History Literature / TheBoneClocks

* TheDragon: Immaculée Constantin for Baptiste Pfenninger.

** DragonTheirFeet: [[spoiler: Outlives her boss and fellow Anchorites by a short span before meeting her end at Holly's hands.]]

* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Subverted with Holly. In her early years she is drawn to the much older and unfaithful Vincent Costello as well as the amoral Hugo Lamb. [[spoiler: [[SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan Later she settles down with Ed Brubeck]]]]

* BigBadDuumvirate: Baptiste Pfenninger and Immaculée Constantin, the leaders of the Anchorites. The former is the founder of the group and the one who is nominally in charge. The latter, while technically second-in-command, is [[TheHeavy much more involved with the story events]] and [[DragonInChief treated as the most dangerous of the Anchorites.]]

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler: The Blind Cathar, an ancient mystic who originally contacted Baptiste Pfenninger and enabled him to form the Anchorites. The Blind Cathar maintains control over the Chapel, the source of the Anchorites' power, and allows them to prolong their immortality by feeding on mortals.]]
** [[spoiler: It's heavily implied that the Blind Cathar is still conscious and knows what it's doing. It could even be considered as the novel's true BigBad with the rest of the Anchorites acting as TheHeavy.]]

* [[InHarmsWay In Harm's Way]]: Ed, who feels intensely alive when working as a {{foreign correspondent}} in Baghdad. He eventually realizes to his dismay that he's become addicted to the adrenaline rush of life in war zones.

* {{Ladykiller in Love}}: Hugo, briefly, when he encounters [[spoiler: Holly at the ski resort. This doesn't last long, though, as he chooses to join the Anchorites rather than stay with her.]]
** That said, the climax of part 5 suggests that [[spoiler: he still had feelings for her, on some level at least, and that this might well have saved Holly in the labyrinth.]]

* PaedoHunt: Ed suspects Dwight Silverwind of pedophilia after the latter tries to tell her fortune. [[spoiler: Turns out he only sought out Aoife because he's an Horologist.]]
** Ed himself is hit with this accusation when he grabs another man's daughter, mistaking her for Aoife.

--> '''Holly''': ''You have to be bloody joking.''

* YourCheatingHeart: [[spoiler: Holly catches Vincent Costello in bed with her best friend.]]

** DragonTheirFeet: [[spoiler: Outlives her boss and fellow Achorites by short span before meeting her end at Holly's hands.]]

* {{Paedo Hunt}}: Ed suspects Dwight Silverwind of pedophilia after the latter tries to tell her fortune. [[spoiler: Turns out he only sought out Aoife because he's an Horologist.]]

* ThePromise: Holly accepting the tea from [[spoiler:Esther Little]] on the hot day in 1984 came at the promise of "a bolthole." More than 40 years later, Holly finds out what that meant.
--> '''Holly''': ''You have to be bloody joking.''
* {{The Verse}}: There are many subtle references to the rest of Mitchell's books, allowing all of them to plausibly fit into the same universe.

** Hershey's story "The Voorman Problem" features in one of Eiji Miyake's fantasies in the first section of ''number9dream''.

** Marinus appears in ''Literature/TheThousandAutumnsOfJacobDeZoet'', as does a relative of Jonny Penhaligon.

* WriteWhoYouKnow: InUniverse, Richard Cheeseman (rather blatantly) bases a character in his novel on Jonny Penhaligon.

* CriticalResearchFailure: It's virtually impossible for a peasant girl in the 19th century Russia to be named Klara. Klara was a name reserved exclusively for nobility, and even among them it wasn't common. And "Koskov" isn't an existing Russian last name.

* BlondesAreEvil: Miss Constantin, a platinum-blond Anchorite who literally drinks souls to stay alive.

[[quoteright:317:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/boneclocks.jpg]]

* {{The Verse}}: There are many subtle references to other works by Mitchell, allowing all of them to plausibly fit into the same universe.

** Elijah d'Arnoq appears early in Adam Ewing's section of ''Literature/CloudAtlas'' as the leading member of a small chapel on Chatham Isle.

The sixth novel by David Mitchell, author of ''Literature/CloudAtlas'', ''The Bone Clocks'' was published in 2014 and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Like a number of Mitchell's other works, it plays with different genres, and features story lines which cross and re-cross over time. ''The Bone Clocks'' consists of six sections, each set several years after the previous one, and narrated by a different character. The sweeping epic thus created is focused on the life of one Holly Sykes. It begins in the 1980s, when she is a rebellious teenager in Gravesend, England, and ends with her struggle to care for her family in a pre-apocalyptic near-future.

* {{The Casanova}}: Hugo's charm, good looks, and skill at manipulation make him very successful with the ladies. He eschews emotional attachments, however, and doesn't believe in love. Until he meets [[spoiler: Holly]], that is.
* {{Disproportionate Retribution}}: [[spoiler: Hershey]] plants traces of cocaine in [[spoiler: Richard Cheeseman]]'s suitcase to get revenge for a bad review. He naively expects this to cause little more than an embarrassing inconvenience for the critic, but [[spoiler: Cheeseman ends up spending several years in a Colombian jail.]] To be fair, [[spoiler: Hershey]] is racked with guilt over this incident.
* {{Driven to Suicide}}: Quite literally, in the case of [[spoiler: Johnny Penhaligon.]]
* {{Evil is Sexy}}: Miss. Constantin, particularly through Hugo's eyes.
* {{Foreign Correspondent}}

* [[InHarmsWay In Harm's Way]]: Ed, who feels intensely alive when working as a {{foreign correspondent}} in Baghdad, eventually realizing that he's become addicted to the adrenaline rush of life in war zones.

