David Mitchell is a fascinating writer. Everytime he publishes a book it creates a big splash, and that is not just hype or good marketing. His books live up to all their acclaim by defying genres, containing well developed, compelling characters, well thought out and surprising plot lines even while maintaining a beautiful and cohesive writing style.  In The Bone Clocks, Mitchell again spins a tale worthy of Sheradnazee, that is both highly entertaining and deeply thought provoking.

As a little girl, Holly Sykes, heard voices.  She called them the “Radio People” and they often let her know when something was going to happen. For awhile Holly and the voices got along and were comforting, but then they became more and more intrusive and unable to control them, Holly broke down and told her mother about them. Understandably, her mother thought that there might be something terribly wrong. but Dr. Marinus, a child psychologist from London was able to help with a simple acupuncture technique and the voices went away.

Now in 1984, Holly is fifteen, and she is madly in love. After a huge row with her mother she decides to leave home and go live with her boyfriend. But when Holly arrives at her boyfriend’s flat, she finds him in bed with her best friend!  Unwilling to go back home and face her mom’s “I told you so ” looks, Holly leaves town and heads towards a farm where she can live, work and and get over her heartbreak and betrayal.  “Love’s pure free joy when it works,” she says to herself, “but when it goes bad you pay loan-shark prices.” Along the way she has some strange and frightening encounters, and when she tries to remember there are pieces missing from her memory, which inexplicably do not seem to worry or concern her and she soon settles in at the farm and does the work she is given. Eventually her family is able to track her down and to her horror she finds out that her younger brother, Jacko, went missing the same day she left home and has never been found. Holly returns to her devastated family and realizes that she is last person to see her brother before he disappeared and that his last request that she memorize a labyrinth pattern he designed was the last thing that he ever said to her.

Holly’s story continues to weave in and out of this book, but Mitchell introduces us to other characters like Hugo Lamb, on scholarship at Cambridge in 1991, who wants to be important and successful, or Edmund Brubeck, the reporter who is addicted to his life of danger and adventure reporting on the war in Iraq in 2004 and can’t seem to stay home with his wife and daughter, or Crispin Hershey, a has been author in 2015, whose newest work was shredded to bits in a review by his supposed friend and fellow writer. Like a kaleidoscope each of these characters, in turn, tells their story while offering us another perspective on the significance of Holly’s lost memories, the mysterious disappearance of her brother, and the strange cabal that seems to be following Holly at every turn.

Mitchell’s questions about time, the nature of love, and our inter-relationships with each other and with the planet are provocative and thoughtful.  “S’pose,” Holly says heaven’s not like a painting that’s just hanging there forever, but more like…like the best song that anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you’re alive, from passing cars or..upstairs window when you’re lost…” Reading this book was certainly a glimpse of heaven, one that I hope others will find as well!

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 Stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to: Keith, Ken, Lauren, Marian and Sharon

Book Study Worthy? Yes

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