The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

What a journey!

My first David Mitchell has left me glowing, gloating & groaning.

Glowing - in the delight of having found a 'new-to-me' author - I now have a whole back list of books to look forward to.
Glowing - from delight in finding such an absorbing, magical story that swept me across generations and times and worlds.

Gloating - that I was reading this year's Booker winner (until the shortlist was announced & he was missing from it!)

Groaning - that now I've finished the book, I miss it terribly. I miss Holly. I miss being in Mitchell's world.
Groaning - about the Crispin chapter - what purpose? why?
It didn't seem to add anything new to the Script, except for a little romantic angle and a trip to Australia.

The Bone Clocks is about purpose, relationships, good vs evil, freewill, doubt, time & timelessness, memory & the environment. All told with a hearty paranormal, science fiction twist.

The Bone Clocks also helped me to finally understand the purpose of twitter!
Sharing my favourite quotes with others reading the book at the same time added to my sense of journey & immersion in the story.

The Australian edition has an extra few pages of  "In conversation with David Mitchell" that talks about the Australian settings in the book. He describes Rottnest Island as

"an extraordinary location...that deep, burnished, glassy blue of the Indian Ocean, so unlike the ginger-beer-coloured English Channel of my childhood; the brain-broiling, skin-frying sun, drier and more dangerous than in Japan; and when a quokka lolloped across the road, I nearly fell off my rented bike."

Mitchell also talks about meeting Australian award-winning writer, Kim Scott who is a Noongar Elder and his time back-packing around Australia. Timelessness comes naturally to the Australian environment,

"The quality of light at dawn, and the alien (to my ears) birdsong and, how, in Europe, you have to go a long way and look selectively to find a view where nothing tells you what century you're in. In many regions of Australia, by contrast..., you can easily find a view containing no clues whatsoever about any century."

I loved this book from start to finish - even the slightly flawed sections. Holly was a character I cared for deeply. Her journey became my journey.

But now that I've finished it...what next? What should my next book journey be? Perhaps I will leave my 'what next' in Mitchell's very capable hands...because I've always loved a little bit of ambiguity!

"For one voyage to begin, another voyage must come to an end, 

sort of."