Why Bone Clocks Works . . . for Some

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Revealing the Mechanism Edition

Some critics of David Mitchell's novel The Bone Clocks pan the story as poor metaphysics, but I think the story works . . . if you fall in love with Holly Sykes, as does just about every other male character in the book.

Even the sociopath Hugo Lamb falls for her, and admits as much to Marinus when the latter asks him why he hadn't escaped the collapsing Chapel through a mechanism that only one individual could use, why he had instead held back, hidden himself, and let Holly use it.

Lamb replies that Marinus need only think back to Holly's memory of the encounter with Lamb in a snowed-in alpine village so many years before.

Doubtless, Marinus recalled the memory he had seen in scanning Holly's mind, a scene that was really none of his business, he admits, but he had watched Lamb through Holly's memory, seeing "what muffled, baffled joy shines in the young man's eyes. He loved her, too."

When Marinus acknowledged what he'd seen, Lamb tells him, "Now you have your answer," then adds his continued regard for Holly in saying, "Did you see her lay into Constantin? Irish blood, Gravesend muscle. Talk about breeding."

It's now Marinus's turn for further astonishment: "You stood by and watched that?"

"Never been the have-a-go-hero type, me."

"Constantin recruited you. She was the Second Anchorite."

"I've always had a problem with authority figures," Lamb explains, then asks one more thing, about Holly, "Did she love me too, Marinus?"

Like him, we never hear the answer . . .