Imagine a nation banishing the outside world for two centuries, crushing all vestiges of Christianity, forbidding its subjects to leave its shores on pain of death, and harbouring a deep mistrust of European ideas. The narrow window onto this nation-fortress is a walled, artificial island attached to the mainland port and manned by a handful of traders. Locked as the land-gate may be, however, it cannot prevent the meeting of minds -- or hearts. The nation was Japan, the port was Nagasaki and the island was Dejima, to where David Mitchell's panoramic novel transports us in the year 1799. For one young Dutch clerk, Jacob de Zoet, a strage adventure of duplicity, love, guilt, faith and murder is about to begin -- and all the while, unbeknownst to the men confined on Dejima, the axis of global power is turning...
I was really looking forward to reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet but the book didn't turn out to be what I was expecting. The first chapter is engaging and if the book had carried on in the same style it would have been fabulous. The second chapter to roughly 100-odd pages in was laborious and very slow reading. There are multiple Dutch and Japanese characters and these characters are called different things depending on who is talking to who. Several paragraphs needed re-reading to get some understanding. It all makes for a very confusing read and the experience only improves as the number of new characters introduced becomes less.
The middle section of the book focuses on the character Orito and is much more enjoyable with the story engaging and compelling. I wish the book was the The Thousand Autumns of Orito Abigawa; it would have been much better! The story is much more focussed and interesting. The ending section goes back to Jacob de Zoet but I didn't find it particularly compelling. More characters are introduced while the story of Orito takes a backseat and is only included very briefly towards the end.
The cultural setting of Japan and the unusual trade 'island' of Dejima was an interesting back-drop. Mitchell has obviously researched the detail of the setting meticulously but I did feel he was trying to achieve too much. Jacob is a prominent character in the first and last third (or so) of the book but much less so in the large middle section. Some threads of the story were not completed. I felt that a large portion of Jacob's life in Dejima was not fully explored and wondered what his experiences were.
This book does need to come with an advisory warning - it probably should not be read by pregnant women or women with young babies. Parts of the book refers to childbirth and could be upsetting.
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