Monday 19 June 2017

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

“Books’ll be back,” Esther-in-Unalaq predicts. “Wait till the power grids start failing in the 2030s and the datavats get erased. It’s not far away. The future looks a lot like the past.” 

This is a book, I mean, if you threw it at someone it could do serious damage. Don't take that as a critique by any means, I've rather loved the journey through time and lives and unravelling the mystery across its many delightfully written pages.
It is also a gorgeous experience that has got me through a rather crappy vortex of a shit storm that has been my life of late. The weather is clearing, fear not.

Reading this at odd intervals, sometimes a page or two, sometimes a hundred pages, probably added to the confusion of the non-linear story and yet somehow also made me love it even more. I appreciated this escape into another reality where underlying forces are waging war within the bodies of mere mortals without them even knowing. It is a fascinating conceit, potentially extrapolated from the notion of bacteria and/or even particles. My science is iffy - so seriously, don't quote me on that.

Regardless the writing is beautiful and offers delightful morsels of insight on everyday life in between the action. Other readers have fallen in love with Mitchell's Cloud Atlas,  which left me a little cold, despite my love of time travel, or rather, my love of reading about the idea.
I lacked the tenacity to stick with that novel and yet this one I found more approachable. I'm not sure whether that is indicative of greater patience on my part or a different style of writing or a more approachable subject. There is something vampiric about the "villains" of this piece that was always going to draw me in. I don't know why I'm always attracted to that trope and yet who could resist the opportunity of reading up a storm that eternal life would facilitate?

5 out of 5 Holly's journey drew me down the rabbit hole.


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