Review: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

Title: The Bone Clocks

Author: David Mitchell

Publisher: Random House

Date of Publication: 2014

Number of Pages: 624

Summary

Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.

For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.

Review

Have you ever wondered what would be like to be immortal in a world, like ours, where mortals live? To be Atemporal in a world so temporal, to watch all those bone clocks age and die, while your body doesn't age and you see the centuries go by. But it's still not that simple. What if you were an atemporal that aged and died but your soul kept returning to other children bodies and you were caught up in a neverending life cycle? The Bone Clocks is a book about life and death, love, vanity and loneliness.

Holly Sykes is a teenage girl growing up in a small town in Britain. Since she was a little girl she heard voices, the Radio People as she calls them. When she runs away from home she meets a strange old lady that asks her for asylum. The circumstances come in a way that she has to accept. Years later and when she has almost forgot about it, this becomes the reason she gets involved in a war between natural atemporals and artificially made ones. This is also the point where she questions what is real and what is not, what does her psychic powers really mean and whether she can trust these people. Once she is convinced that the anchorites, the artificial atemporals, are the ones that kidnapped and killed her brother she is ready to take part and finally help the horologists.

But Holly doesn't have a metalife or any particular powers apart from getting glimpses of the very near future some periods of her life. As the years pass she grows old, she has a daughter and eventually becomes a grandmother. When life on earth becomes difficult again due to oil shortage she strives to make a comfortable enough life for her grandchild, although she is no longer young and suffers from several pains. In that stage of her life even her experiences with the horologists seem like a dream.

The Bone Clocks at first reminded me of Ghostwritten since each part is narrated by a different person and up to some point the parts are episodic. This at first made me worried especially when the first part ended and I didn't know what happened to Holly's brother and I really wanted to know more and all of a sudden we transfer to six years later, in a different place, through the eyes of a guy that didn't have anything to do with the story up to that point. But luckily all of the narrators meet and interact with Holly in some way or another so there are neither plot holes nor unaswered questions.

Not everyone in this book is a stranger to us though. To be precise, three chatacters from previous David Mitchell's novels appear in this one and two of them are quiet important for the story. First appears Hugo Lamb, the slightly older cousin of Jason's in Black Swan Green that was acting too cool. Well, his character hasn't changed at all and the role he has in The Bone Clocks suits him perfectly. From very early on the book we meet a certain Dr. Marinus, but only until he becomes the narrator we learn that he is Dr. Marinus from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I loved this character from the previous book and this didn't change for this one. He has grown to be one of my all time favourite characters. Lastly, scientist Mo Muntervary from Ghostwritten appears to be Holly's neighbour, both in advanced age trying to protect themselves from outlaws and other difficulties when the times get tough.

The Bone Clocks is a thrilling novel and at some points I just couldn't stop reading it because I was so worried about the characters. Holly is a lovable character and there are plenty of chances to grow strong bonds with her and being concerned about her well-being. As in real life unpleasant things happen to Holly and the people around her. These times the book gets heavy, but feels surprisingly real. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interesting in a realistic novel with strong fantasy elements. So, my advice is...

Get lost in this amazing story!