The Bone Clocks
Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics -- and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly's life, affecting all the people Holly loves -- even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list -- all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townh
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Bone Clocks
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1984, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes runs away from a fight with her mother. The novel returns to her every decade, through Cambridge, the Iraq war, and a near-future Ireland, while a war between two immortal factions touches her life.
The Bone Clocks was written by David Mitchell and published in 2014. Mitchell is also the author of Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, and Ghostwritten. The Bone Clocks shares characters with Cloud Atlas in his connected literary universe.
No. Each David Mitchell novel stands on its own, but readers familiar with Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, and other earlier works will recognize crossover characters in The Bone Clocks.
The Bone Clocks is 656 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Bone Clocks takes most readers 10 to 14 hours to finish.
The Bone Clocks is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
The Bone Clocks is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.