"Ugh, I'm so ambivalent about David Mitchell," is not a feeling I was aware I had until I got a few pages into The Bone Clocks. But I had that feeling to a greater or lesser extent (which I guess is to be expected when the feeling in question is ambivalence) until I finished it last night. "Too clever by far!" was a thought that kept going through my head. "One trick pony!" was another. It irked me the way Mitchell name-dropped characters and stories from his other novels*. But... but... I really liked the book. Mitchell may have one trick**, but he does it very, very well. He creates characters you really care about, even when they're despicable. The Bone Clocks' ending, I thought, was perfect! (And this is saying a lot because endings, in particular, are something that I've always found unsatisfactory in Mitchell's other novels.)
On a side note, I'm still stalling on writing about the All Souls trilogy, but this book occasionally reminded me of it: the discussions of the challenges that come with immortality, the second sight, the telepathic communication, references to Oc, and other unexpected commonalities kept coming up.
* I suspect a younger me would have actually liked this device and felt cool to be in on the secret. Has something changed about me? These insertions just felt heavy-handed and coy. (Especially the Black Swan Green one that called out the book's title!)
** If you've read Cloud Atlas, that is the trick I mean. To be fair, I've read 5 of his novels, of which I would say 3 use this trick, one sort of uses this trick, and one does not use this trick.
