Bandit

Night Map

Mural Beginnings

Brunch

Mannequin

Critical Mass

Skew

Foggy Morning

Protest

Old TV

A2 Cafe

Project Runway

Ever After

<-- Office

Book Review: David Mitchell: "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet"

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Having read "Ghostwritten" and "Cloud Atlas" I was expecting some jumps through time while reading this book, which never occurred. Being anchored to the lip of 19th century Japan was fantastic! The beginning was a loud and unfamiliar party of accents, dialects, terminologies, people meandering in and out, that sets the scene for the bulk of the book. Each page, each line, demands to be taken piece by piece, patiently and with full attention. Mitchell has written a trustworthy narration that recounts a few years on a Dutch trading post on an island off of Nagasaki with such sensation that I found myself wincing at times. This novel has grit, adventure, wit, and the sparks of clashing cultures. He incorporated near poetic tools to convey the bilocation most of his characters were experiencing with beautiful and frequently amusing prose. Thank you, David Mitchell, for a terrific and careful novel.



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