The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet | The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel

An old-fashioned tale that's also inventive | The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel | David Mitchell

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	• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel David Mitchell Random House, 2010 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Choppy but interesting......

You know, I'm having a hard time just trying to figure out why I like this book. The prose was not particularly good, esp. when a character speaks and there is a concurrent background explanation i.e....the wind screamed through like a train....come on Mr. Mitchell let's clean up our metaphors!

But the economy of narrative is also the best thing about this book. When he is not engaging in the above-mentioned explanations about what is going on, one can then sense the action and that is when the book is at its best.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

David Mitchell is well known for his mind bending piece of fiction, Cloud Atlas, a book in which Mitchell proves that he is both a great story teller and craftsman. In his new novel, Mitchell, who is on record as saying that he wants to continually evolve as a writer, reinvents himself as a historical novelist, setting tale in Japan during the turn of the 19th century. In James Woods' review of Mitchell's new novel, featured in the New Yorker, he asks why a writer of Mitchell's considerable talents is spending time writing a good historical novel. While I think Woods entirely misses the boat on Cloud Atlas in his review, his point actually seems well taken when it comes to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet. The book gets off to a bit of a clunky start as the reader is introduced to a virtual monkey bin of characters both Dutch and Japanese without enough time spent on their development as characters for the reader to get a firm foothold. In fact, the first portion of the book labors in much the same way as Cloud Atlas' opening section does but without the payoff at the end.

Once Mitchell settles in to the story, Jacob De Zoet becomes an interesting character, and his sudden infatuation with a Japanese woman, and encounters with the rough Dr. Marinus are the stuff of fine writing. However, I think it's fair to say that Mitchell could have cut a good portion of this sprawling 479 paged book without losing any of the important threads. Unlike many historical novels, which seem bogged down in research, Mitchell's story gets bogged down by a whirlwind of double dealings that leave the reader feeling unmoored.

By the conclusion of the first section the plot elements are fully in play and the book begins to take off. However, the second section, which includes the story of Japanese interpreter, is occasionally held back by lackluster writing. Certainly Mitchell is a brilliant word smith, but at times, (and here I think Mitchell struggles a bit operating in the third person for the first time in his fifth novel) the feelings implied by the characters seem artificial.

It is in the third section that Mitchell's narrative gifts start to pay off, and the reader is swept up in the story coming together in a way not quite reminiscent of Dumas, but it certainly shares elements with the epics of the past. Tolstoy or Dostoevsky would be offering too much credit. Would that Mitchell could have gotten to this character building action a hundred pages sooner.

The fourth and fifth sections take place twelve and eighteen years after the main action. And it is in these two extraordinarily short sections, under ten pages total, the reader gets a glimpse at the sort of magic that Mitchell dispenses freely in the latter half of Cloud Atlas as Jacob De Zoet reflects on an old friend dying, and a lost love returned briefly. It is in these more human moments that Mitchell really makes his mark as a writer. For all the evident pyrotechnics of his story-telling method, he is, at heart, a very good recorder of human nature. If The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet falls short it is only in forgetting the memorable characters that he crafts so well for the machinations of plot and revealing parts of the ancient Japanese culture. I have no doubt that Mr. Mitchell will continue writing wonderful books for years to come, and though I cannot highly recommend this book, I would recommend it to readers, though I rate it his fourth best behind Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green and Ghostwritten. All in all, I can think of worse ways that one might spend an afternoon than wrapped up in a world of love, loss, intrigue and regret, with David Mitchell captaining the ship.

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An old-fashioned tale that's also inventive

In 2004, David Mitchell impressed readers and critics alike with Cloud Atlas, his genre-defying (and Booker-Prize-shortlisted) novel with a structure more akin to a set of Russian nesting dolls than a typical novel. In his most recent novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Mitchell skips the literary fireworks in favor of the more conventional form of the historical novel. Mitchell's protagonist--Jacob de Zoet--travels around the world in 1799 to the trading post maintained by the Dutch East Indies Company off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. The Dutch traders are confined to the man-made island of Dejima, lying just off the coast of Nagasaki and connected to the mainland by a heavily guarded bridge. Seeking to earn enough distinction and money to wed the sweetheart he left behind in the Netherlands, de Zoet is tasked with investigating Dejima's notorious corruption. In de Zoet's time, Nagasaki was a mysterious land ruled by powerful samurais and enigmatic traditions, and the inevitable clash between East and West provides the animating force for most of the novel's action.

With its large cast of colorful characters and its adventure-laden plot, including a forbidden love affair and a daring rescue attempt from a dangerous sex cult, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet maintains its quick pace for nearly five hundred pages. Throughout it all, Mitchell employs the conventions of the genre while avoiding most of its clichés. This book's fault, if it has one, is its exuberant excess. The plethora of characters, subplots, and historical details can be challenging to keep up with, particularly in the first hundred pages. This superabundance is also the novel's greatest strength, however, as it results in a realistic rendering of an entire world with all its messiness and complexity. While not as groundbreaking as Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is an old-fashioned historical adventure tale that also manages to be thrilling and inventive.

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Very good, but hardly a masterpiece....

There's much to admire in The Thousand Autumns. Mitchell writes beautiful, sometimes achingly beautiful prose. Many of the characters are superbly realized and the clash of cultures is observed with an expert eye.

There are though, frustrations. Jacob's Japanese love interest is the focal point of the 2nd book but all but drops off the novel in book 3. The last 25 years of her life are a blank after her goodbye and goodluck wave. She appears in an hallucination at the end of Jacob's life, but the reader is left in the dark as to her end.

Spoiler Alert: After the magistrate's exquisite revenge/ hari kiri there seems to be a mad dash to wrap things up--and they are. But for me it was unsatisfactorily done with a slapdash feel.

The last 50 pages changed my opinion of the book from amazing to just very good. Absoultely worth reading, but frustrating because it could have been great.

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In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply ?a genius.? Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian?s claim that ?each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.? The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the ?high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island? that is the Japanese Empire?s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.

But Jacob?s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city?s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob?s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, ?Who ain?t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life??

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.

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