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The Bone Clocks - Part VI: Sheep's Head (February 2015)
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Violet
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Feb 08, 2015 03:58AM
The thread for the final part of The Bone Clocks. And again massive thanks to everyone for a brilliant discussion that has enriched and continues to enrich my reading of this novel.
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I enjoyed this tale thoroughly up to this section but the denouement simply did not ring true to the same degree as the rest of the saga for me ... both in terms of story and character. Like the Ed-at-war section, the author's own politics got heavy-handed for my taste. Not that I disagree. But I felt these sections will not stand up for future generations. I am also not fond of deus ex machina rescues, and was disappointed by this one.
Mitchell is an amazing writer and storyteller, and most characters who were introduced did indeed return to reward the reader's attention with their integral importance later. But the boy child (being a bit vague to avoid spoiler) was purely extraneous, it seemed. Is he just a device? Or is a sequel coming?
I found this part annoying for several reasons:(1) Every Mitchell book I've read so far (Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas, and now The Bone Clocks) has ended with the human race going to hell in a hand basket, and I'm getting a bit tired of it.
(2) A major character, Aoife, is killed off-screen and in flashback.
(3) The state of the world is not believable. It's not the world going to hell because of climate change that I have a problem with, that's a possibility; but the collapse of Irish and English society. People just don't act that way in crisis situations. Also, the loss of the contents of the internet is just silly. Also, the world wouldn't run out of oil all at once, the price would keep climbing, which would mean that sources that normally wouldn't be cost efficient would be tapped. And there's be huge temptations to increase the use of coal (there's lots of coal), despite the effect on air and warming. And when things get really bad, there's the fact that many nations are very well armed.
The thing is, if you really want to screw over Ireland in a future, climate-related scenario, just assume the gulf stream moves (which is possible), and you're essentially left with Iceland without the geo-thermal power...
I don't think Mitchell did his research. Now, that might be an odd complaint in a book that contains out-and-out fantasy elements, but that part bugged me. Possibly I'm taking it too literally.
I was cool with this part, although I don't think it was needed. There was at least one reference along the way to what the future would hold, but I'm no longer with my book so can't look to see where it was. The adopted grandson did seem to come out of left field and perhaps was for the purpose of making points about ebola and the potential post apocalyptic issue of how to deal with those dependent on manufactured drugs.
I enjoyed this part more than most of the book. I still wouldn't hold it up as any kind of favourite, but once the devices and fantasy and everything else was out of the way, and it was just Holly's story, at the end, it seemed to relax more and be itself.The future seemed relatively believable, although I wish he'd spelled out in an expository way less of what had led to the pass.
Mitchell always has to break rules so in the final chapter he does what no reader wants - introduces an almost endless stream of brand new characters! This was very much a long winded epilogue and the dystopia a kind of prelude to what happens at the end of Cloud Atlas. I enjoyed it though and despite all my reservations about this novel I was sorry to say goodbye to it.
Julie wrote: "Mitchell is an amazing writer and storyteller, and most characters who were introduced did indeed return to reward the reader's attention with their integral importance later. But the boy child"I saw this novel as essentially a story about Holly and her men. I always thought of marinus as a male perhaps because of the ancient mariner and to me the boy child was her final bond with the male and a completing of the circle as he called jacko to mind.
Peter, I recently read both Station 11 and the Dog Stars and the dystopian scenario was pretty much identical in both those novels, as was the case with the Road too. I think you have to allow for poetical license to some extent because stuff like working phones or internet and available oil simply wouldn't allow these created worlds to function as they need to in these novels. And was Aoife really a major character? I never felt that. And pretty much every character in this novel disappeared off-screen so this was very much part of the novel's template. He was, at least, consistent.
I wondered whether the Chinese economic involvement in Ireland in this part alluded to the Dutch role in Dejima, Japan in "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet".
There's a question whether the last chapter simply foreshadows another part of the uber-novel. It might be unsatisfactory as an ending of this particular novel, but when the entire mosaic is laid out, it will be a continuum. It might be like splitting one Tolkien novel into two films, and not releasing them simultaneously. Or Dickens writing novels in instalments.
Yeah, i saw that too. The cordon was like the Dutch india concession in Dejima. He riffs his own novels loads more than any other writer.
What was clear in this part was that Mitchell wanted to create a genuine community spirit – thus, the endless procession of new characters. Almost a kibbutz spirit except created through necessity rather than social idealism. So, though on the one hand, he was painting a bleak picture of life without modern technology and the resources we rely on, he was also perhaps offering a criticism of how these props have isolated us from one another and even dehumanised us. As Pete said Mitchell’s vision of the future might appear at face value a bleak one but I think there’s also a powerful subtext of optimism about the human spirit and this was most poignantly personified by Holly herself. Holly grows in the novel. She becomes an admirable fully evolved human being capable of transfiguring gestures of love, nurture, empathy and sacrifice. You could say Mitchell gives us a narrative of history through the experiences of one ordinary individual woman’s life – an achievement Virginia Woolf once said was completely missing from our understanding of the nature of history.
