Book Review: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Published on Sunday 9 May 2010 12:56

David Mitchell Sceptre, £18.99

THE books of David Mitchell represent something akin to a Holy Grail for the publishing industry: not only is he a literary novelist who enjoys commercial success, he is an experimental, even avant-garde writer whose works appeal equally to prize judges (he has been shortlisted for the Booker) and the Richard & Judy selectors. His new novel may not have the nostalgic charm of Black Swan Green, the matryoshka structure of Cloud Atlas or the alternate realities and fantasies in number9dream, but it has a sophistication and depth that leads me to suspect we've only glimpsed the author's potential so far.

Jacob de Zoet is a clerk of the Dutch East Indies Company who, in the late 1790s, is sent to Dejima, an artificial island, barely 200 paces across, off the coast of Nagasaki and the only point of contact between the Europeans and the Seclusionist Edo Shogunate. It is a place of paradoxes: claustrophobic and yet mind-opening; repressive and yet libertine, with gambling tables, drunken brawls and concubines. The whole place simmers with distrust and opportunism, Machiavellian schemes and counter-schemes.

Jacob arrives with a new station chief determined to root out corruption and to renegotiate, forcefully, the company's dealings with Japan; but nothing is as it seems in this "floating world". Mitchell conjures all the stinks and shades of Dejima vividly, and provides respite from the brutality and venality through two characters, Dr Marinus, the enlightened but grumpy scientist, and Orito, a scarred young woman studying medicine under him, and with whom Jacob falls in love.

Most historical novels are hampered by the reader knowing what will happen. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet sidesteps such concerns, and from its restricted canvas spirals out to include mysterious convents, abductions, family sagas, naval engagements, missed chances and seized opportunities. Not even Mitchell's trademark, "easter egg"-like links (devoted readers should keep an eye out for an ancestor of the physicist Muntervary from Ghostwritten, and a significant ship turning up in the final third) help to predict the fates of the characters.

The novel makes clear that what was exhilarating about Mitchell's earlier work wasn't the playful architectures or the dalliances with sci-fi; it was the exhilaration of the language itself. Mitchell doesn't just write poetically, he breaks into poetry in an astonishing cadenza towards the conclusion. Some of the descriptions are viscid, like the "yeasty moon, caged in his half-Japanese, half-Dutch window", through which the moonlight is "filtered to chalk dust". A recurrent device is to interleave the action with details of animal noises, plant colours, unobtrusive actions, like a ground-bass to the melody of the story. Mitchell uses neologisms ("a snonky song"), similes (a gate like the Greek letter pi) and metaphors: a scene between Jacob and Orito is "coin of time", something small, valuable and exchanged.

Mitchell explores the failure of language, the ironies and tragedies of miscommunication. In one scene, as Jacob answers the Japanese interpreters' queries about the meaning of "lack of proof positive", "in broad daylight" and "impotent", we discover he's being told more than he realises. It is telling that the novel's most epiphanic moments are all speechless: a stifled shout, a raised hat, a shell placed with finality.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is far more subtle than just a tale of culture clashes, forbidden love and unexpected bravery. For a tour de force, it's surprisingly nimble, emotionally complex and simply unforgettable.

&#149 This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday, May 9, 2010