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The Bone Clocks - Full Book (February 2015)
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Violet
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Feb 08, 2015 12:30PM
What did you make of the novel as a whole? This is the thread to discuss any and all aspects of the Bone Clocks in its entirety (spoilers allowed and encouraged so beware if you haven't yet finished).
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For me, the novel was the story of Holly Sykes' life, told in a very different way. Holly's life was told not as a continuous story but by set pieces at different ages where we were told a significant things that had happened in the intervening time through flashbacks of one sort of another. That worked for me. But then we have the magical, fantastical, mystery tour going on as well. I liked how it was introduced in the first four parts a lot.
Now Part 5 was a bit over the top with the fantasy. It was so overt compared to the how it had been woven into the story until then. I loved learning Marinus's story and, through him, that of Esther and the war between the two fantasy groups. What I did not particularly like was the actual blow-by-blow account of the second mission. Although I did like the twist at the end with Hugo redeeming himself a bit.
The book could have ended with part 5, leaving the reader to imagine what happened to Holly, Hugo and Marinus. I would have been fine with that. But, from the point of view of the story of Holly, it was fitting that she should be the one to bring her story to an end.
I enjoyed the book. I liked it better than Cloud Atlas, but not as much as Ghostwritten.
Yeah, I definitely liked it better than Cloud Atlas. I also agree with Linda on how this was just the story of Holly's life told in a different type of way... Kind of from the other side, or sideways! I understand why the last chapter was included, but like someone said in another thread, it became a bit heavy handed and far-fetched. It was good to know Marinus endured. I wonder how many horologists were left in the world? It seems like it would be good to be able to live life after life and have your memories but in fact it would be very lonely and sad having to watch people die over and over again.I kind of need to let this one settle for a bit before I rate it. There were some really good parts, there were some hokey parts. I applaud Mitchell for writing the type of book that appeals to him regardless of whether or not WE"RE going to appreciate it. Art doesn't follow a recipe. So kudos to Mitchell. But at the same time, like someone else here said, there seems to be some kind of emotional distance within this story that kept me at arms length... I never felt like I cared too much about anybody except maybe Marinus.
Holly and Ed differ on liking and disliking travel. Holly and Hugo differ on liking and disliking wealth. Holly and Crispin differ on liking and disliking fame. And the differing is part of their connections.With each character I've been moved from disliking to liking, or at least understanding.
He's crafted a double exposure experience.
And now I note that Horologists and Anchorites differ with/connect through the liking and disliking of immortality.There's some serious Zen going on here, folks. I can't decide whether to write some Haiku or hit the zafu.
I do think it was Holly's story, and the structure as a way of telling that is in theory a great device... I just wish that the actual writing had drawn me in more and made me believe. It mostly seemed at a level removed from the real, the fully drawn and solid; like a cartoon. An -- overall -- enjoyable one, but one nonetheless.
The connected novella structure didn't work as well here as it did in Cloud Atlas. In CA the link "everything is connected" worked because it was a backdrop to each story, yet each story was complete on its own. BC has a story, although it's buried in a good deal of exposition, and it's frustrating to have to dig that out when it's needed and let it go when it's not. I liked Holly and I loved the convention of different viewpoints of the same person, but upon completion I didn't find her all that memorable.
I felt like the story lacked a reconnection of Holly and Hugo. In the battle, we have no indication of what she thought when she saw him again, and he has no dialogue or reference from Marinus to let us know what he thinks either. In the final chapter, when she mentions to Holly that Hugo still lived, we don't even get a response.
I liked the ideas of the Anchorites and the Horologists and on a paragraph level I enjoyed reading a lot of the book. But there was so much that was disjointed or extraneous that I didn't find the whole greater than the sum of is parts.
A couple days ago, Sandy, you hooked me into appreciating the baroque complexity of this work.Just saying. Keep it coming. Not a clue what I might do with it but so what?
Thanks, Lacewing. I'm not sure how I did that, though. Reading some of your comments and from some of the other people in this group, I sometimes feel like I missed a lot subtle things, as if I hadn't given enough attention. A second reading might help, but I doubt I'll go to the trouble anytime soon.
The Wordsworth discussion raised some interesting issues.Here is a link to the wiki article on Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Gray
"Lucy Gray, like the Lucy of the Lucy poems and Ruth of Wordsworth's "Ruth" are, according to H. W. Garrod, part of "an order of beings who have lapsed out of nature – the nature of woods and hills – into human connections hardly strong enough to hold them.