* {{Miss Conception}}: Resulting in the {{teen pregnancy}} mentioned below.
* {{Paedo Hunt}}: Ed suspects Dwight Silverwind of pedophilia, [[spoiler: but this proves not to be true.]]

* SelfDeprecation: Much like ''Cloud Atlas'', there's a book-within-a-book (written by Hershey) with a similar plot. Cheeseman gives it a scathing review, singling out the juxtaposition of a fantasy subplot with "state-of-the-world pretensions".

* {{The Sociopath}}: Hugo Lamb is the ultimate example of this trope, and well aware that anyone who knew his actual thoughts would call him such. He's [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Pride arrogant]], and [[TheUnfettered utterly unscrupulous]]. [[spoiler: Perfect Anchorite material, as it turns out.]]

* {{The Verse}}: There are probably many subtle references to other works by Mitchell, but here are a few of the most obvious:
** Marinus appears in ''Literature/TheThousandAutumnsOfJacobDeZoet'', as does a relative of Johnny Penhaligon
** Elijah d'Arnoq is in Adam Ewing's section of ''Literature/CloudAtlas''
** Mo Muntervary, Holly's neighbor in the final section, is one of the narrators of Mitchell's first novel,''Ghostwritten''
** Hugo Lamb appears in ''Black Swan Green'' as a boy, as the protagonist's cousin
** Hershey's story "The Voorman Problem" features in one of Eiji Miyake's fantasies in the first section of ''number9dream''
** Marinus mentions that he and the other Atemporals are putting together a think tank, and calling themselves "Prescients," the same name of the technologically advanced group seen {{After The End}} in ''Literature/CloudAtlas''.
* {{Write What You Know}}: Thoroughly averted through most of the novel, but used ingeniously in the Crispin Hershey section. Hershey is a celebrated writer, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the author. But Mitchell takes this one step further, as Hershey's latest novel features a writer character with striking similarities to Hershey himself, though he denies this. In fact, Hershey seems to have written a story much like ''The Bone Clocks''. Hershey's bestselling novel, Desiccated Embryos, which sometimes seems to be the only thing he's known for, has similarities with ''Literature/CloudAtlas''. It's described as having a mirrored structure, just like Mitchell's own bestselling novel that he'll likely always be known best for. See any similarities?

* {{Write What You Know}}: Thoroughly averted through most of the novel, but used ingeniously in the Crispin Hershey section. Hershey is a celebrated writer, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the author. But Mitchell takes this one step further, as Hershey's latest novel features a writer character with striking similarities to Hershey himself, though he denies this. In fact, Hershey seems to have written a story much like ''The Bone Clocks''. Cue {{Mind Screw}}.

* {{The Sociopath}}: Hugo Lamb is the ultimate example of this trope. He's [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Pride arrogant]], and [[TheUnfettered utterly unscrupulous]]. [[spoiler: Perfect Anchorite material, as it turns out.]]

* {{In Harm's Way}}: Ed, who feels intensely alive when working as a {{foreign correspondent}} in Baghdad, eventually realizing that he's become addicted to the adrenaline rush of life in war zones.

The sixth novel by David Mitchell, author of ''Cloud Atlas'', ''The Bone Clocks'' was published in 2014 and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Like a number of Mitchell's other works, it plays with different genres, and features story lines which cross and re-cross over time. ''The Bone Clocks'' consists of six sections, each set several years after the previous one, and narrated by a different character. The sweeping epic thus created is focused on the life of one Holly Sykes. It begins in the 1980s, when she is a rebellious teenager in Gravesend, England, and ends with her struggle to care for her family in a pre-apocalyptic near-future.

* {{The Sociopath}}: Hugo Lamb is the ultimate example of this trope. He's [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], [[Pride arrogant]], and [[TheUnfettered utterly unscrupulous]]. [[spoiler: Perfect Anchorite material, as it turns out.]]

* {{Write What You Know}}: Thoroughly averted through most of the novel, but used ingeniously in the Crispin Hershey section. Hershey is a celebrated writer, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the author. But Mitchell takes this one step further, as Hershey's latest novel features a writer character with striking similarities to Hershey himself.

The sixth novel by David Mitchell, author of ''Cloud Atlas'', ''The Bone Clocks'' was published in 2014 and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Like a number of Mitchell's other works, it plays with different genres, and features story lines which cross and re-cross over time. ''The Bone Clocks'' consists of six sections, each set several years after the previous one, and narrated by a different character. The sweeping epic thus created is focused on the life of one Holly Sykes. It begins in the 1980s, when she is a rebellious teenager in Gravesend, England, and ends with her struggle to care for her family in a pre-apocalyptic near-future.