David Mitchell is getting raves almost everywhere for his most recent novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. As usual, one of the best places to go to get an overview is The Complete Review (see here for its discussion and links of the reviews). One of the most interesting discussions is in The New Yorker, where James Woods provides an overview of Mitchell’s work so far (see here).
FD has only read Cloud Atlas (see here for The Complete Review on that novel) , and loved it, but was defeated when trying to read a second Mitchell novel. Cloud Atlas may be well suited to the Internet generation; the intertwined narratives change quickly enough that even those with short attention spans should be able to enjoy the ride. The new novel sounds like a harder sell in the age of minimal concentration, it’s long (480 pages in hard cover) and set in a time and place little known to most readers. Undoubtedly the good review will translate to sales, but how many readers will finish the novel?