"Perpetually they threaten to fall back into a kind of things or a kind of spirits.""
Do you think this relates to the premise of "The Bone Clocks"?
Are the immortals spirits that linger between humans and nature, a third part of a triangle?
Would anybody like to discuss the divine wars and the distinction that's emerged between the macro (immortal) and micro (human) wars?Is Mitchell suggesting that we humans are used by deities and religions as their foot soldiers?
Do the divine/immortals use us as Wordsworth's "human connections"?
Do the divine enter and re-enter us at will? Partly to get their job done, but partly for their own protection (a bit like a horcrux?).
I am an atheist, and I suspect Mitchell is as well, so I find it interesting that the transmigration of souls and deities takes such a prominent role in his fiction.
Also I've always been fascinated as to why some religions "personalise" or "humanise" the deities, while for others it's totally taboo. I could probably relate more to the divine as non-personal and simply some kind of life force that animates the inanimate.
But Mitchell seems to be interested in the divine "occupying" the human, and souls transmigrating not just vertically from generation to generation, but horizontally across the same generation from person to person?
An extension of the divinity issue is the plethora of pop culture references in the novel. I see it as a dump bag of allusions. Not all of them are fully developed. Either they are red herrings, or it's possible that they might be planted there on the basis that they will be further developed in future parts of his uber-novel.However, just as we have been using the language of tropes in other threads, I wonder whether Mitchell is exploring memes.
And the immortals might just be another meme and actually work like memes attaching to and detaching from our consciousnesses, then moving on to other generations.
“‘Sleep tight, Gran, don’t let the bedbugs bite,’” Holly’s granddaughter Lorelei says near the end of the novel.
Holly responds, “Dad used to say that to me, I used to say it to Aoife, Aoife passed it on to Lorelei, and now Lorelei says it back to me.”
“We live on, as long as there are people to live on in.”
Just like a meme?
Maybe not "just like a meme" but "much like a meme." I can see the story qualities in the cause-and-effect logic of science. I don't at all think Mitchell takes reincarnation's stories as more than parables. But he certainly doesn't dismiss that kind of thinking.
At this point I can't separate what I bring to this book and what's on the page. (Nor am I overly concerned to do so.) And with that caveat in mind: we are evolving, embodied, story-making creatures. We make of IT what we will within a confinement we can only wishfully imagine ourselves out of -- or more meaningfully into. Look to the roots but don't kill the plant; maybe do some pruning and grafting and transplanting.
ADDING: Evolution is currently civilization's grand narrative.
I found this the hardest of all his novels to assess. On the one hand I repeatedly felt it was an exuberant failure as a novel but on the other I was really sorry to say goodbye to it when I finished. I think I'm going to wait until tomorrow before saying anything more.
I’ve finished now – enjoyed the read but found some sections held back the storyline , especially Ed’s experiences in Iraq and Crispin Hershey’s revenge on the critic. There were times when I wished he would just get on with it. But the writing was quality stuff with cleverness and as many references as you cared to catch hold of.I liked the big parallel that was going on through Holly. She seems to be a different character in each section – almost a series of characters related only by history and memory. Because of the book’s structure, her character doesn’t develop but jumps from one stage to another through the book. So she’s a rebelling teenager, an in-control bar manager, a mother with an absentee husband, a successful globe-trotting author, a hapless victim caught up in a fantasy war and a grandmother/ smallholder at the edge of a crumbling civilisation.
So her life parallels the jumps of the Horologists from one body to another. I can look back on my life and see that at another time I was a different person entirely. So are Horologists an extrapolation of that view of a life. This may have been the starting thought at the conception of the book.
I wrote some of this on another thread but I think it belongs here: What was clear at the end of the novel 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. The horologists too were a community. So I think Mitchell was ultimately coming out in favour of community as a social model (attacked in the novel by, in turns, economic, ideological and religious zealotry). 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. As Jim and sandra said, 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.
I also agree with sandy that the seams here between the two worlds were more obtrusive than in Cloud Atlas. The fantasy never quite seemed to me an organic part of the novel. More like skin grafts often though, conversely, the fantasy did add vitality to the romping exuberance of the novel.
