The Bone Clocks

Semester 1, blog post 2

This blog post may contain spoilers. Reader discretion is advised. You have been warned...mwahahaha. >:D

A book I've started recently is The Bone Clocks, written by David Mitchell. The novel, set in the 1980's, is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Holly, who has run away from home. Possessed by a strong "psychic ability," she is contacted by strange voices, dubbed by her as "the radio people." Because of her strange skill, Holly has caught the attention of many groups – both friends and enemies. Her attempts to unravel the mysteries that have now taken over her life are chronicled by this novel.

I don't have much of an opinion on the book as of right now, considering I'm on, like, page two (I'm being completely serious here). So, for this post, I'm going to be talking about the author.

David Mitchell is an accomplished writer who has written a number of bestselling novels, including Ghostwritten, Number9Dream, and Cloud Atlas. When asked when he first knew he wanted to be a writer, Mitchell replied, "There was no single epiphany, but I recall a few early flashes. When I was ten I would be transported by certain books—Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy, Susan Cooper’s fantasy novels, Isaac Asimov—and burn to do to readers what had just been done to me. Sometimes that burning prompted me to start writing, though I never got more than a few pages down. A few years later I would indulge in a visual fantasy that involved imagining my name on the jacket of a book—usually Faber and Faber—and I’d feel a whoosh inside my rib cage."

If you want to learn more about Mitchell or his books, you can find his site here. You can also find a Wikipedia article on him here.

And to conclude, here's a video of David Mitchell answering fan questions...

Basically in the video you get to see which parts of the author's life are used as inspiration in his novels. Watch the video; you probably won't expect him to say some of the things he does.

You have now reached the end of my ramblings. I hope I didn't bore you to death. And now I should probably thank you appropriately for reading. So thanks, I guess.