Saturday, October 30, 2010

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - 1

Something strange occured as I read this book; I developed a fairly clearcut love-hate relationship with it, which is more or less what happened when I read David Mitchell's last novel.

My Cloud Atlas review remains buried as a long abandoned draft several pages below the surface in the 'Edit Posts' tab.

It was begining to look like a similar fate would await my impressions of Mitchell's latest novel, for I'd never be able to make up my mind whether to pen a long positive review with an extended set of caveats covering its failings or an essentially negative one where my frustrations with the work came to the forefront and the undeniable pleasure of reading it was handled almost as an afterthought.

So, I've decided to do something a little different: a review in sections, if not exactly in different voices and genre styles, which might of course be the befitting manner postmodern way of critiqueing an author like Mitchell.

And that's it for part one...

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