Cult author and Booker finalist David Mitchell delivers new winner
Following the success of Cloud Atlas, with the film adaptation starring Halle Berry, David Mitchell has delivered a new time-bending supernatural epic novel The Bone Clocks, writes Fiona Purdon
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From the hard-edge streets of Thatcherite Britain to a mystical 19th century colonial Australia, then onwards to a dystopian future on the wild Irish coast — David Mitchell’s new epic novel traverses country boarders, timelines and genres.
The 595-page tome, The Bone Clocks, is the fifth of Mitchell’s six novels to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize.
The British author has returned to the genre-defying structure of his most famous novel, 2004’s Cloud Atlas, which has sold more than one million copies worldwide and in 2012 was turned into a $100 million film.
Mitchell, who UK’s Guardian newspaper called “the greatest author of his generation’’, admits he is a little unnerved yet delighted to have a growing reader base — with all the accompanying expectations that this brings.
“I try not to think about the pressure,’’ he tells Canvas. “I’m more interested in thinking about what can make this darn book work. I’m relieved it’s finished. It was a difficult one to write, but that is how it should be.
“It almost felt like blood was coming out of my fingers. If it had been effortless and I didn’t break into a sweat, readers would know. You can tell if a book has driven the writer to drink and nervous exhaustion — and the payback is there in the text. It’s a blood offering.’’
Brisbane fantasy writer Trent Jamieson believes The Bone Clocks is Mitchell’s most ambitious novel — and his best. Jamieson also thinks that while The Bone Clocks is a massive metaphysical epic it is also the literary supremo’s most personal novel.
“It’s his most emotionally fulfilling novel,’’ says Jamieson, author of award-winning short stories Slow and Ache and Cracks. “I sometimes find his work cold, but this has real warmth and a beautiful sadness.
“He is coming into his power as an author now, which makes his work even more exciting,’’ adds Jamieson, also a creative writing teacher at QUT. “The Bone Clocks is an amusement park ride, but an intelligent one. David Mitchell manages to write realistic fiction but threads fantasy through it like very few people can. His work is also so literary. He sets the bar high for science-fiction and fantasy writers.’’
For Mitchell, The Bone Clocks is a midlife crisis novel. In defiance of the ageing process, the 45-year-old wanted to focus on characters who live multiple lives, starting with Dr Marinus, who first appeared in his preceding novel, 2010s The Thousands Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
“I’ve always been interested in the idea that if people can live multiple lives, what would they do with those lives,’’ Mitchell says. “It floated my curiosity boat — and these were the questions which made me write.’’
Mitchell had the initial idea to write a chapter for every year of a character’s 70-year life. He took 12 months to pursue this challenge before realising it was too difficult to create a flowing novel from 70 short stories. Instead, Mitchell decided to write six novellas to cover six of the seven decades of his protagonist’s life.
In The Bone Clocks, the feisty, strong-willed and smart Holly becomes the pawn in an ages-old battle between rival camps of immortals — the Anchorites, predatory soul-decanters, and Horologists, who reincarnate by taking on newborn bodies, led by Dr Marinus.
It’s Holly’s story that is told over the six novellas, in contrasting writing styles, starting with the “hard-baked social realism’’ of Hot Spell (1984). Next, Myrrh Is Mine, Its Bitter Perfume (1991) paints a picture of the social classes as Mitchell introduces Anchorite-in-waiting Hugo Lamb, a sociopath who Mitchell’s readers will remember as the mean-spirited cousin to stammering teenager Jason Taylor in his 2007 semi-autobiographical work, Black Swan Green. (Mitchell himself stammers and is a patron of the British Stammering Association.)
War journalism blended with “hopefully well-written soap opera’’ form The Wedding Bash (2004), followed by a pastiche of the book festival world in Crispin Hershey’s Lonely Planet (2015). Next is the metaphysical fantasy thriller in An Horologist’s Labyrinth (2025) and finally a heroic but bleak apocalyptic future in Sheep’s Head (2043), set in Ireland.
“Sheep’s Head is set in the extreme western fringe of Europe,’’ Mitchell explains. “It’s a very special place where there is a thin membrane from this world to the next,’’ adds Mitchell, who lives close by in the small village of Ardfield, near Clonakilty, on the coast of County Cork, and has picnicked at the spot with his Japanese wife Keiko Yoshida and their two children, age 8 and 12.
