The problem I had with The Bone Clocks may be part of its genius. I won’t spoil the ending for you-there’s a giant battle between the horologists and the anchorites, then we end up back in Holly’s body again-but in the latter chapters, my investment in the story waned somewhat. I feel like I’m already writing the blurb for that book, which is not something I’d usually volunteer to do. I’d like Mitchell to write a whole collection from her perspective. If you ask me, Holly Sykes is an excellent poet. “The wood sounds like never-ending waves, with rooks tumbling about like black socks in a dryer.”
“The English Channel’s Biro-blue the sky’s the blue of snooker chalk.” “Okay, so she’s mad as a sack of ferrets.” I see where it was, but not where it is.” Sounds interesting, right? I’m all for sci-fi (as a rule I say bring on the aliens, time travel, and interplanetary war), but Mitchell makes his first human protagonist, Holly Sykes, such fun that you just want to stay in her head as she delivers gem after perceptual gem: There’s a century-long battle going on between these two groups, which allows Mitchell to set the book in 1984, 1991, 2004, 2015, and 2025. The anchorites have to take over human bodies (only the bodies of children with psychic tendencies work, and the host soul dies when the anchorite moves in). The horologists live somewhat normal lives, but when they die they wake up 49 days later in a new body, in a new time (usually in the body of a child who has just left his or her body), and with their memories intact. The conceit he uses is that alongside humans living in human time there are horologists and anchorites.
He’s a narrative braider, but in The Bone Clocks that braid is often on the verge of unraveling. Mitchell has clearly found a form he enjoys, and it involves leapfrogging timelines. Known connections to this year’s contenders: “I am friends with Jenny Offill and Anthony Doerr.” She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. Matthea Harvey is the author of five books of poetry-most recently If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? and Of Lamb, an illustrated erasure with Amy Jean Porter-and two books for children, Cecil the Pet Glacier and The Little General and the Giant Snowflake.
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