Review: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

I’m often asked, by people who only read the Spark Notes of books for school, why I read so much.  The very deep and soul-probing answer I typically come up with is: “It’s interesting.”

So why do I read these “interesting” things?  Reading may be interesting, but so are black holes and antique fairs, in my opinion.  As for why people read, I believe that at the most simplistic core of the matter, people read either for entertainment or for knowledge.  Fiction or Nonfiction, Romance or History.  When you can get two in one- or all three, if we still count “interesting” as a category- it becomes the type of book I feel free recommending in blanket statements.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell was such a book.  It is clearly fiction, but the historical setting has been finely researched.  I learned quite a bit about late 17- early 1800s Japan and the Dutch East Indies Company without the tedium that comes in a textbook.  The entertainment value is also high- not simply entertaining for those who enjoy the tricks and creativity put into Cloud Atlas and Number9Dream, The Thousand Autumns runs on plot.  It is gripping without seeming rushed, and involves many events without losing great writing.

When I described to friends the book Cloud Atlas (which I loved and wished I could have recommended to more people), it sounded like this: “well its six stories and a mirror, and the stories break off in the middle and then there are recurring themes and each story is really really different.”  It’s true, but it doesn’t describe the book any more than saying it has a front a back and a middle does.  The Thousand Autumns can be described by plot, although it likewise doesn’t capture all of the great writing Mitchell has put into it.  The Thousand Autumns is actually rather traditional.

A Dutch East Indies trading ship has come to Edo-era Japan, with the scrupulous Jacob de Zoet as the clerk assigned to right the company wrongs.  These wrongs, as de Zoet soon learns, are as much the result of greedy Dutchmen as greedy Japanese, and he is left behind in Dejima as the ship on which he arrived sets sail without him.  While in Japan, he falls in love, befriends a doctor, and clandestinely learns Japanese.  And while this is going on, there is a draconian shrine of evil monks, a war between Britain and the Netherlands, and a lot of shady deals and culture clashes.

Many characters are described either through backstory, internal monologues, or through their relationship to another character.  Most interesting are de Zoet, who has come aboard to make a name for himself so that he may marry a girl back in Zeeland; Orito Aibagawa, the samurai’s daughter and midwife studying Dutch medicine; and Ogawa Uzaemon, a skilled Dutch interpreter for the Japanese.  David Mitchell’s writing is adroit in keeping the reader wanting more facts while dazzling with descriptions.  Quite often, we get what the character thinks in alternating lines to what the character sees or hears:

“From a doorway comes a funerary mantra and tendril of incense.

Shuzai is expecting me for sword practice, Uzaemon remembers…

A heavily pregnant girl at a crossroads is selling pig-fat candles

… but to pass out twice in one day would start unhelpful rumors.

Uzaemon bids Yohei buy ten candles; the girl has cataracts in both eyes.

The candle seller thanks her customer.  Master and servant continue climbing.

Through a window, a man shouts, “I curse the day I married!””

This technique is used seamlessly in some instances or purposefully jarring in others.  One passage alternates a young man’s poetic thoughts on Japan’s horizon with another man releasing his bowels into the ocean.

Why am I reviewing a book that came out last year?  Because The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is Literature with plot.  September begins next week, and the concept of beach reading packed up with the folding chairs, but this is the book I wish people brought to the beach.  Its fun to read something you can get lost in while you’re on a vacation from the realities and trivialities of life.  And so often this means genre fiction because what’s housed in bookstores as Literature is not meant to be lost in.  When we’re kids, What Is This Book About is all that matters, but as I spend more time analyzing literature in school What Does This Book Mean and How Does It Use Schemes and Tropes takes over.  Literature can challenge our way of thinking and use words creatively.  These are fine goals and these should be pursued.  But sometimes we just need to be told a story.  We don’t need our worldview challenged; we want to get lost in a story that is well-written, moves in great place, is spun up in creativity and doused in history.  And as the months get colder and you feel pressured to read Anna Karenina to repent for the Sophie Kinsella you read down the shore, split the difference and get The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

by Danielle Bukowski