The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. “Mitchell can take spit globules, gout, puss, blood letting, beatings, anal exploratories, overall bad hygiene, and organized rape and turn it into poetry. I'll admit that the idea of a historical novel set in a 1799 Dutch trading post off the coast of Japan didn't readily appeal to me. And the dialect of the first section (something like garbled cockney that Mitchell calls ‘bygonese’ in an interview in the back of the book) was a little difficult to process at first. Give it time and let yourself absorb Mitchell's deliberate language and vivid imagery. You are in the hands of a master storyteller. A Thousand Autumns pulls in elements of romance, action, political thriller and high seas adventure. His characters are varied and complex - even minor characters have multi-dimensions that add depth to the story. By the end of the book I was fully invested, cheering and mourning the various outcomes of each character's fate.”
