The Bone Clocks
.jpg)
First UK edition
|
|
| Author | David Mitchell |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Neal Murren |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Drama |
| Publisher | Sceptre |
|
Publication date
|
2 September 2014 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 609 |
| ISBN | |
The Bone Clocks is a novel by British writer David Mitchell. It was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2014, and called one of the best novels of 2014 by Stephen King. The novel won the 2015 World Fantasy Award.
The novel is divided into six sections with five point-of-view first-person narrators. They are loosely connected by the character of Holly Sykes, a young woman from Gravesend who is gifted with an "invisible eye" and semi-psychic abilities and a war between two immortal factions, the Anchorites, who derive their immortality from murdering others, and the Horologists, who are naturally able to reincarnate.
The title refers to a pejorative term that the immortal characters of the book use to refer to regular humans who are doomed to mortality because of their aging bodies.
The book consists of the following six stories that are set in different times of Holly’s life:
Fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes runs away from home to live with her twenty-four-year-old boyfriend. Before she leaves, her younger brother Jacko hands her a maze and tells her to memorize it. Arriving at her boyfriend's home Holly finds him in bed with her best friend. She nevertheless decides to keep running away and meets an older woman called Esther Little who gives her green tea in exchange for "asylum" which Holly consents to thinking she's insane. Holly, who was once plagued by auditory hallucinations, then has a violent daymare involving her brother Jacko and several of the violent voices she recognizes from childhood. Afterwards she encounters Ed Brubeck, an acquaintance, who feeds her and helps shelter her. He talks about working on a strawberry farm in Kent. Holly decides to go to the farm and, after securing a job by phone, hitchhikes towards the farm. She is picked up by a young college-aged couple, Heidi and Ian, who believe in communism and who take her to their home. After breakfast Holly washes up and then goes outside where she finds the couple dead. She is then attacked by a man called Rhîmes who mistakes her for Esther Little but soon comes to realize she has no powers at all. Rhîmes then tries to kill Holly but is stopped by the reanimated corpse of first Heidi and later Ian. Holly realizes that Ian is in fact Esther Little who has come to claim sanctuary. Esther embeds herself in Holly's brain but erases the incident from her memory.
Holly makes her way to the strawberry farm. While there she hears the news of Heidi and Ian's death but is unable to connect it with herself. She meets a young woman called Gwyn who says that she was once a runaway too and that unless things are violently bad she should return home. While Holly is considering it, Ed Brubeck arrives having guessed where she is and tells her she needs to return home as Jacko is missing and the police are not treating the case seriously as they believe he is with Holly.
...
Wikipedia