The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

I love David Mitchell but this one was a dud for me. And not just because I loathe gory descriptions of difficult births (which this novel opens with) or stories involving forced pregnancy (a major plot point). Not even because the first half of this book was like someone decided the world needed a retelling of The Handmaid's Tale from the point of view of a white dude who barely knew her. I would forgive Mitchell even that, I know I would.

Maybe my real problem is just that this is the most ordinary Mitchell novel I've ever read: too little magic, too much realism (as I quipped on Twitter). Straightforward narrative, a single chronology, precious few interconnections to the rest of his metaverse (Marinus notwithstanding). Maybe it was the weirdly unsatisfying way everything turned out, with the feeling that all the real mysteries remained unsolved; maybe it was that I chafed at spending so much time in Jacob's head (and that of the insufferable Captain Penhaligon) while the characters I wanted to spend more time with got shuffled to the sidelines. Maybe it was simply that historical fiction is not my genre; certainly this novel has no lack of accolades.