Weird & Wonderful- The Bone Clocks

For the September meeting of City Lit's Weird & Wonderful club, we discussed "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell.

Like some of Mitchell's other works, "The Bone Clocks" mixes genres a bit. It orbits around the character of Holly Sykes over basically her whole life, with long jumps to other characters' viewpoints. Holly is kind of mildly caught up in a war between two different kinds of immortals; the novel's latter chapters also bring us to a climate-change-induced semi-apocalypse.

We generally liked it, but this novel is mixed in several senses of the word. Possible spoilers, and definite editorializing, below:

Chicago Nerds: Cloud Atlas

For the last book discussion of the Chicago Nerd Social Club, we dove into (ascended? attempted to map?) David Mitchell's 2004 novel, "Cloud Atlas".

The novel is actually a carefully arranged mix of six novelletes, with a mirrored structure. More on that below. Each story is a different genre, time period, and style, with a host of recurring imagery and themes.

Our reception of the book was generally positive, modulo some caveats about its "literariness". We struggled with the question of what it's really "about"--always a vexatious question, but the fact that these six stories are presented as a single novel, rather than as a collection, makes one long for a cohesive theme or two. And, follow-up question: is this book optimistic or depressing vis-a-vis the human condition?

Some structural analysis, synopsis, and likely spoilers below: