Barbara 's Reviews > The Bone Clocks

I read “Cloud Atlas” for book club and struggled to get through it. It was not a fun read for me. As a result, I hesitated getting “The Bone Clocks”. It has so much great press that I felt I should give it a chance, and if I didn’t like it, I’d abandon it. So with that said, I went into this book expecting to abandon it. I can’t say it’s the best book I’ve read, but I can say it’s a whole lot more interesting and easier to follow than “Cloud Atlas”. This isn’t a book for the average reader. It’s 600 pages long, and Mitchell doesn’t fully define made-up words or explain his idea of time dimensions until pages in the late 400’s. What kept me going were the stories of the lives he wrote the book around. The book is split into six sections in six different time frames, from five different points of view. Part one and six are written from the main protagonist, Holly’s point of view. The novel begins in 1984 and ends in 2043. The parts are like little novellas but are tied together by characters. Unlike “Cloud Atlas”, this is funny. I’m not a fan of science fiction, which this novel could fall under, yet I am a fan of this book. Mitchell’s wit helps plus the character development is extraordinary. It’s a bit out there, and you need to “loosen your grip on reality” to totally appreciate it. It’s well written and it is a page turner.