"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell, summary

The British author’s sixth novel unfolds before the reader a sweeping panorama of the hidden confrontation between two factions of immortal beings, spanning six decades of the protagonist’s earthly existence, Holly Sykes. The work ties together the intersecting plotlines of all of Mitchell’s macro-fiction, transforming individual human fates into an arena for an eternal battle of metaphysical forces. The manuscript was written between 2011 and 2014, when the book was published in its original language.

The novel won the 2015 World Fantasy Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. While not part of a numbered series with a common title, the author has incorporated it into the grand metaseries "Overbook" with novels such as "The Ghostwriter," "Dream Number Nine," "Cloud Atlas," "Under the Sign of the Black Swan," "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," and the novella "The Hunger House."

Hot days

In the hot summer of 1984, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door of her family’s pub, The Captain Marlowe, in Gravesend after a loud argument and a slap from her mother, who has discovered her daughter’s secret affair with twenty-four-year-old Vinnie Costello. On the stairs, her younger brother, Jacko, a strange seven-year-old autistic boy, hands the runaway a souvenir — a cardboard cheese box circle with a labyrinth drawn on it, vowing to memorize the complex route. A joyful escape into the arms of her lover turns to disaster: after catching her boyfriend in bed with her best friend, Stella, Holly wanders despairingly off to the Kentish moors, remembering how, as a child, she suffered from the whispers of "radio people" and visits from the ghostly Miss Constantine, until the strange Chinese doctor, Marinus, silenced the voices with a precise press of his finger to her forehead. On a riverside pier, a thirsty girl begs for cold herbal tea from the eccentric elderly fisherwoman Esther Little, who leaves a chalk message on the boards and asks for a favor in return – to give her shelter in the future, to which the runaway frivolously agrees.

Ed Brubeck, a classmate who picked her up, gives her a bicycle ride to the ancient church in St. Mary Hoo, where they hide from the parish bell-ringers in a cramped closet and have midnight conversations about their parents. In the morning, Holly secretly leaves her sleeping companion, rushing to Rochester, where she gets a job picking strawberries at Gabriel Harty’s farm. After passing through a short pedestrian tunnel under the highway, the fugitive suddenly falls into a psychedelic haze: the walls expand into a diamond-shaped hall with a painting of an eyeless old man, Miss Constantine in a ball gown is assaulted by flashes of blue light, and a black-haired man with a bloody nose radiates otherworldly power.

Waking on the side of the road, Holly hitches a ride with socialist graduate students Ian and Heidi, makes breakfast in their bungalow, and then encounters a waking nightmare: the paralyzed bodies of their hosts in the garden, the appearance of that same pale, nose-broken pursuer named Joseph Rimes, who breaks Heidi’s bones with a flying cutting board and attempts to strangle the fugitive with an unknown force. The dying Ian, whose mind is temporarily occupied by Esther Little, stabs the monster to death, makes Holly promise to provide mental sanctuary, and, forcing her to press her finger to her forehead, vanishes completely from her consciousness. Reaching a farm on the Isle of Sheppey, Holly picks berries with her new friend Gwyn, but their peaceful respite is shattered by the sudden arrival of Ed Brubeck: the police are searching for the runaway schoolgirl, as little Jacko vanished without a trace from her locked house the night she left.

The good smell of bitter myrrh

December 1991 in Cambridge greets Humber College student Hugo Lamb with Christmas carols in King’s College Chapel. The ambitious cynic and card sharp catches the eye of an elegant woman introducing herself as Immaculée Constantin; the mysterious stranger begins a conversation about the nature of power, promising immortality and eternal reprieve, after which Lamb inexplicably loses two hours. That evening, at the crowded Buried Bishop pub, Hugo masterfully manipulates his friends, luring the naive aristocrat Johnny Penhaligon to an underground poker game, defending critic Richard Cheeseman from a gothic attack, and seducing his roommate’s girlfriend, reveling in his emotional invulnerability.

While visiting his former mentor, Brigadier General Philby, who had suffered a stroke, in a nursing home, Hugo shamelessly steals unique collectible Indian stamps from the frail old man, dating back to 1854. He sells the loot to the Moscow philatelist Kriebel for ten thousand pounds, funding a secret Swiss bank account in the name of Marcus Anyder. Soon, Lamb cynically puts the squeeze on the utterly gambled Penhaligon, convincing the unfortunate debtor to sell his father’s vintage Aston Martin for a pittance. However, right at his parents’ doorstep, Hugo is accosted by a homeless London beggar, speaking with the voice and words of Immaculée Constantin.

