Carregue numa fotografia para ir para os Livros Google.
A carregar... The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (original 2010; edição 2011)por David Mitchell
Informação Sobre a ObraThe Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet por David Mitchell (2010)
Booker Prize (23) » 40 mais Books Read in 2016 (86) Historical Fiction (80) Favourite Books (343) Garden-fiction (13) Books Read in 2023 (663) Books Read in 2020 (1,052) Books Read in 2015 (1,234) Books Read in 2013 (440) A Novel Cure (295) Urban Fiction (32) Books tagged favorites (196) Books Read in 2010 (240) Books Set on Islands (55) Reading 2011 (2) Asia (149) Fiction For Men (141) Autumn books (31) Best Fantasy Novels (786) A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro.
Incredible. ( ) Similar to Cloud Atlas in terms of themes and general feeling. Apparently, Mitchell likes writing about living the hard life, survival versus principles, and ships. It occurs to me that Mitchells books are permeated with melancholia. This beautiful sadness makes you respect and sympathise with main characters that try to make the best of their lives, even when they've been dealt a bad hand. If you like this book, read Stoner (Williams) and Shogun (Clavell) next. A book club pick :) I wasn’t too keen on picking up another David Mitchell novel after Cloud Atlas. I did enjoy it, but it felt too much like an “I’m writing a bestseller and don’t I know it” exercise. Then I happened to read about The Thousand Autumns in a couple of blogs I trust, that basically said “don’t read Cloud Atlas, read his other books”. And then I suggested it for my book club, and I am glad I did (well, I am writing this review before the book club meeting, anyway… ;) ). The very first chapter will floor you. Orito is an awesome character (more on this below) and I wanted to see so much more of her. So I felt the joy that comes upon you when you dive into a good story told well. The history of Dejima is intriguing and I hadn’t explored it much, despite my fascination with Japan (because there is a lot to explore, you know). The author has done a lot of research, and it shows. I loved all the details and the melting pot of Dejima from the very beginning – smart-ass sailors, merchants, slaves, interpreters, courtiers, smugglers etc. Even the minor characters shine! Jacob de Zoet steps into this medley. Corruption and thievery abound, so he walks on shaky ground and in a web of intrigues. I always like to read about different cultures meeting: “ ‘Ask, Vorstenbosch orders, ‘how His Honour enjoyed the coffee I presented’. The question, Jacob notes, provokes arch glances among the courtiers. The Magistrate considers his reply. ‘Magistrate says’, translates Okagawa, ‘Coffee tastes of no other.’ “ The academia meetings were very interesting to read about, with Dutch and Japanese scholars trying to make sense of western science together, as things got lost in translation. Historical figures, such as Sugita Genpaku, make an appearance. Nice! The writing hooked me and sang to me. Here is Jacob (who has been doing his homework, as one should), catching a Japanese interpreter at a lie: “Ramifications hatch from the appalling hush.” And here is the impossible romance: “I wish, he thinks, spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket.” And here is autumn: “Birds are notched on the low sky. Autumn is aging.” Besides being a very well written piece of historical fiction, this is a novel about choices and their consequences. Jacob makes a noble choice, and then he makes a horrific one, and the difference between doing something noble that is detrimental to you alone and truly taking responsibility for another human being, hits the reader hard. When it comes to responsibility, Orito makes a different choice. I love Orito’s strength, resilience, and agency – while her would-be lovers are busy with angst for months, she plans. I enjoyed her POV much more than Jacob’s (who sometimes comes off as a bit of an everyman), she is a lot more interesting. The end chapters transformed this book from a four into a five star read. Perfectly done. P.S. I suspect David Mitchell has seen a lot of samurai movies. The scenes, dialogues, turns of fortune in the samurai/ronin adventure part of the book were exactly right.
There are no easy answers or facile connections in “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.” In fact, it’s not an easy book, period. Its pacing can be challenging, and its idiosyncrasies are many. But it offers innumerable rewards for the patient reader and confirms Mitchell as one of the more fascinating and fearlesswriters alive. Another Booker Prize nomination is likely to greet this ambitious and fascinating fifth novel—a full-dress historical, and then some—from the prodigally gifted British author For his many and enthusiastic admirers — critics, prize juries, readers — the fecundity of Mitchell’s imagination marks him as one of the most exciting literary writers of our age. Indeed, in 2007, he was the lone novelist on Time’ s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Through five novels, most impressively with his 2004 novel, Cloud Atlas, Mitchell has demonstrated flat-out ambition with respect to testing — sometimes past their breaking points — the conventions of storytelling structure, perspective, voice, language and range. The result, according to Mitchell’s rare detractors, is an oeuvre marked by imaginative wizardry and stylistic showmanship put on offer for their own sake. For most everyone else, however, Mitchell’s writing is notable because its wizardry and showmanship are in the service of compulsively readable stories and, at its best moments, are his means of revealing, in strange places and stranger still ways, nothing less than the universals of human experience. Though direct in its storytelling, Jacob de Zoet marks a return to full amplitude. That means occasionally over-long scenes and one or two rambling monologues. But it also guarantees fiction of exceptional intelligence, richness and vitality. With “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” David Mitchell has traded in the experimental, puzzlelike pyrotechnics of “Ghostwritten” and “Number9Dream” for a fairly straight-ahead story line and a historical setting. He’s meticulously reconstructed the lost world of Edo-era Japan, and in doing so he’s created his most conventional but most emotionally engaging novel yet: it’s as if an acrobatic but show-offy performance artist, adept at mimicry, ventriloquism and cerebral literary gymnastics, had decided to do an old-fashioned play and, in the process, proved his chops as an actor. PrémiosDistinctionsNotable Lists
1799, Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor. Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk, has a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city's powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken--the consequences of which will extend beyond Jacob's worst imaginings. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumDavid Mitchell's book The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNenhum(a)Capas populares
Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
É você?Torne-se num Autor LibraryThing. |