“At the beginning of each novella I pull the rug out from the readers — and it is no longer the sort of book they thought they were reading,’’ Mitchell says of the book’s complex structure.
“I do it five times. The structure gives me a pioneering sense of satisfaction. I make sure the boring bits get edited out. I’m basically a novella writer. I can do big hulking novels, which are really novellas welded together with tunnels and tubes, like with Cloud Atlas.”
Jamieson observes that the character of Holly is the most richly layered and clearly drawn character in any of Mitchell’s works. He says the novella structure builds tension.
“The last novella would not have worked so well if Mitchell hadn’t built up the excitement (in the preceding novellas). You don’t get the pay-off until the end.
“When you finish a novel, you know it is a great book if you feel a bit sad and you wanted it to go on.’’
Jamieson, whose 2010 horror/fantasy novel, Death Most Definite, is the first in hisDeath Works Trilogy, also works at Avid Reader at West End and says Mitchell’s Australian fans have been excitedly awaiting the publication of The Bone Clocks.
Around the world, too, academics and mega fans intensely examine Mitchell’s work and gather at his conferences, where there are panel discussions on subjects such as Narratology and the Mitchell Multiverse.
The Bone Clocks feature several return characters, including publisher Timothy Cavendish, who first appeared in the author’s 1999 debut work, Ghostwritten, also a hyperlinked novella; and Nurse Noakes, who appears in Cloud Atlas and was memorably portrayed in the movie by a cross-dressing Hugo Weaving.
“It’s a way characters can cheat death and oblivion,’’ Mitchell says. “It also makes one world more real when you introduce a character from another world.’’
Adds Jamieson: “It really shows (his) work conversing with each other. There is a greater narrative there. Mitchell plays with that, too. It is very fulfilling to see characters return ... and gives you little Easter eggs to hunt for. It gives his work a greater power.’’
The Bone Clocks offers a surprise appeal, too, in that several scenes in Crispin Hershey’s Lonely Planet (2015) novella are set in Australia — more precisely 19th century Western Australia and Rottnest Island, 20km off the Perth coastline.
Self-absorbed author Crispin Hershey’s ghostly experiences on Rottnest — where he bumps into Holly Sykes — is based on Mitchell’s “unnerving’’ visit to the island in 2004. At the time, Mitchell found himself writing many notes. It was ionly afterwards that he learned from Australian author Gail Jones that from 1838 to 1931 Rottnest Island had been a prison for Aboriginal people.
“I felt like I was at a party in a cemetery,’’ Mitchell says. “Afterwards I learnt about the island’s history as a penal colony and that it is one of the most haunted places in Australia. I got a similar feeling when I visited Newgate Prison (in England), a place with intensely bad historical karma.’’
The Bone Clocks’ novellas also feature an ages-old indigenous woman, Esther Little, whose genesis was formed when Mitchell visited Sydney in 2011 as a short-listed Commonwealth Writers Prize author and met award-winning Australian indigenous writer Kim Scott.
“I wanted a character who was ancient, old and had a strange relationship with death and an understanding with time ... who had lived many lives and who had a Stone Age soul,’’ says Mitchell of Esther, who turns out to be a pivotal Horologist.
“I remember having several conversations over two to three days with Kim (Scott) that I’ve never had with anyone else. He knows things no one else knows.’’
With The Bone Clocks completed and now in book stores, Mitchell has moved on to other projects. With his wife Keiko Yoshida, Mitchell recently translated the memoir of an autistic Japanese teenager, The Reason I Jump, motivated by the couple’s own autistic son. And a few months ago Mitchell released to Twitter, through a series of 280 tweets, his short story, The Right Sort, about a boy on Valium.
Mitchell, who hopes to return to Australia for a book tour next year, says he has already mapped outb his next six books and wants to write more about The Bone Clocks’ Horologists, Holly’s grandchildren and Marinus.
“One’s own standard is the only one that matters,’’ he says.
Story first appeared in Canvas
THE BONE CLOCKS
Sceptre, $30
Originally published as Cult author and Booker finalist David Mitchell delivers new winner