The Bone Clocks
Longlisted for the Booker Prize
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4.2 • 156 Ratings
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
'ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANTLY INVENTIVE WRITERS OF THIS, OR ANY, COUNTRY' INDEPENDENT
Winner of the World Fantasy Award and longlisted for the Booker and Folio Prizes
'A triumph'
GUARDIAN
'Fantastical'
OBSERVER
'Epic'
EVENING STANDARD
'Mind-spinning'
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
'Dazzling'
NEW YORK TIMES
The internationally bestselling novel from the author of Cloud Atlas, at once the kaleidoscopic story of an unusual woman's life, a metaphysical thriller and a profound meditation on mortality and survival
Run away, one drowsy summer's afternoon, with Holly Sykes: wayward teenager, broken-hearted rebel and unwitting pawn in a titanic, hidden conflict.
Over six decades, the consequences of a moment's impulse unfold, drawing an ordinary woman into a world far beyond her imagining. And as life in the near future turns perilous, the pledge she made to a stranger may become the key to her family's survival . . .
PRAISE FOR DAVID MITCHELL
'A thrilling and gifted writer'
FINANCIAL TIMES
'Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good'
DAILY MAIL
'Mitchell is, clearly, a genius'
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
'An author of extraordinary ambition and skill'
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
'A superb storyteller'
THE NEW YORKER
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Like Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks is a vividly imagined and head-spinning tale. Tempestuous teenager Holly Sykes has a history of hearing voices and seeing specters. Spurned by her boyfriend and fueled by spite, Holly embarks on a journey into the Kentish countryside, where she unwittingly becomes a pawn in a violent battle between magical armies. Hurtling forward from its starting point in 1984 to 2043 (where Holly is a grandmother cherishing a simple life in Ireland), Mitchell’s audacious novel is like nothing you’ve ever read before. Blending small human dramas, current events, big ideas and supernatural mystique, The Bone Clocks unveils colourful characters and unexpected twists at every turn.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Is The Bone Clocks the most ambitious novel ever written, or just the most Mitchell-esque? We begin in the punk years with a teenage Talking Heads obsessed runaway from Gravesend, England, named Holly Sykes. She becomes a pawn in a spiritual war between the mysterious "Radio People" and the benevolent Horologists, led by the body-shifting immortal Marinus. Many more characters and places soon find themselves worked into Marinus's "Script" across the book's six sections: there's Hugo Lamb, a cunning, amoral Cambridge student spending Christmas 1991 in Switzerland, where he encounters an older Holly tending bar; then it's the height of the Bush/Blair years, and our narrator is Holly's husband, Edmund Brubeck, a war reporter dispatched to Baghdad. Another flash-forward lands us in the present day, where the middling novelist Crispin Hershey weathers a succession of literary feuds, becomes confidante of a New Agey Holly and her daughter, then has his own unsettling encounter with the Radio People. In the penultimate section, Marinus reveals the nature of the Script the secret conflict lurking just beneath mortal affairs and how Holly may be the key to a resolution whose repercussions won't be known until 2043, when the aged Holly rides out a curiously sedate end-time in rural Ireland. From gritty realism to far-out fantasy, each section has its own charm and surprises. With its wayward thoughts, chance meetings, and attention to detail, Mitchell's (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet) novel is a thing of beauty.
Customer Reviews
Great plot, great characters, a bit too much made up language
This is a story of good against evil. It follows the life of Holly Sykes from childhood- where she first encounters the sinister 'anchorites'- to adult where she helps the well-intentioned 'horologists' to save the world from their evil intentions.
The plot is cleverly written and spans several decades of Holly's life from the 1970s to the 2040s, and centuries past as it becomes clear some of her companions and their enemies have lived for hundreds of years. The dialogue used attempts, and succeeds to some extent, to describe the language of the anchorites and horologists, and life in the future but the sheer amount of made up language makes some reading heavy going.
Fabulous
I found this book engrossing, I read it first many years ago, and re-reading it was like a reunion with an old friend. To allude to a minor theme in the book, I found incidents and moments within which were like treasured memories. It is a fantastical, futuristic, apocalyptic but ultimately optimistic detective story. I really enjoyed it, again. Thank you David Mitchell, I am looking forward to doing the same with Ghostwritten.
Superb
A joy to read from beginning to end. Expertly written. Highly recommended