Even when it’s our own life’s story, the book says, it’s not always about us. But it is only at the beginning and the end that we see things from her point of view other sections are narrated by four male characters, with Holly in the wings. The book has a straightforward chronology, following Holly from her teen years into old age in 2043. With “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” (2010), a historical novel set in Edo-era Japan, it appeared that Mitchell was setting aside his ambitions to blaze a unique literary trail. He ducked the issue in “Black Swan Green” (2006), a semi-autobiographical novel about a boy growing up with a stutter. Could he ever write anything as brilliant? This was such a signature element that it loomed over his subsequent books. Mitchell earned a devoted readership with 2004’s “Cloud Atlas,” a novel of profound emotions that jumped across centuries and the globe with a stunning twist: its innovative structure. There are many kinds of novels this could become: A bildungsroman, a commentary on Thatcherite England, a horror story, a YA romance. “Six days should do it…” she thinks, “Six days’ll show Mam I can look after myself in the big bad world.”

After a fight she decides to take off, a short runaway jag, the kind designed to teach her concerned family a lesson. We enter David Mitchell’s new novel, “The Bone Clocks,” through a conventional door: Holly Sykes, a mouthy British teenager in 1984, is sleeping with an older guy and spending time with a bad-news best friend.

The bone clocks book review