I very much enjoyed this book, but it seems that many of the things that various people have noted that Mitchell might have been doing have been done better elsewhere in a novel with a narrower focus. Which of course brings us back to his acknowledged preference of writing novellas and how he then links them together in some fashion and calls it a novel. For me the link in this book - Holly Sykes - works better than the links in Cloud Atlas. And, if I keep Holly front of mind, I have to say that the whole of this book is better that the individual parts because I really liked the story of Holly's life, which, as Jim notes, we learn in big jumps with Holly a "different" person in each. And, as Jim also suggests, it is likely that each of us is/will appear to be a different person at different times in our life -- teenager, college student, mid-career, retirement, etc -- as we are shaped by what we experience.
I have pondered why Mitchell would chose to use a fantasy world as a very overt subtext to Holly's maturation but reached not conclusion. In addition to the fantasy theme, the comments on these threads (and the articles that have been pointed to) point to many other possible themes/ideas that could be examined independently of Holly's life, e.g., the meaning of the cultureal references, the very few references to TV, the "digs" at the publishing industry and author types, and on and on. Perhaps this vast array of ideas that have been noted is what sets this novel apart.....
Great post, Linda. Something I wonder is might the novel have been better without the fantasy bloodbaths. I thought the two worst scenes in the novel were the fights. Both seemed to trivialise the novel, shrink it in stature. Maybe if he had found a more subtle way of establishing the animosity between the horologists and ancorites?
A tremendously enjoyable romp but falling short of great literature. That's my take.
Yes an enjoyable read. I like what Jim says about the book being about 1 soul throughout a lifetime and the growth and changes that 1 soul goes through then extrapolate that thought through the horologist's soul that grows and changes through many many lifetimes. And perhaps after a certain point the horologist's soul matures and doesn't change all that much anymore.
Mod
Yes, I like this a lot as a summery of the way Holly's story and the horologist's relate to each other. Where would you put the Anchorites in? Are they essentially stunting the growth of their souls in the way they prolong the life of their bodies?
And the comment that the horologist's souls might stop maturing is interesting. I found myself constantly questioning whether the horologists were really believable as humans that had lived for hundreds of years and experienced so many different lives. People gain wisdom as they age, but is it reasonable to assume that the curve levels out at some point? That the wisdom of a 90 year old wouldn't be that much more behind the wisdom of a 900 year old?
Haha perhaps we're thinking too much! The reason I question if the horologists were growing much as people after a certain point is because they ceased to have relationships (for the most part) with other regular humans. They could not have children although I suppose they could adopt. And you're right. Even though the horologist's are experiencing many lifetimes, they are only experiencing a certain amount of years per life, so how much more wisdom is there after a point? After living a life, aging, failing physically, having to experience death? It's hard to think about because we are so finite! It seems like their world became so small because of the way they lived-meeting up with the same few people over and over again through the many different lifetimes. It would get so lonely and sad!I don't think the anchorites can grow much because they are essentially so self-centered. I think soul growth happens as we experience life, as we suffer and learn, age step by step experiencing all the milestone things that make up a life like childhood and learning, falling in love, marriage, careers, child rearing, gaining knowlege... Which for the anchorites, if you're constantly decanting some poor soul, how much do you care about the rest of it? Plus if you are not aging physically, it would be pretty hard to hook up with a significant other for any length of time!
Mod
There's probably a few fantasy writers out there kicking themselves for not inventing the Horologists and Anchorites. One could spend a lifetime just writing their tales. I suspect at some point it would get to be a total drag, waking up in yet another (playing the odds) parasite ridden, starving peasant child and having to start all over again.
Yeah, the Anchorites were just drug addicts doing the same thing over and over again to get their fix. And being a horologist sounds cool for a minute but upon closer inspection would be horrible and pointless, really. Trapped in an endless loop and it makes our regular lives seem like maybe not so terrible after all, not such a gyp being a mere mortal!
Whitney and Sandra, I see you both three starred it. I'm torn between 3 and 4 (its three and a half for me). Did anyone five star it or one/two star it?
Loved this description of Mitchell's prose from Ian's review (he five starred it) "Mitchell's prose isn't particularly flowery or pretentious or purple. Like the character Crispin Hershey, he isn’t "a fan of flowery prose."
It’s neither overwrought nor underwrought. If anything, it's deliciously wrought-ironical. It’s relaxed, casual, conversational, fluid, breezy, exuberant, charming, almost flirtatious. The sort of prose you'd hope to meet at a party, in fact, the very reason we used to go to parties.
Flirtatious especially is brilliant to describe his writing.
