Join David Mitchell to talk about THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, our September Book of the Month, on Wed 28 September, 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

September's Author of the Month has been named as one of the most influential novelists in the world. David Mitchell has twice been shortlisted for the Booker and his novels attract vast numbers of readers and glowing reviews alike.

His latest book, THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, is a masterpiece of historical fiction. Set in 1799, in the Japanese trading port of Dejima (run by the Dutch East India Trading Company, it is Japan's only window to the outside world), the novel follows young Dutchman Jacob de Zoet's struggle to win his fortune, battle with corruption and begin his love affair with the beautiful but scarred Japanese midwife who is dangerously close to the local Samurai lord. Ambitious, poetic, pacy, full of detail and immaculately researched - this is a novel that creates a world so fully realised that you become utterly engulfed in its pages.

We have 100 free copies for Mumsnetters - find out more at our book of the month page.

And get your paperback or Kindle version now.

We're delighted that David will be joining us for the chat on Wednesday 28 September 9-10pm. Look forward to seeing you there.

Hi - very odd sensation writing to an author I admire so much. Gulp. Here goes. Cloud Atlas was incredible and stayed with me for a long time, but this one was even better. I wept buckets at the end. The description of Jacob leaving his son behind was so painful and raw I had to put the book down and 'gather' (I have two sons). I didnt know how you could possibly end the novel, but again, a very moving and beautifully imagined scene (wont spoil for those who have yet to get there). As an English teacher I was blown away by the scene you did of the market in rhyming couplets; astonishingly composed. Just brilliant. Thank you. I dont know where you get this stuff from but please keep doing it!

Oh, and my question: has your novel been translated into Japanese or Dutch and if so, how has it been received?

So glad I didn't forget about this! As the mother of two young sons, I loved Black Swan Green and felt that it really gave me some insight into how it might feel to be a boy!
I'm rather nervous about the filming of Cloud Atlas and was wondering how much input you had into the adaptation process? I did a course on film adaptations once, and can only really remember feeling satisfied with the film version of Joyce's short story The Dead, otherwise concluded that the cliche about good books making poor films and vice versa was largely true. Have you see the finished version yet, and do you feel it captures your internal view of the book, and does a writer even have such a thing, or is it modified by critical and reader responses?
Hope to still be up and available at 9pm (insomniac 2 year old is messing up my evenings!!)

Hello! I loved this book, an epic read. Just getting my question in early - where did you get the idea for the Shiranui shrine? The psychology aspect, ie keeping the women hopeful and productive, is very interesting. There's a slightly similar set up in Cloud Atlas if I'm remembering correctly. Is there something in history which influenced you or did you think of it yourself?

Hi!

What's the deal with Japan, and with old-timey maritime adventures? I've seen them appear in your books at least twice!

@jamaisjedors

I wanted to jump in with my question and appreciation before tonight because I will probably be in bed (am an hour ahead here in France)!

But actually I see that sfxmum has got in before me!

I am 3/4 of the way through "The thousand Autumns..." and enjoying it very much.

I wanted to say how much I appreciated your "translation scene" with Jacob helping out the interpreters with Dutch/Japanese.

As someone who spends her life translating backwards and forwards between two languages I found it fascinating and very accurate - not that I know any Dutch - do you? by the way? (In some ways it's quite wierd to read the Dutch/Japanese exchanges in a third language,English).

You are obviously totally fascinated with language, as all good writers should be are, I loved the palimpset quality of Cloud Atlas and the way you seemed to be having fun with language there (but not in an off-putting self-conscious way I thought).

Can you trace back where your fascination with language came from? How many languages do you speak?

Anyway I am taking up way too much space AND have probably exceeded my quota of questions - I'm hoping someone else is going to ask about the title - or will all be revealed when I finish the book?

Thanks for your books

(oh and sneaky extra question - what was the last book YOU read?)

Hi 'Jamais' -

I'll be a bad lad and reply to yours before 9 because of your bedtime.
Thanks for yr kind comment about the translation scene - an EFL lesson, in a way, even though the answers are being used to set poor Jacob up and deliver a threat. I studied a little Dutch, but as usual not enough to speak with any confidence. Novelists are doomed jacks of all trades. Perhaps my fascination comes from the fact that I stammer - when language isn't as fluent as thought, you notice it more, and think about it more - your survival as a kid can depend on working out how to do what your disfluency is trying to stop you doing.

The last book I read was 'The Informers' by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, a terrific book I thought - cerebral and delving, sad and good. Always nice to be treated like an adult rather than a market demographic. Now I'm reading 'Independent People' by Halldor Laxness, an Icelander - again, superb.

My look at the time! Better finish this one - thanks for your interest in my work...

I loved this book through and through, particularly its pace which allowed the characters to develop and give the island life such a strong sense of time and place before events exploded. Unfortunately it read so clearly I think I am now an expert in Japanese-Dutch history at the end of the eighteenth century. How much research did you undertake into the period or should I not hold forth quite so vehemently and just enjoy the story!

oooh thank you, just checked in before bed - much appreciated - I will read the rest of the thread tomorrow.

