Novel Expectations

Everyone has favourite authors and occasionally you find that author who so intrigues you that you have read all their books, may have a couple of theories about their style or characterisation and certainly lend their books to all your friends so you can talk about them with others.
For me that author is David Mitchell, an English born writer who spent a considerable time living in Japan and whose works (at that time four novels) were the subject of my Honours' dissertation. Okay, so that is going slightly beyond the interest described in the first paragraph but there is something in Mitchell's work that just plain interests me.

However, when he announced the publication and subject matter of his new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (due out this year, so six months after the completion of my dissertation) I was more than a little apprehensive. To start with, my dissertation had focused on structure in Mitchell's novels, an element that is very strong and very adeptly constructed in his three early works, but less innovative in his fourth, and with the announcement that his fifth would be a linear historical novel I was, as you can imagine, devastated.

Taking a step back this seems a strange reaction, as the novel is set in a historical period I have much interest in (Japan just before it was forced to open its borders) and was focused on two cultures I have an abiding interest in, Japanese and Dutch. Further, it being written by my favourite author, why was I not leaping about in excitement?

Put simply, I thought Mitchell would forgo any inventive structural elements and become more of a “traditional linear storyteller” interested in facts and not in the power that words can have. I describe Mitchell as a two tier writer, and as I explained to my father, it is like he creates a wonderful garden full of interesting plants, yet they are also grounded in well fed soil. In addition, for those that are prepared to look a little further, he has hidden small Easter eggs in various places that are hard to hunt out, but when you do find them it is incredibly rewarding, and together they all make a pattern. Thus, he is an academically inclined writer who nevertheless does not let this interfere or lessen the quality of his stories and characters.

So I spent months grumbling to various people about how I was going to hate the new novel and that it was all a terrible travesty, but I still bought Jacob de Zoet and left it on my bedside table, waiting for the time I would pluck up enough courage to read it. Which was last week, stuck at home with the winter lurgy. I found that perhaps I was mistaken about several things.

Firstly, I was disappointed in the setting being historical seeing as I associated Mitchell with such contemporary themes and at the forefront of what is either the late postmodern or what will come after postmodernism (if you are interested in such ideas try this New Yorker article on David Mitchell and Jacob de Zoet). But if you examine his earlier works a large chunk of it is set in non contemporary times. Certainly not as distant as in this latest instalment, but nonetheless noticeably not present day.

Further, after a few chapters I was so sucked into the book and its characters that I was having trouble putting it down, a fact that reminded me that while I had spent my Honours year hunting Easter eggs in Mitchell's garden, it was actually the garden itself I had initially come to inspect and love. It was characters like Eiji from number9dream, Robert Frobisher from Cloud Atlas, Jason from Black Swan Green and the woman on the Holy Mountain in Ghostwritten that had first made me fall in love with Mitchell's books, so why would it be any different in Jacob de Zoet?

That is not to say that Jacob de Zoet is entirely the same or different when it comes to such elements in Mitchell's other work. One of the most intriguing “Easter eggs” of his work is the character crossovers that exist between his books. In every novel bar his first at least one character (often minor) reappears from one of his former books. Such a network is fascinating when dealing with the novels as a whole, as such sharing creates a metaworld that is both supported and made problematic by the individual novels (characters that are doomed to die in one novel come back in middle to old age in others and thus call into question their nature). Thankfully in Jacob de Zoet Mitchell continues such a tradition, having the young midshipman who appears near the end of the book (not to spoil things) being Boerhaave, a sailor who features as an older man in Adam Ewing's section of Cloud Atlas (Mitchell's third book). While such links are easily looked over and may seem overly pedantic, such treasures make the reading of all of Mitchell's works something more than just being able to say that you know what happens in each one.

Finally, in my study of Mitchell I found that a surprising number of goats appear in his works. Prominent examples are Goatwriter in number9dream, a character from a “children's story” read by the main character, and the goat from Ghostwritten that plays a role at the turning point in the story set on Clear Island. As such, I was on the lookout for goats and many, many appeared, much to my delight. Significantly, they were a feature of history at the time and place Mitchell was writing and they do not dominate the story noticeably in comparison to other animals, however every mention was a delight as it reaffirmed that this was truly my favourite author as I had studied him.

Thus, my reading of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was a much more enjoyable experience than I initially expected, reminding me of some of the things I had started to overlook about my favourite author, and confirming a number of those that in my mind sets him apart and makes him all the more special.