And this is a great quote from james Wood on the problematic fusing of fantasy with a realist narrative in this novel - "What occurs in the novel between people has meaning only in relation to what occurs in the novel between Anchorites and Horologists. A struggle, a war, is being played out, between forces of good and forces of evil, although how humans behave with one another appears to have little impact on that otherworldly battle. Mitchell has written a theological novel of sorts, and just as certain kinds of theology threaten to rob human life of intrinsic significance—since theology exists to convert worldly meaning into transcendent meaning—so Mitchell’s peculiar cosmology turns his characters into time-travelling groundlings, Horology’s dwarves."
Violet wrote: "And this is a great quote from james Wood on the problematic fusing of fantasy with a realist narrative in this novel - "What occurs in the novel between people has meaning only in relation to w..."
As I suggested above, you can find whatever theme you want to in this novel. I'll pass on this one!
LOL. It's been a really enjoyable discussion for that reason (and many others).
Well, anyway. Some factions of the literati are enmeshed in the war of Good Lit and Evil Lit. So there, James Wood. Take that.
Mod
I'l also pass on that one. It seems obvious to me that Mitchell highly values the interactions between regular people. So what if there's a 'otherworldly' battle, it really doesn't affect that many people when you get down to it. And you could just as readily claim that people are bacteria's dwarves.
Mod
Thanks Whitney. I've really enjoyed it.
Me too, everyone. I've gone from not wanting a second reading to looking forward to a third. That's my favorite thing to do with a book.
Linda wrote: "I very much enjoyed this book, but it seems that many of the things that various people have noted that Mitchell might have been doing have been done better elsewhere in a novel with a narrower foc..."But Linda, didn't you feel that Holly, who was the best thing in this highly enjoyable book, became less vivid in each incarnation until she's reduced almost to a stock character?
This is the Mitchell book I have most enjoyed, with all its faults, but still it is highly frustrating. The fantasy theme has been done by other genre writers (eg plot reminiscent of Dan Simmons' early SF/horror classic "Carrion Comfort") but it's what Mitchell does with it that matters. He wants to write about politics and literature as well as giving us the story which is fine (though the early interjection of the bellringers discussing Thatcher, for example, is jarring in this narrative. There didn't seem any purpose to the grown-up Ed Brubeck apart from to smuggle in some politics and a frankly thin war adventure (the "sacrifice" of his Arab helpers, used to rationalize his war obsession, is a melodramatic low point cliche). Crispin is more interesting since Mitchell has more original things to say about literature and his Martin Amis protagonist is very funny. Nevertheless the acid comments on writers writing about writers are no less valid just because Mitchell makes the criticism so well himself.
The writing is so rich (e.g. I loved the way he used present perfect and past perfect grammatical terms to illustrate differing memory states with a neuroscientific precision). but I wanted that skill to be used to tell me how the characters I'm interested in developed as people, rather than getting arbitrary snapshots of them. It's as if the writer fears he'll be found out of date if he allows himself to believe too much in them.
Having been called a Mitchell knocker (in a good humoured way) in this thread, I have to agree with those who judge this an enjoyable read without being great - three stars - but that's progress from my perspective. The frustration continues, because this is a writer who has the gifts to be up with the best (maybe the portrait of Hershey's lifestyle explains why he currently isn't).
My first book read in this group - isn't it great to see everyone's comments and ideas? - especially how that can change as the reading progresses.
Sandra wrote: "Haha perhaps we're thinking too much! The reason I question if the horologists were growing much as people after a certain point is because they ceased to have relationships (for the most part) wit..."I guess wisdom for a near immortal would look very different to human wisdom, since so much of our thought is conditioned by the terrifying knowledge that our existence and all our projects will come to an end in a relatively short time. You would imagine that this species might put more time into satisfying accomplishments (like Marinus' playing the piano and painting) and probably discovering more about the physical world. These particular horologists seem to be ok with ecological meltdown, wars and pestilence continuing; but they get upset about rival immortals stealing a few souls every now and then - just adrenaline junkies who like to fight wars I suppose.
Given our short life spans, you'd hope that wisdom would counsel vivacity!
Martin, I enjoyed your overview with its warring measures of praise and frustration. Great observation about the neuroscientific precision of command in using tenses to convey the experiencing of time. One thing your comments made me think of is how Mitchell's principal writing tool seems to be vitality. Perhaps more than any other writer i know he lets himself be carried along (away?) by his sheer love of storytelling. It's like its always galloping him ahead of the usual dictates of novel writing. I kind of wonder if his penchant for the novella as a form isn’t simply the solution he found to give full expression to his prodigious vitality. Anyone who’s ever tried to write a novel will know how hard it is to commit to one idea, one character and discipline oneself to see the relationship through. Mitchell’s like a charming and mischievous cad of a writer whose imaginative vitality makes it hard for him to commit to long term relationships. He has so much creative energy his impulse is to spread it far and wide. He wants to play the field.
