The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

One of the lead characters in this 6-part novel is the middle-aged writer Crispin Hershey who gets a very bad review of his latest book, Echo Must Die, which reads, in part:

"So why is Echo Must Die such a decomposing hog? One: Hershey is so bent on avoiding cliche' that each sentence is as tortured as an American whistleblower. Two: The fantasy sub-plot clashes so violently with the book's State of the World pretensions, I cannot bear to look. Three: What surer sign is there that the creative aquifers are dry than a writer creating a writer-character?"

All of the above would apply as aptly to this book as it did to the fictional novel. The question becomes, is Mitchell recognizing his own shortcomings and making fun of himself, or is he realizing that these are criticisms others might have of his latest and making a preemptive strike?

I would add a fourth critical comment of my own: David Mitchell is a pitiable amateur when it comes to describing a wizard-type duel and should leave this type of storytelling to J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.

Other than the above annoyances, I really enjoyed this book.

Mitchell is a master of storytelling and making characters seem real, as he has proven in all his previous novels. He returns to a format here similar to that in Cloud Atlas, with multiple stories concerning seemingly diverse characters who, as it turns out, are all connected. The thread holding them all together is the character Holly who appears in each story, first as a 15-year-old runaway and last as a 70+ grandmother. Also running throughout is the account of a war between two groups of semi-immortals, with one faction being of the soul-devouring kind much similar to those created by Stephen King in his novel Dr. Sleep.

When Mitchell is writing about the normal humans (the "bone clocks"), he meets and often exceeds reader expectations, delivering engrossing stories about four diverse characters: the aforementioned Holly; a conflicted war reporter who is torn between fatherhood and an addiction to the dangers of war; an amoral Cambridge student who charms, cheats, and steals his way to wealth and status; and the middle-aged writer on a downward slide who plots revenge against the critic whom he blames for his decline in popularity.

I just wish Mitchell had come up with a better framing device, because his war between the two supernatural groups is not at all believable and is sometimes downright silly.

I am often much more critical of a favored writer who I believe has failed to live up to previous accomplishments than I would be of a writer of whom I have no expectations. That is the case here. Mitchell is always rewarding, even when he is not at his best.