Evening everyone

There couldn't be a more thrilling way to start the new season of Mumsnet Bookclub. David Mitchell is a vastly talented and dazzlingly versatile writer whose books have won passionate responses from readers and critics alike. THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET is not only a finely crafted masterpiece of historical fiction but also a deeply pleasurable, gripping read.

There is much to pack into an hour, so without further ado....

David, firstly, thank you very much indeed for taking the time to join us. And congratulations on a stunningly vivid and beautifully written novel. And thank you too for already giving us some excellent insights into how you write (I would scold you but your answers are too good). Perhaps we can kick off with the other advance questions from further up the thread? And then we'll aim to get through as many as possible over the next hour.

I'd also like to add our two standard MN Bookclub questions:

Which childhood book most inspired you?

What would be the first piece of advice you would give anyone attempting to write fiction?

Over to you...(and apologies for your background shading - its saying Butterscotch Angel Delight to me)

Just to say Hi David and thanks for the brilliant books - our book group was set on fire by Cloud Atlas a few years ago. I've read your others but think a Thousand Autumns really stood out too. And you're so right about busy mums (I have 5 young kids + work) - when I read fiction I have very high demands, and you've not let me down yet!

My pleasure Tilly and everyone -
thanks for having me on your website.
My most inspirational childhood books were the Earthsea series by Ursula le Guin - intelligent fantasy that still inspires me today.
The first piece of advice? Like the Nike advert, Just Do It.
Practice writing in a notebook - anything will do. If you don't have a great idea for a story, just write about the view from your window, and see where it takes you...

@LongStory

Just to say Hi David and thanks for the brilliant books - our book group was set on fire by Cloud Atlas a few years ago. I've read your others but think a Thousand Autumns really stood out too. And you're so right about busy mums (I have 5 young kids + work) - when I read fiction I have very high demands, and you've not let me down yet!

And thank you Long Story -

I'll do my best to never let you down. I dislike being let down myself.

Thank you.

I like what you said earlier about novels being built on changes of mind. With CLOUD ATLAS, did you play around with a lot of different structures/characters before whittling it down to its present arrangement? Was there an Ezra Pound moment where you took out the scissors and did a literary mash-up? Or was it a fully formed structural idea from the word go?

And (final question, I promise) how much do you generally leave on the cutting room floor? Are there whole swathes of David Mitchell literature buried in a drawer under the bed/in the bin?

Great questions Tilly [runs off to bed!]

The picture you paint of the future in Cloud Atlas still haunts me a little. I would be interested in whether you are feeling more or less optimistic about the future since then.

@CalatalieSisters

Assuming I haven't got/read the book in time, I will be afraid to come back to the webchat next week because people naturally have to feel free to include spoilers.

So can I just ask a question now about Cloud Atlas? I enjoyed it very much indeed and, I guess like most readers, the feature I most enjoyed was the beautiful precise capture of very different voices, and very different forms of narrative. But, still, I was reading forward very eagerly, because we tend to think of novels as being very largely about progress to a resolution, about a satisfying ending that retrospectively flavours the whole story. In one way Cloud Atlas had a very satisfying ending, the completion of the narrative arc from one civilisation corrupted by an external/techno-rich set of outsiders, to another post-"smart" civilisation, in relation to which a new set of techno-rich outsiders were much more cautious, much more wary of disrupting something valuable.

That was a lovely circle, but still (and I don't mean any of this as a criticism) what was lovely was its structure rather than its content: the content was relatively slight, obvious -- a kind of truistic portrayal of the dangers of commercially led industrial progress and imperialism and the need to respect the integrity of traditional cultures.

So what I wanted to ask is: am I wrong to read a novel primarily for the sake of its content rather than its form, and to read enthusiastically forwards to the content of its resolution? I wanted the resolution, or rather the ideas conveyed in the resolution, to be more challenging, unexpected, counterintuitive, novel than they were. But what was beautiful about the book was its voice and its structure, and I should have been reading more "in each moment" (rather than reading forwards), as you might think of reading a poem rather than a novel.Was I looking in the wrong place? I don't think I've expressed any of that very well: what I am really thinking is something like : "Poems and novels are very much less different from one another than I thought before reading Cloud Atlas."

Another deep question from Calatalie Sisters here -

I'm glad you liked the structure. Themes & ideas - yes, some writers - like Umberto Eco - seem to set out with the ideas, and their novels are almost lecture notes set to fiction. I'm not knocking that or saying it's wrong - I like his books a lot - but that's not how I work. I'm more a plot and character man - these are the elements that keep me reading the books I love - so I can see that a reader who needs more intellectual nourishment than I can offer might find my books a little cerebrally... thin? I find my ideas as I go along. Or perhaps I'm just a bit distrustful of answers to the big questions - the big questions are big questions because they're not easily answerable. Maybe I'm more of an explorer than an answerer...