Violet wrote: "Martin, I enjoyed your overview with its warring measures of praise and frustration. Great observation about the neuroscientific precision of command in using tenses to convey the experiencing of t..."Violet, you have expressed my own impression perfectly. The risk is that, covering such a lot of ground, the writer skates over the surface so cleanly that the only effect left behind is pastiche (in particular, it's fine to borrow from and subvert genres, but somehow they need to be integrated with the whole).
The invention does flow in Mitchell's writing - he also had that literary term "scansion" applying to a telepathic analysis of a person, but many ideas are not followed through. I don't know whether he's more scared of being bored or boring.
Finishing this book feels like tasting the last spoonful of an over elaborate and too rich dessert. We should read "Nora Webster" by Colm Toibin next, as a complete contrast to the shiny post-modernish approach!
Violet@40 and Martin@41: I love meeting a writer half-way -- via novels, via online conversation -- and because it means a lot to me . . . Please. "hard for him to commit" and "scared of being bored or boring" are not what any of us would say to each other.
Don't let us pretend that authors are not in the room with us.
I'd say that to him Lacewing, with my best charming smile. It's meant playfully. I think he'd rather have enjoyed our discussion of his book on the whole which I reckon has been essentially very favourable though not, of course, without misgivings.
Lacewing wrote: "Violet@40 and Martin@41: I love meeting a writer half-way -- via novels, via online conversation -- and because it means a lot to me . . . Please. "hard for him to commit" and "scared of being bo..."
I agree. I think we have to recognise that Mitchell is a craftsman and that all stylistic aspects of his work are thoroughly thought out and deliberate. The question for me is never whether he lapsed into poor style by way of inattention or carelessness, but whether his choice worked. Sometimes it mightn't/ doesn't.
Are you going to be reading Euphoria with us next month, Lacewing? Hope so as I've loved your input.
Completely agree with what you say, Ian. I didn’t mean my comment in a derogatory way. Just that every writer will be conditioned by the nature of his/her imagination. Were one to use a dog simile I’d say Mitchell has more of a greyhound of an imagination than a bloodhound.
That's understood, though I think he could out-charm all of us!
I'm not sure I agree that we should always say of craftsmen that all stylistic elements of their work must be intentional and deliberate, myself. Strange analogy, but take David Bowie. In my eyes, the single most amazing visionary working in music in the latter part of last century and in first part of this. Outstanding craftsman. But some of his eighties output was poor in ways he's admitted he didn't intend. Artists, like anyone else, have good days and bad days, or years, or decades. They're not always their own best critics, or editors. They don't always see their own work clearly. Let's be clear, I think it's very easy to be too critical about the artist, and in particular his or her intentions or thought process. I've objected vehemently to people when they call people that they don't get 'pretentious' and imply that the emperor has no clothes, I'd just pulling the wool over our eyes. But at the same time, I think it's too far the other way to say that if it doesn't work, they intended it that way. Sometimes they try things, and fall. Sometimes they're not at the height of their powers.
Ultimately, I believe the thing that's been said around here before... No two people read the same book. What we can comment on with impunity is whether it worked for us, in or reading, in its enmeshing with our filters. The further we get from that, unless we have evidence from the horse's mouth, the more we're just speculating.
Mod
There were a few pieces that felt unresolved to me, or places where I wish things had been done differently.
First, I didn't understand the point of Crispin's assassin. Did I miss something? Was it simply to show how the story of the Radio People affected readers? Or was there a connection between the assassin's poems, Crispin's death, and other parts of the story? The only thing I noticed was that Holly was no longer sick in the next section but there wasn't any clear connection I could see between Crispin's death and Holly's remission.
Second, why was there not more Hugo? I was happy he showed up again in Marinus' section, and that there was still some good left in him, but it felt incomplete.
Finally, I would've liked to have seen more anchorite action. I tend to like stories from the "bad guy" or guilty party's point of view, which is probably one of the reasons I liked Hugo's section so much. I would've liked to have read more about how they operated, from their perspective, which probably would have made the battle sections more exciting.
