Once again Mitchell captures some of what makes him a brilliant and captivating writer together with what makes him hard to read. It's taken me a few days to puzzle it out and my referring to Cloud Atlas is because it helped me get there. Both these books, but perhaps TAOJDZ more than Cloud Atlas, suffer from plot difficulties. This is meant very narrowly and let me explain by saying what I don't mean. Mitchell is superb at crafting characters and motives, events and drama but it's his plotting that is harder to stick with.
Again, with a negative definition...I don't mean he can't tell a story either. I found the end to this book satisfying in the extreme (and I do recommend you read it) but the narrative journey to get there, whilst successfully creating a context in which the end was so psychologically pleasurable, felt listless at times, unsatisfactory at others and frequently left me wondering where exactly he was going. Without dissecting it too much for those of you who will go and read it later the book is really split into two halves which feel like an ascent and a descent with the whole constructed as an elaborate series of ironically mundane kabuki plays with a wonderful suggestion of fable about them. It's an interesting and, one suspects, knowing structure but not one I think many people would be able to follow through with as the 'episodes' can be too distinct to bring a smooth sense of narrative progression.
At the same time, individual episodes - a discovered graveyard, a hesitant escape, an honest man's downfall - are intricate, subtle and beautiful to savour and experience. I'm torn; this book is excellent and I have no hesitation in recommending that people should read it...however, I know it's not the most accessible story even if it is a triumph and the problems with it are structural not accidental. Whatever...I personally suggest you read it and make your own mind up.
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