The Bone Clocks
Books | Fiction / Literary
4
(612)
David Mitchell
The New York Times bestseller by the author of Cloud Atlas • Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize • Named One of the Top Ten Fiction Books of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly, and O: The Oprah Magazine • A New York Times Notable Book • An American Library Association Notable Book • Winner of the World Fantasy Award“With The Bone Clocks, [David] Mitchell rises to meet and match the legacy of Cloud Atlas.”—Los Angeles TimesFollowing a terrible fight with her mother over her boyfriend, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her family and 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 on the war in 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. Rich with character and realms of possibility, The Bone Clocks is a kaleidoscopic novel that begs to be taken apart and put back together by a writer The Washington Post calls “the novelist who’s been showing us the future of fiction.” An elegant conjurer of interconnected tales, a genre-bending daredevil, and a master prose stylist, David Mitchell has become one of the leading literary voices of his generation. His hypnotic new novel, The Bone Clocks, crackles with invention and wit and sheer storytelling pleasure—it is fiction at its most spellbinding.Named to more than 20 year-end best of lists, includingNPR • San Francisco Chronicle • The Atlantic • The Guardian • Slate • BuzzFeed“One of the most entertaining and thrilling novels I’ve read in a long time.”—Meg Wolitzer, NPR“[Mitchell] writes with a furious intensity and slapped-awake vitality, with a delight in language and all the rabbit holes of experience.”—The New York Times Book Review “Intensely compelling . . . fantastically witty . . . offers up a rich selection of domestic realism, gothic fantasy and apocalyptic speculation.”—The Washington Post “[A] time-traveling, culture-crossing, genre-bending marvel of a novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Great fun . . . a tour de force . . . [Mitchell] channels his narrators with vivid expertise.”—San Francisco Chronicle
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More Details:
Author
David Mitchell
Pages
656
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Published Date
2014-09-02
ISBN
0812994736 9780812994735
Ratings
Google: 2.5
Community ReviewsSee all
"For the first two-thirds of this book, I found it incredibly boring. It just explored the everyday problems of "random" people who I wasn't sure why I was supposed to care about. Only when the 'random' people came together and the *scifi/fantasy* aspect of the story actually showed up did I start to care, and it finished super interestingly. I think you have to make your own opinion about a book like this. "
"3.5 out of 5. As usual, Mitchell skips and hops around time threading his characters with interesting connections and keeping his audience current. I could have done without the tabs handed back at the end, and left the connection of holly to her grandkids a mystery. While I love the first-person-marinus, a bit too heavy handed in the magic and fantasy when previous chapters didn't really have...well...ENOUGH of it. Overall another strong read, but I felt its length by the middle. Nice to end with holly again, and I have to say besides Ed, her sections are the most compelling."
"This book is a lot more science-fiction than Cloud Atlas, for sure. Where Cloud Atlas gently hints at the connection of souls between lives over generations, The Bone Clocks is specifically about people with the ability to be reborn into new bodies and use powers. While these powers do not manifest strongly throughout the book, it’s a kind of jarring overtone to the whole story, and yet, what ultimately ties the story together.<br/><br/>The story itself is told well, although I came away with the feeling that there was a lot of exposition on the lives of the characters that wasn’t truly necessary. I would spend quite a lot of time learning about a character’s background and actions to be abruptly jarred into the main storyline with it’s weird soul powers.<br/><br/>The final chapter in this book was the most disturbing presentation of post-global warming I’ve read so far. Up until the final moments, at least. And even then, the story was not uplifting or that hopeful, which isn’t to say it should be, just that the one saving grace for the characters was not that uplifting for the rest of us. This chapter has haunted me for days after reading."
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Owen Winkler
"I don’t know if I have a favorite... might be too hard to pick. I love David Mitchell’s work. My taste ranges from sweet lovely novels to Asimov sci-fi. Mitchell is a good in-between. I’m currently reading Sarah Maas’ Court of Thorns and Roses series. I am on the 5th book. Indulgent fantasy and a good story, too! "
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Ashley Kaplan