work on the emergence of fads and chaos theory, is both intelligent and great fun!

listen to the end

I love it, but I didn't know I loved it until I got to the end!

Laugh out loud moments

Any additional comments?

I was stopped in the grocery store and asked what I was listening to that had me grinning like a maniac. "Bellwether" takes a little while to get rolling, but the narrative voice is beautifully captured, and the ideosyncracies of the workplace, fads, and scientific discoveries enlivens a fairly straightforward storyline. Once the sheep were introduced, I found myself unable to unplug. As a sheep owner, I was similtaneously laughing and nodding over Sandy's and Ben's exploits with the ovine crowd. Brilliant fun and thought-provoking as well. Why do we embrace fads? How do they get started? Why is it that so many important scientific discoveries seem to happen by accident? What is the origin of the hoola hoop?

A Little Bang Theory

Fascinating and droll, Connie Willis's short novel Bellwether hooked me from the start with its overarching metaphor about fads. And then it kept me hooked (and chuckling almost incessantly) with its wry observations about working in a corporate office environment and living in a world of self-policed social conformity.

That sounds like quite a mouthful, but it's not all that complicated: this is pretty much the same idea as The Big Bang Theory -- the real (and really funny) lives of scientific researchers -- with the notable difference that the main character is perplexed by fads rather than, like the Big Bang guys, devoted to (certain types of) them.

Two things I take away from this book, other than the straightforward fact of enjoying it immensely for its observations and humor: its setting and its metaphor. So many books, movies, TV shows are about people most of us can never be -- policemen, lawyers, doctors, secret agents, etc. Not really a surprise -- those are the occupations that offer up a broad range of dramatic life or death plot lines, especially for serial versions of their respective media.

But we don't usually relate to them directly. By contrast, a smaller number of works are about real people working everyday jobs in the most common setting -- the office. And yet so many of those become popular because we can relate to the setting, not least of which is The Office. The Big Bang Theory is so good not because of the rare profession of its characters, but because it shows their day to day lives at the office and at home (of course, for the purposes of sit-com).

Bellwether is likewise about Ph.D. scientists, and their research provides a metaphorical background, but there is immense appeal in their office environment and politics and relationships, and in what they have to do just to get a cup of coffee or iced tea, let alone get their projects funded. Great stuff.

The other irresistible aspect of Bellwether is its metaphor -- fads. It is, in my opinion, a rare feat of literary prowess to come up with a metaphor so powerful that we are as much interested in it as in what it symbolizes. Every section of Bellwether features an exploration of at least one fad (hula hoops, Rubik's cubes, coffee houses, hair styles, etc.). The details are simply fascinating in and of themselves, but they also come full circle in their respective sections in symbolizing that part of the proceedings. Again, great stuff.

One other aspect of Bellwether is worth mentioning. It doesn't quite rise to the level of fads as metaphor, but it comes close -- the examples of scientific breakthroughs that came as the result of accident or luck or serendipity or some unexpected sequence of events. This metaphor is not quite as pervasive as fads, even though it starts off the story and plays a large role in its conclusion. Still quite interesting, but not as completely captivating.

Great fun

Connie Willis is a witty and perceptive writer and Bellwether manages to be many things - biting social commentary, a thriller, a romance, a comedy - and a great story, too. Some of the characters may be (by necessity) stereotypical, but they are multi-dimensional, believable, quirky and original stereotypes. This had me laughing out loud and this is as much due to Kate Reading's wonderful narration as to Connie Willis' writing. Although I guessed the ending, it was hugely enjoyable to observe the characters antics as the story unravelled. Highly recommended.