The Bone Clocks
core novel 2014 The Bone Clocks / Slade House
Record
| First published | 2014 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.84 (98,479 ratings, collected 2026-09-28) |
| Page count | 609 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780340921609 |
Synopsis
In the summer of 1984 fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes of Gravesend has a blazing row with her mother and runs away from home, only to find her older boyfriend in bed with her best friend. Holly is no ordinary runaway: as a child she heard voices she called the Radio People and was visited by a woman nobody else could see, and now a strange woman offers her a small kindness in exchange for "asylum". Told in six sections spanning six decades, each narrated by a character whose life crosses hers, the novel follows Holly from that scarred adolescence to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast. Running beneath it all is a hidden war between two kinds of immortals, the Horologists, reborn across the centuries, and the Anchorites, who buy their long lives with the souls of psychic children; Holly is unwittingly a piece on their board.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Bone Clocks / Slade House
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: David Mitchell
Awards (verified)
- World Fantasy Award (Best Novel), 2015: won
- Booker Prize, 2014: nominated; Longlisted (Man Booker Prize 2014).
Notes
- Sceptre, 2 September 2014. Six linked sections, 1984-2043; the atemporal war of Horologists and Anchorites is the hidden mythology that Mitchell says underlies all his novels.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within The Bone Clocks / Slade House (standalone work): position 1 of 2: next Slade House (2015)
Sources
← The Bone Clocks / Slade House dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.