The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell Review

Released in 2010, following ‘Cloud Atlas’ and ‘Black Swan Green,’ the Thousand Autumns is first and foremost an historical novel set in the late 18th century on the man-made island of Dejima off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. As we can expect from a novel of weight from Mitchell, this is dense with detailed depictions of a crew of Dutch traders, the only traders that Japan is allowing itself to have contact with from the outside world, and how they maneuver through trade negotiations with the layers of interpreters, negotiators, prostitutes and their own double dealing.

Jacob arrives hoping to make enough money to placate the father of his beloved, and establish his own worth. He is assigned along with a new overseer to put the companies books back to right as corruption has become rife on the tiny island. As a straight shooting do gooder, this put Jacob in the difficult position of having to work with a crew that is also setting him up to be sure his clean up can only go so far. While working through this maze of culture and language and diplomacy, he becomes smitten with a student of the island’s doctor. His missteps in trying to win her hand sees her sent away to a nefarious shrine of the black arts. On top of that, the British arrive to take over as Napoleon has essentially taken their home country and dissolved their company.

The book is thick with prose describing life, culture, and the deft interplay of words that may be purposely mistranslated between nationalities. A reader’s first instinct is that it will be a hard go, but once into the text, it is not a burdensome read, often quite the opposite, with the characters strongly coming to the fore and never swamped by the world building superstructure flying in around them. It is historical fiction and thus it does have the tropes of setting being as important as anything else, but one immediately feels as if they are walking along side by side on Dejima with Jacob, or they on the road to the shrine of misfits, or even aboard the British ship with its Captain hoping to take control. The text is beautiful, often written with several layers, but it does not slow down the narrative flow. It does reward the reader to go back and pick through for all the bits they missed the first time.

The book is essentially in three blocks. The first section is spent with Jacob establishing the world and their mission as well as friendships, antagonists and romances. The second is spent with the midwife Orito who Jacob pursues and her efforts struggling with being sent away to a mysterious shrine. The third is a tale of the British sailing in to take over this trading port, one way or the other.

My only criticism here is the same as I have with other David Mitchell single narrative books: he’s actually writing in novellas and sometimes the links fitting them together don’t always sit together satisfactorily. The conclusions to part 1 and part 2 could have been stronger to leave the reader with a holy crap! what’s next? feeling and not a feeling of …hey… wait… This is more nitpicking than anything, but in a book so towering with amazing characterization, world building and prose, it does leave you wanting to feel a little more secure in your transitions. “Oh well, I guess this is new…” is not the best feeling in turning the page and finding all the characters you had been with are now in the background if on stage at all. The writing however, eases over these problems and quickly pushes any quibbles aside as you dive right back into great characters and action. Jacob, Orito, and the British Captain’s stories could all have been fleshed out into their own book—it’s that good.

If I had any serious criticism, it would be because David does tend to write in smaller bits tied together, sometimes the narrative comes to a dead halt as your main character encounters a new character that goes on for an entire chapter at times telling a backstory, or perhaps it’s a character reading a bible verse and each line is alternated with a line of story text. While well written, it can make the reader, upon encountering another block of similar text, just skip the long aside and go on. And that’s a shame. Often those asides are well written, very entertaining and informative, and the reader will miss out by skipping them. However, when you’re building up to someone’s final fate, those asides stop you dead and are frustrating.

On the whole though, the bounty of riches in this title are well worth the few extraneous asides. And while it is very much an historical drama, it does include a major character and important scene that strongly informs the over arching “Mitchell-verse” that pervades all his titles. Jacob’s descendent, Jasper de Zoet is a main character in “Utopia Avenue.” Along with “Cloud Atlas” and “The Bone Clocks,” this is a must read by a master craftsmen giving a graduate course in what writing can be.