Utopia Avenue unless he or she finishes first the sprawling (even by Mitchell’s standards) 2010 historical saga set at the turn of the 18th century in Nagasaki, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. However, even then a reader will not be ready to appreciate fully the backdrop of
These stories nestle into one another like Russian dolls, burrowing into the central tale in post-apocalyptic Hawai’i before emerging to repeat the cycle of the previous five sections in reverse, by resolving each interrupted story.
But in this 2004 effort, Mitchell amps up the energy and the invention over a wider range of prose styles and six-times-two extended set-pieces which draw one into: the mind of a 19th century notary at sea, a poor musician’s journal early in the next century, a whistle-blower’s thriller, a dystopian robotic Asia, and a wittily sour publisher on the lam. Probably Mitchell’s best known effort to date,Ĭloud Atlas creates an ambitious narrative that follows similar themes as his debut. The manner of how their essence may be transmitted in turn floats into a vast Cloud Atlas (2004). Tellingly, the substance of the novel adds up to nine lives. The characters merge subtly with one another. It shuffles through various lives in different places across many centuries. Ghostwritten (1999) lives up to its title. His first book introduced his modus operandi. You might also enjoy this interview with the author at the release of Black Swan Green.) The Bone Clocks and Slade House will prepare you to step back into Mitchell’s oeuvre. You need to start with The Bone Clocks (2014), and maybe the spin-off novella from the following year, Slade House. Utopia Avenue fresh, I’d suggest a detour. Which can add up, given the heft of most of his tales speculating on the grey areas between this realm and other ones. Engagingly told by either first or third-person narrators, his plots unfurl to keep any reader turning the pages. You can count on his fiction to take you into a multicultural space, a cultural clash, and (nearly always) a spiritual - or at least supernatural - encounter. Eight novels into his career, David Mitchell has clearly established himself.
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