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 … Fantasy Award
“With The Bone Clocks, [David] Mitchell rises to meet and match the legacy of Cloud Atlas.”—Los Angeles Times
Following 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, including
NPR • 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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WOW! I just finished THE BONE CLOCKS. I received an advance reading copy and started it more than two and one-half years ago; picked it up and started over in March of 2017. I’m not sure where to go, what to say, what to think, where I am. I feel like I have just returned from a month-long trip, but I am not sure where I went, or what I did, but I’m fairly certain that I enjoyed myself, I had a good time, Right?
A young girl, Holly Sykes of Ireland hears voices, she runs away from home, her brother goes missing, she becomes a best-selling author, she travels back in time, she meets the people of the voices…. PHEW! In and out, up and down, round and round. I should not have liked this book with its seeming disjointedness and fantasy elements. This book is not for everyone. This book is only for very special bone clocks, who are willing to confront its challenges.
Mitchell scares me when I begin one of his books, but in a good way. I know I will be facing a beast, and I will want to quit, but with some early perseverance, I will endure. A brilliant writer challenging the borders of modern fiction, his writing, his insight will draw you into a special place where only the brave who want to challenge their minds will go.
I really don’t want to say too much more about this book. Frankly, I don’t know that I can. Try it, if you dare, but give it time and do not become discouraged. You will finish in Ireland and Iceland and in a new place in your mind.
This book was a wonderful read. I think that Mitchell’s greatest talent is for writing in so many very distinct voices, and that is especially important in a book like this, where the main character’s life is given through the voices and perspectives of a number of people: an Oxfordian, a war correspondent, an immortal (of the good sort…), as well as in her own voice. This book should have been a prize winner for the writing alone. It wins with me!
As a young girl Holly Sykes is visited by an exotic and fascinating woman — the first of a lifetime of psychic experiences that gradually lead her into a crucial role in a war between immortals who get their immortality from abducting and sucking the soul out of children and immortals who get their immortality largely by simply being reborn into the body of a child. She is there when the war comes to an end — but not her involvement with the remaining immortals when the world as we know it comes to an end.
A combination of near future dystopian Earth, combined with supra-natural immortal sentient entities, (both heroes & villains) who readily inhabit, but only discretely influence human behavior; are in an aeons old fight, to rule the universe. This is good writing with a novel literary construction method. Good read!
Mr. Mitchell was warming up for Bone Clocks when he wrote Cloud Atlas. You’ll love it.
A beautifully written, original read. I stopped trying to figure out what was happening about 1/3 of the way through and trusted the author to unfold his story at his own pace. Well worth the time!
My first exposure to David Mitchell was the mind-bending, form-busting Cloud Atlas, which was undeniably brilliant, if flawed, and exhilarating for this toying with structure and voice. On a different end of the Mitchell spectrum is the far more conventional Black Swan Green, about a British adolescent struggling with growing up. Somewhere between the two lies The Bone Clocks, which is about the life of a woman, starting as a rebellious young teenager and growing through adulthood, with a smattering of scifi/fantasy tossed in to good effect (in my mind; other readers and reviewers are less sure). Again, the structure is inventive (though less than Cloud Atlas), in that the richest fantasy part is just kinda tossed in during the final part of the book (though it then returns to the narrative). As with his other books, Mitchell toys with voices and inhabits different characters fully, in ways that other novelists aspire to but lack the talent to achieve (with some exceptions, of course). I thought this book was superb, though not as immediately engaging as some other Mitchell – and I felt the characters were particularly compelling. Say what you like about Mitchell (and he does seem controversial), his is a unique talent and his books are a non-stop thrill ride by literary fiction standards. I look forward to going back and reading his first novel, Ghostwritten, which somehow escaped me.
Grade: A
I’m a fan of Mtichell, but found this to be plodding and too outre to enjoy.
I gave this a shot because I really like the film version of Cloud Atlas, but I’d never read anything by the author. And, like that movie, this book jumps from one character perspective to another throughout time, but never goes back again. It’s very well-written, but I was so heavily invested in the first POV character that, when it switched, I just couldn’t muster the energy to care. If you’re looking for some minding fantasy, I recommend it. But just know that the rug is going to be constantly pulled out from under you just as the plot gets interesting.
Love, love, love this book! This was the first David Mitchell book I read and am now a huge fan. I don’t want to say much about the plot other than time travel. You have to read it to get how really good it is and how extremely good David Mitchell is.
David Mitchell is one of my favorite authors but his books are not a beach read. You have to be willing to put time and attention into the reading to follow characters who move across periods of time. It is a tighter timeline than Cloud Atlas but there are many shifts. I found it very difficult to put down. It is extremely well written and one actually becomes interested in the main character and her interactions with the real world and the fantastic alternative intervenors that Mitchell creates. Well worth the time.
Very odd how everything fits together but I couldn’t put it down!
A great writer. Excellent using a dialogue driven plot(s).
While often I was confused while I was reading this novel, eventually everything all came together. This novel was disturbing but riveting at the same time. The ending is not what you want exactly, but it is what should be.
Boring and wordy
Love the writing style.
Too confusing. Characters jumped around too much
I really, really don’t get the acclaim for this author. This book, like the others I tried to read, left me bored and wondering what all the hype is about. The characters are pretty much two dimensional, the story just wanders around without any actual plot or development, and nothing to suggest that if only I stick it out to the end I’ll care about it any more. I gave up about halfway through.
Some page turning and other parts dragged.
Too confusing, I read about half and decided I had better uses for my time.
Eclectic epic instant classic – tour de force