Kate Saunders

Secret Lives

The Bone Clocks

By

Sceptre 595pp £20 order from our bookshop

Like David Mitchell’s Booker-shortlisted Cloud Atlas from 2004, his latest novel, The Bone Clocks, is a terrific feat of literary engineering. The first section of the book is the least successful. It’s 1984 and fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes, who lives in a pub in Gravesend, runs away after a row with her mother. Holly is an ordinary teenager, but there is something very odd lurking in her background. As a little girl she heard voices in her head, and an icy blonde woman appeared at the end of her bed; she gave her name as ‘Miss Constantin’. Eventually, a mysterious Dr Marinus banished the voices inside Holly, apparently with a few waves of the hand.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The breadth of Clarke’s knowledge and experience, coupled to a conspicuous absence of pomposity, makes for easy an… ,
    • In this month's Silenced Voices, Lucy Popescu shines a light on Myanmar's persecution of writers and journalists, p… ,
    • Lecture on war and peace in 19th-century Europe by Professor Sir Richard Evans, Thurs 25 Oct, 6.30pm Europe House… ,
    • 'Why, throughout the world, are so many people fascinated by the fiction and reality of espionage? And why of all p… ,
    • . here on books, Muriel Spark and life's tangled dance ,
    • RT : There aren't enough aggressive subtitles these days: ,
    • Churchill's on the cover of the October edition of the magazine. Piers Brendon reviews two new books about the Brit… ,
    Follow Us