"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell *****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Originally published in 2014
• English author
• 1984
• Miner's strike...socialist movement
• Holly Sykes.....Ed Brubeck
• Daymares...Miss Constantin
• Dr Marinus/Horologists  v.  Pfenniger/Anchorites
• Rhymes
• Esther Little, 
• "asylum"..  hide in a body
• Vocabulary:
• coracle:  a small, round, or very broad boat made of wickerwork or interwoven laths covered with a waterproof layer of animal skin, canvas, tar covered or oiled cloth, or the like: used in Wales, Ireland, and parts of western England.
• Cathar: (in medieval Europe) a member of any of several rigorously ascetic Christian sects maintaining a dualistic theology.
• psychosoteric:  created by author
• epiphyte:  a plant that grows above the ground supported non-parasitically by another plant or object, deriving its nutrients from rain, air, dust....from air
• chatoyant:   reflecting a single streak of light when cut in a cabochon.
• Quotes:
• p34..."What if...what if Heaven is real, but only in moments?  Like a glass of water on a hot day when your dying of thirst, r when someone's nice to you for no reason, or...".
• p.41...."Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices."
• p.52..."Life's a matter of Who Dares Wins."
• p.58..."....his voice is like the wind swerving through a weird day."....referring to Bob Dylan
• p.100..."Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed.  Power is a visitor to,, not a possession of, those it empowers.  The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long term side effects.  Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul.........The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields an bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral."....Immaculee Constantin
• p.126..."You, Hugo.....are a sordid, low-budget French film.  The sort you'd stumble across on TV at night.  You know you'll regret it in the morning but you keep watching anyway."....LOL...Holly to Hugo Lamb
• p.135..."...for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good."
• p.150..."Love is the anesthetic applied by Nature to extract babies."
• p.151..."Love wants love in return, and I right, Olly?  Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users.  But when the side-effects kick in --jealousy, the rages, grief, I think count me out.  Elizabethans equated romantic love with insanity.  Buddhists view it as a brat throwing a tantrum at the picnic of the calm mind."
• p.157..."here's the truth:  who is spared love is spared grief
• p.161..."Racial differences I'be always found to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, but class difference is sexuality's Berlin Wall."....Hugo
• p.263..."A journalist marries the news, Seymour.  She's capricious, cruel and jealous.  She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she'll stay a day or two, then jet off.  You, your safety, your family are nothing."...Ed Brubeck
• p.325..."I riff on notions of the soul as a karmic report card; as a spiritual memory-stick in search of a corporeal hard-drive; and as a placebo we generate to cure our dread of mortality."
• p.387..."Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose.".....LOL
• p.427..."One cannot cross the same river twice."...i like that
• p.565..."There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.  I've met it before."
• p.565..."...if you could reason with religious people, there wouldn't be any religiou people."
• p.597..."Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."
• Notes:
• References to Orwell's "Animal Farm"
• Horologists/Atemporals refer to the body as "bone clocks", when the body dies they go to "the dusk" for 49 days then "awake" in a child's body (p.449)
• Anchorites move into another's body and do not physically age, "a girl who lived like a hermit in a cell, but in the wall of a church.  a living human sacrifice, in a way."(p.436), they fuel their atemporality on engifted souls
• The two groups are referred to as Carnivores and Herbivores
• Capitalism metaphors
• Iceland fares well post "Endarkenment"........connection to "enlightenment"?
• Doubt is the chink in the armor of the Anchorites....to beat them one must take advantage of it
• Anchorites stay at twelve......disciples?
• Frequent use of the phrase "it is Scripted"....like Jews..."It is written"...lending a statement weight.....fatalism?
• Anchorites...all white...racist white power
• Review:  David Mitchell has done it again.  He has written a cross-genre, mind-twisting, thought-provoking novel.  Mitchell's use of language is marvelous.  His characters, particularly the protagonist, Holly Sykes, and Marinus are vividly memorable.  The plot is complex and multi-layered and then winds down into a singularly profound statement about the power of the will to survive and continuity over time.  Meanwhile, Mitchell is somehow also able to make clear and pointed statements about the state of our social-political irresponsibility, our climate busting, Dark Ages inducing behavior as a species and the soul destroying properties of power. If that isn't enough, this is just a gripping story full of mystery, imagination, and plot twists. Outstanding! Moral of the story?  "Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."