bone clocks

The Bone Clocks is a novel by David Mitchell, the guy who wrote Cloud Atlas. I say that like I read Cloud Atlas, but I didn't. I think I saw the movie however, or maybe parts of it. This book was in the quick picks section at my library and it looked like it was right up my alley. Yeah, it was.

I liked this book from the first page, and I enjoyed right through. I stayed up at night reading; I stopped what I was doing on the weekends and took this book and a coffee out to the yard; I lingered over breakfast for too long each morning. I'm not a fast reader, and this is a dense book.

What I especially liked about it, is the in depth examinations of the characters. Many writers would give a few paragraphs, or even a few lines to set up a character and then plow ahead with the storyline, infilling bits about the character as they go. Good writers show us what the character is like, rather than tell us. Mitchell shows us by taking the time to write the story from each character's perspective, and through their eyes we see the multiple facets of the story as well as get a much better feel for that characters themselves, and in the end its what the story is about; these people.

There is a Fantastic aspect to this story, but its not overwhelming. Its the axis about which the plot revolves, but its just the axis, not the entire storyline. Mitchell has take the time to think about what life would be like in the world he's created, and we get to inhabit it with him. It runs parallel to ours, and maybe just 20 feet to the left of us. Its like many stories of this ilk that imagine another world, or even a secret society within our own, that moves along with us without our knowledge. I'll keep my eye out for more David Mitchell.

Read this book.