In the Swiss resort of La Fontaine-Sainte-Agnès, Lamb is enjoying skiing with Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt, but a morning phone call brings terrible news: Penhaligon, haunted by a gambling debt, has committed suicide by jumping his car off a cliff. Trying to drown his cynical anxiety, Hugo meets a stern English waitress at a local bar, Holly Sykes, helps her clean the place, and for the first time in his life, feels the seeds of genuine affection. A snowstorm traps the couple in Holly’s cramped apartment; she shares her abiding pain about her missing brother, they become lovers, and a shocked Lamb realizes he is hopelessly in love. In the morning, having decided to finally commit to Holly, Hugo goes out into the sun-drenched square, where he is overtaken by an SUV carrying Elijah D’Arnoq and Baptiste Pfenninger; Faced with genuine miracles of psychosotericism and the promise of eternal life among the anchorites of the Chapel of Darkness, the selfish young man without hesitation betrays his budding love and boards the machine of immortals.

Wedding feast

April 2004 shifts the action to Brighton, where war reporter Ed Brubeck arrives for the wedding of Holly’s sister, Sharon. Over the years of their marriage, they have a daughter, Aoife, but their life is fraught with hidden tension: exhausted by the constant fear for her common-law husband, Ed issues an ultimatum, demanding that she terminate her contract with Spyglass magazine and end her trips to Baghdad. On the pier, during a morning walk with his daughter, Ed encounters a luxurious woman who introduces herself as a longtime family acquaintance, Immaculée Constantin. The strange woman probes little Aoife’s forehead, searching for some invisible third eye, and then walks away disappointed.

Wedding celebrations give way to panic: seizing the opportunity while her father dozed in his room at the Grand Maritime Hotel, six-year-old Aoife vanishes without a trace. Frantically pacing the pier, Brubeck searches in vain for his daughter in the shop of local fairground fortune teller Dwight Silverwind. Returning to the lobby, he finds Holly in a deep trance, hoarsely muttering the mysterious numbers "ten fifteen." Silverwind suggests to her father that this is a sign, and Brubeck finds the key to room 1015, locked for renovations, where the lost girl sleeps peacefully on the bed. That night, a shaken Ed confesses to Holly the terrible truth about his recent Iraqi assignment: his assistants Nasser and Aziz were killed in a car bomb attack outside the Safir Hotel, and the reporter decides to leave the dangerous profession behind forever.

Crispin Hershey’s Lonely Planet

In the spring of 2015, at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, aging writer Crispin Hershey is agonizing over Richard Cheeseman’s scathing review of his new novel, Echoes Must Die. Hershey is also infuriated by the colossal success of Holly Sykes, who is presenting her autobiographical book, Radio People, about the voices of childhood. In the smoking room, the deranged poet Soleil Moore accuses Crispin of being blind to the secret war, accusing him of being blind to it. He rudely dismisses her.

A year later, at a festival in Cartagena, Colombia, Hershey encounters a drunken Cheeseman and, under the guise of a feigned reconciliation, steals his hotel key. He then hides a packet of pure cocaine in the critic’s suitcase and anonymously informs customs officials. The revenge turns disastrous: Cheeseman is arrested and sentenced to six years in Bogotá’s monstrous prison. Tormented by his conscience, Hershey organizes a committee to defend the critic, begins an affair with Spanish publisher Carmen Salvat, and accidentally encounters Holly Sykes and the grown-up Aoife in Australia. At the lighthouse on Rottnest Island, Holly suffers a severe seizure: the woman speaks with alien voices in Aboriginal dialect, alluding to ghosts of the past. Later, at a hotel bar in Shanghai, Sykes accurately guesses the outcomes of coin tosses and shares a mysterious premonition concerning Crispin himself: "a spider, a spiral, a one-eyed guy."