Violet, I see a lot of different ideas in your comments @13, to which I had some immediate responses. First, I'm not sure what the connection is between the creation of a "genuine community spirit" and the "endless procession of new characters." Second, I agree about the subtext of optimism that Holly exhibits and about Holly's maturation into an admirable human being. Third, assuming your comment about "Mitchell giv[ing] us a narrative of history [1984-2037?] through the experiences of one ordinary woman's life" applies to the book as a whole, I see that, although I'd say that was better done recently by Rabih Alameddine in An Unnecessary Woman and Alice McDermott in Someone.
Linda, I was baffled by why Mitchell was giving us so much information about so many new and apparently irrelevant characters until i realised they were there to give body to a sense of community in the village. There's no other real need for most of them. I haven't read either of the books you mention ( both look very interesting) and I don't doubt other writers have done a better job of interpreting (a section of) history through the lifespan of a single woman. Just thought it was an observation worthy of debate.
Violet wrote: "Pete, I recently read both Station 11 and the Dog Stars and the dystopian scenario was pretty much identical in both those novels, as was the case with the Road too. I think you have to allow for p..."The things that bother me above the idea of society breaking down into a dystopian war of all-against-all (or town vs town) when a disaster occurs are: one, it's a cliche (particularly on TV and movies), and I think a lazy one; two, it's unrealistic -- people tend to act a lot more altruistic in real disasters; and three, it trains us to expect the worst from our fellow humans, which has real-world negative consequences in actual disasters.
And by the way, I go by Peter, not "Pete".
Peter, yeah, it's interesting that dystopian novels generally cast the human race as predominantly malevolent and selfishly rapacious though when one reads accounts of, for example, England during the Blitz, the exact opposite is true. However I did see a fair share of altruism and what Violet called community spirit in Mitchell's depiction, more so than in The Road for example.
The problem I had with this chapter was the way that Ireland and Europe seems to been balkanized so quickly (a process that continues in this section). Societies don't tend to break up like that unless there are really severe pre-existing tension.
Apologies Peter for name slip. I've got a good friend called Pete and it's kind of automatic for me to drop the r when I see the name Peter.
Violet wrote: "Apologies Peter for name slip. I've got a good friend called Pete and it's kind of automatic for me to drop the r when I see the name Peter."No problem!
Mod
For Peter and Ben's point about people pulling together, I don't think that's always the case. People tend to pull to together and help their own, such as the example of England during the blitz, but they also tend to protect themselves against 'outsiders'. It was only two days after the flooding when people in the neighboring town used guns to prevent evacuees from New Orleans crossing into their town.
As I said above: " Societies don't tend to break up like that unless there are really severe pre-existing tensions." New Orleans has a lot of pre-existing tensions (mostly along racial and class lines). I don't think Ireland is in a similar situation (except for the North, which could easily blow to pieces in a crisis).
Speaking of which, were the Protestants Horologists or Anchorites?
Mod
Right, I didn't disagree with that. My disagreement was with the assertion that people pull together in disasters, which is true with limitations. Although, eventually, when things got bad enough and with enough time, even close knit villages would start seeing each other as rivals as one's tribe grew more insular. Mitchell did present us with some preexisting schisms between the Stability government and the Chinese Zone, but I agree he didn't allow nearly enough time for that level of breakdown to have occurred.
Mod
It's only 26 years since the Soviet Union was in Afghanistan.
Mod
A poster child for those pre-existing tensions.
But for half that time the pre-existing tensions have been with the US. Some places are just tense with everybody ;)
Mod
Having said that, I still wanted to keep reading and still felt myself growing nervous any time Holly and her grandchildren seemed to be in danger. I grew incredibly excited when Marinus showed up to rescue Lorelai and Rafiq. This really had me torn - so many questions left unanswered, a strong feeling of "what does this have to do with what we've read the last several hundred pages?", all mixed in with a sense of "yay! A hero is here!"
Perhaps these types of disaster stories show up over and over because there is something compelling about them, or about how they make us think and feel. Even if people don't necessarily act this way when disaster strikes, our thoughts seem to head in the direction of assuming the worst. In a way, it feels dangerously exciting to embrace those dark thoughts and see how someone else would (or wouldn't) get their characters out of the situation.
There was an almost ambling pace to this final section - no excitement whatsoever. And then all of a sudden pressing danger and, like you said, the excitement of Marinus showing up. From being a bit bored i quickly passed to not wanting it to end.
21st Century Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
An Unnecessary Woman (other topics)Someone (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Rabih Alameddine (other topics)Alice McDermott (other topics)
