Title: The Bone Clocks
Author: David Mitchell
Tags: #time #murakami #drwho
Discovered: The Man Booker shortlist 2014
Where read: (In part) Craft Coffee Greenwich Peninsular
The Word's Shortlist view:
The Bone Clocks is a remarkable and ambitious journey through time and place via numerous first person narrators. The intricate plot is bursting with original ideas and themes that bend realism and fantasy over its 608 pages. For me, this is David Mitchell's best work yet - and after Cloud Atlas that's a stunning achievement!
The journey begins in the familiar surroundings of suburban Kent in the 1980s with an inauspicious family, a head strong teenage girl, Holly Sykes, and her younger brother Jacko. What follows is a story in six parts each based around Holly at different stages of her life from teenage runaway to adult and parent.
It must be said, the novel is a complex and challenging character driven piece that moves backwards and forwards through generations. Its genius lies in the way the lives of each of the disparate characters are connected in some way to Holly but a certain amount of perseverance is required.
The environments that Mitchell creates are imaginative and broad - from Cambridge in the 90s to Iraq in 2004 before moving to the future and ending in Ireland in 2043 with the European economy in free-fall.
Throughout the first two thirds of the novel a fantasy sic-fi plot bubbles away but this isn't fully explored until the later parts of the book when we come face with the Horologists - a band of immortals with an almost vampiric view on succession planning. The way this section is linked to the realism of the other sections is a remarkable feat and pure Mitchell.
Many will read the novel purely as its David Mitchell, others as it was Man Booker shortlisted but for me this novel is the perfect brew between literary fiction and fantasy, a place which The Word's Shortlist has often celebrated in Murakami novels such as The Wind up Bird Chronicle.
Still need convincing? Check out David Mitchell's own playlist 'Music for a lost Horologist' to accompany the book. Where else would you find Shostakovich and Maria Callas next to The KLF, Yoko Ono and Talking Heads?
Listen to the full playlist here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1yRBByypyFczSNnS2Jqymt1/music-for-a-lost-horologist-a-bone-clocks-playlist
The journey begins in the familiar surroundings of suburban Kent in the 1980s with an inauspicious family, a head strong teenage girl, Holly Sykes, and her younger brother Jacko. What follows is a story in six parts each based around Holly at different stages of her life from teenage runaway to adult and parent.
It must be said, the novel is a complex and challenging character driven piece that moves backwards and forwards through generations. Its genius lies in the way the lives of each of the disparate characters are connected in some way to Holly but a certain amount of perseverance is required.
The environments that Mitchell creates are imaginative and broad - from Cambridge in the 90s to Iraq in 2004 before moving to the future and ending in Ireland in 2043 with the European economy in free-fall.
Throughout the first two thirds of the novel a fantasy sic-fi plot bubbles away but this isn't fully explored until the later parts of the book when we come face with the Horologists - a band of immortals with an almost vampiric view on succession planning. The way this section is linked to the realism of the other sections is a remarkable feat and pure Mitchell.
Many will read the novel purely as its David Mitchell, others as it was Man Booker shortlisted but for me this novel is the perfect brew between literary fiction and fantasy, a place which The Word's Shortlist has often celebrated in Murakami novels such as The Wind up Bird Chronicle.
Still need convincing? Check out David Mitchell's own playlist 'Music for a lost Horologist' to accompany the book. Where else would you find Shostakovich and Maria Callas next to The KLF, Yoko Ono and Talking Heads?
Listen to the full playlist here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1yRBByypyFczSNnS2Jqymt1/music-for-a-lost-horologist-a-bone-clocks-playlist
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