In the fall of 2019, in Iceland, Hershey learns of Cheeseman’s release and Carmen’s unexpected pregnancy, but their relationship falls apart, and Holly Sykes confides in a friend that she is terminally ill with liver cancer. In December 2020, the writer, teaching at Blythewood College in the United States, encounters Cheeseman in his office; he lost an eye in prison but finds the strength to spare his attacker. Barely overcoming his mortal fear, Crispin encounters the possessed poet Soleil Moore at the door; declaring Hershey a figure of the great Scenario, the madwoman fires six bullets into the novelist. Dying on the office carpet, the writer manages to spot a dried spider under a cabinet, a spiral pattern on the floor, and a lost one-eyed pirate figurine from a children’s building block.

Chorological labyrinth

In the spring of 2025, Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby, the current female reincarnation of the ancient horologist Marinus, receives a box from a Norwegian school for the deaf containing an audio tape recorded by Esther Little before the fateful 1984 operation. The recording reveals that Esther’s soul survived, finding temporary mental refuge. Soon, the hermit Elijah D’Arnoq approaches Marinus, declaring remorse for the murder of an innocent child and offering her assistance in destroying the lair of the Soul Eaters — the Chapel of Darkness.

Marinus searches for elderly Holly Sykes in a New York park, but the frightened woman refuses to believe in reincarnation or immortal conspiracies. Soon, anchorite agents attempt to kidnap Holly under the guise of New York police officers, but horologist Oshima takes control of the guard’s mind and rescues her. Hiding Sykes in a safe house, Marinus places her in a trance and travels down memory lane to the events of 1984. By uttering the secret ancient name of Mumbaki, the healer awakens the soul of Esther Little, who has been dormant for forty-one years.

A group of horologists, along with Holly and a repentant D’Arnok, enters the portal to the Path of Stones, leading to the Chapel of Darkness. After destroying the icon of the Blind Cathar, the heroes realize they have fallen into a cunning trap: D’Arnok reveals himself to be a double agent, enemies surround the group, and the ancient spirit of Cathar merges with the walls of the sanctuary. Arkady, Unalaq, and Oshima perish in a furious psychosoteric duel. Protecting her remaining forces, Esther Little sacrifices herself, unleashing a colossal psychokinetic blast on a hidden crack in the Chapel’s vaults. The stone colossus begins to crumble, releasing destructive clouds of Darkness that obliterate the bodies and souls of the anchorites.

Marinus, still in Holly’s body, flees through a breach to the center of the infernal labyrinth, once woven into the fabric of the Chapel by the soul of little Jacko. At the crossroads, they encounter the surviving Immaculée Constantin; crazed with terror, Holly bludgeons her tormentor to death with a rolling pin from her bag. Reaching a shining golden apple at the center of the labyrinth, Marinus forces Holly to touch it. A magical anchor returns Holly to the real world, to the floor of a New York mansion, and Marinus combines the last of his energy with a repentant Hugo Lamb to open a saving aperture from the perishing nothingness at the last moment.

Sheepshead

In the autumn of 2043, seventy-four-year-old Holly Sykes lives out her days in a secluded cottage, Dunan, on the Irish peninsula of Sheepshead. Civilization has descended into the chaos of the Fade: resources are depleted, the power grid has collapsed, food is being rationed, and a radioactive spill from the stricken British Hinkley Point nuclear power plant threatens to the east. Holly manages a modest household, caring for her fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Lorelei, an orphan after the death of her parents in a plane crash; her Syrian foster son, Rafik, who suffers from diabetes; and her elderly neighbor, Mo.

The sudden withdrawal of the Chinese concession and the withdrawal of the military contingent open the peninsula to the rampage of marauding gangs. Former militia fighters storm farms, forcibly cutting off vital solar panels. A battle for a fuel depot rages in the village, neighbors are killed, and Rafik’s insulin supplies are running low. Unexpected salvation comes from the sea: an Icelandic coast guard patrol ship drops anchor in the bay. Leading the rescue mission is young presidential adviser Harry Veracruz — a new incarnation of the tireless Marinus. Using his diplomatic status and telepathic suggestion, the horologist secures permission to take on board not only Icelandic citizen Lorelei but also the ailing Rafik, guaranteeing them safe passage and medication in Iceland untouched by chaos.

Having said goodbye to her beloved children on the pier and handed them over to the reliable hands of an ancient guardian, Holly Sykes returns to the empty house to meet the approaching darkness and silence, having finally fulfilled her earthly duty.