I have read one chapter of David Mitchell’s new book and I’ve now put everything else down to finish it. This is a big deal for me because I have lots of things to read; lots of things to do; a limited amount of time before I go back to school in the fall and thus a finite time to indulge in ‘fun’ reading; also because I’ve never read David Mitchell before. And it’s kind of a long book.
But The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has garnered some very nice attention – you’ll spot it on the front page of the New York Times Book review this weekend, a lovely review by Dave Eggers – and David Mitchell’s work (Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, Ghostwritten) has been so highly praised in the past (“Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything” wrote the NYT book review after Cloud Atlas came out) that I feel compelled to read him.
Already (one chapter!) I’m overwhelmed by the scope of Mitchell’s imagination. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is set in 1799 in Japan – specifically a man-made island in Nagasaki harbor named Dejima – and tells the story of a young Dutch clerk (our Jacob) who plans on making his way as a bookkeeper in Dejima for a while before returning to Holland to marry his fiancee. And that’s really all I know. Read Eggers’ review to find out more. But it doesn’t even matter, does it? Nine pages in and I can tell that for the next 460 of them, I will be happily immersed in a really, really good story, set in, for all I know about Japan circa 1799, another world.
So……..even though we’re shut today (Happy 4th July), come and check it out. We are, by the way, open tomorrow.
Susie
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