The Bone Clocks
.jpg) First UK edition | |
| Author | David Mitchell |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Neal Murren |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Drama |
| Publisher | Sceptre |
Publication date | 2 September 2014 [1] |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 609 |
| ISBN | 0-340-92160-9 |
The Bone Clocks is a novel by British writer David Mitchell. It was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2014,[2] and called one of the best novels of 2014 by Stephen King.[3] The novel won the 2015 World Fantasy Award.
Plot
The outline of the plot was provided by Mitchell’s publisher, Sceptre:
In 1984, teenager Holly Sykes runs away from home, a Gravesend pub. Sixty years later, she is to be found in the far west of Ireland, raising a granddaughter as the world’s climate collapses.In between, Holly is encountered as a barmaid in a Swiss resort by an undergraduate sociopath in 1991; has a child with a foreign correspondent covering the Iraq War in 2003; and, widowed, becomes the confidante of a self-obsessed author of fading powers and reputation during the present decade. Yet these changing personae are only part of the story, as Holly’s life is repeatedly intersected by a slow-motion war between a cult of predatory soul-decanters and a band of vigilantes led by one Doctor Marinus. Holly begins as an unwitting pawn in this war – but may prove to be its decisive weapon.[4]
— Curtis Brown, publisher
The book consists of the following six stories that are set in different times of Holly’s life:
- A Hot Spell, 1984
- Myrrh is Mine, Its Bitter Perfume, 1991
- The Wedding Bash, 2004
- Crispin Hershey’s Lonely Planet, 2015
- An Horologist’s Labyrinth, 2025
- Sheep’s Head, 2043
Allusions/references to other works
The Bone Clocks contains characters from other works by Mitchell, following precedents set in his earlier novels. In interviews leading up to the release of this novel, Mitchell described this shared universe as an "uber-novel".[5]
- Hugo Lamb, one of the novel’s narrators, appears as a boy in Black Swan Green, in which he is the protagonist Jason Taylor's cousin. The character Alan Wall also appears in Black Swan Green.
- There are mentions of Spyglass Magazine and the writer Felix Finch, both featured in Cloud Atlas.
- Crispin Hershey, another of the novel's narrators, is ostensibly the author of The Voorman Problem, an excerpt from number9dream, as well as the writer of a work whose plot seems identical to The Siphoners, a short story written by David Mitchell, which in turns seems to be the same pre-apocalyptic universe described in the last section of the book. He is also briefly mentioned in Slade House.
- The soul of Dr. Marinus from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is revealed to be capable of reincarnation, and is another of the novel’s narrators, mostly as Dr. Iris Fenby. This particular incarnation of Marinus actually appeared in David Mitchell’s libretto for Michel Van der Aa's opera Sunken Garden, which David Mitchell said served as a "prologue" to the Bone Clocks. Marinus, as Dr. Iris Feenby, also appears in Slade House.
- Jonny Penhaligon is implied to be a descendant of Captain Penhaligon of the British frigate Phoebus in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Jonny's sister, Fern appears as a minor character in Slade House.
- Elijah D’Arnoq, another "Atemporal" like Dr. Marinus, is implied to be the same character as Mr. D'Arnoq of the Chatham Islands in the first segment of Cloud Atlas, though the Afterword which appears in the paperback version reveals that Elijah is Mr. D’Arnoq’s son.
- Mo Muntervary, a physicist who first appeared in Ghostwritten, is a secondary character in the last of this novel's sections.
References
- ↑ "The Bone Clocks". UK: Amazon. Retrieved 2014-08-03.
- ↑ "The Bone Clocks". The Man Booker prize. Retrieved 2014-08-03.
- ↑ Greene, Andy (October 31, 2014), "Stephen King", Rolling Stone (interview).
- ↑ "The Bone Clocks". UK: Curtis Brown. Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ↑ "In Bone Clocks, David Mitchell ties his universes together". LA Times. Retrieved 2014-09-06.
External links
- Map of Holly's journey
- Review of The Bone Clocks by Rose Harris-Birtill for Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 44.1. 120 (June 2015): 131-34.
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