@TillyBookClub

I like what you said earlier about novels being built on changes of mind. With CLOUD ATLAS, did you play around with a lot of different structures/characters before whittling it down to its present arrangement? Was there an Ezra Pound moment where you took out the scissors and did a literary mash-up? Or was it a fully formed structural idea from the word go?

And (final question, I promise) how much do you generally leave on the cutting room floor? Are there whole swathes of David Mitchell literature buried in a drawer under the bed/in the bin?

CLOUD ATLAS was written with the structure clearly in mind before I began. It was 9 parts long, however, before reality began to bite and I realized 6 was the limit - only so many times you can ask a reader to start again. I wrote each novella in its entirety first, though I did work out the cliff-hanger moment as I wrote them.

Some stuff falls to the cutting room floor, but it generally gets reincarnated elsewhere.

@LongStory

The picture you paint of the future in Cloud Atlas still haunts me a little. I would be interested in whether you are feeling more or less optimistic about the future since then.

It depends on what that day's newspapers look like, Longstory.
And I'm very nervous about how our children will be flying, or having food brought to supermarkets, or how their container ships will lug stuff around the world without oil. Solar power is good for light-bulbs, but we still haven't worked how to shift heavy stuff without combustion engines...

hm....

Thanks, jamais. The level of question (and answer) is damn high this evening. I'm hoping to keep my standards up. Have got another one - but am wary of hogging the thread so David, feel free to leave this one until you've finished with the others.

A question connected to those themes of communication you mentioned...I feel as if I would recognise one of your books even if it came to me as a nameless, coverless manuscript. You are such a distinctive author. But I'm surprised by that, because you can shapeshift and write so confidently in so many different guises. Do you think you can describe your 'voice'? Did you quickly find/recognise it when you started writing?

@CountrySlicker

I loved this book through and through, particularly its pace which allowed the characters to develop and give the island life such a strong sense of time and place before events exploded. Unfortunately it read so clearly I think I am now an expert in Japanese-Dutch history at the end of the eighteenth century. How much research did you undertake into the period or should I not hold forth quite so vehemently and just enjoy the story!

I did a fat stack of research! Research to lay down the foundations of the world (How did the Napoleonic Wars redraw Europe?) and research to enable each scene (When was shaving cream invented?)

I quite like historical fiction for this very reason, though - my understanding of the past gets improved, plus I get the story. Is that not a Buy 1 get 1 free worth having?!

Hello David,

I've read all your books and was amazed to find a theme or link that seemed to run through each book that bound them together for example a character from one book would be distantly related to someone in another book or a sign would be present in two books in a different contexts but I couldn't find it in the last book. Did I miss it perhaps?

Thanks,
Michelle

Hi David :)

You put a lot of yourself and your own experience into Black Swan Green, so I wondered whether you appear (in one form or another) in your other novels? If so, is there a version of David Mitchell that might surprise us?

Hasten to add that I didn't mean "thinness of content" (as distinct form form) as a criticism. I think it is good.

"Lecture notes set to fiction" is a great way of characterising the fact that we ought not to look to novelists primarily as purveyors of thematic truths. It is hard, though, as a reader to live up to that. We have to learn to sometimes switch off an overbearing pursuit of meaning?

@TillyBookClub

Thanks, jamais. The level of question (and answer) is damn high this evening. I'm hoping to keep my standards up. Have got another one - but am wary of hogging the thread so David, feel free to leave this one until you've finished with the others.

A question connected to those themes of communication you mentioned...I feel as if I would recognise one of your books even if it came to me as a nameless, coverless manuscript. You are such a distinctive author. But I'm surprised by that, because you can shapeshift and write so confidently in so many different guises. Do you think you can describe your 'voice'? Did you quickly find/recognise it when you started writing?

If it's not too pretentious to say it, I feel that I'm the servant (or midwife?) of each book, and it's my job to hunt around and find the best voice, or the optimum voice, for that book. Clearly this isn't a 1 Size Fits All proposition... I don't think I could describe my voice, other than 'Hopefully The Right One'.
It's a novelist's job to be able to shape-shift if that novelist is going to have a crack at a wide and varied cast. So I wouldn't say I'm so special in this regard...

@michelleantoinette

Hello David,

I've read all your books and was amazed to find a theme or link that seemed to run through each book that bound them together for example a character from one book would be distantly related to someone in another book or a sign would be present in two books in a different contexts but I couldn't find it in the last book. Did I miss it perhaps?

Thanks,
Michelle

Evening Michelle...

I couldn't many 'hyperlinks' into 1000 AUTUMNS because of the simple fact it is set earlier than all of the others. However, you'll find a moon grey cat in BLACK SWAN GREEN, the young midshipman who waits on Jacob at the very end is the same Boerhaave who becomes the captain of the Prophetess in CLOUD ATLAS and the carpenter Muntervary is the Corkonian ancestor of Mo Muntervary, the quantum scientist in GHOSTWRITTEN. It's a small world...