the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell (Sceptre, 2010)

An impressively imagined (and researched) historical novel about the intersection of Dutch traders with Japanese culture in Nagasaki circa 1800.  The book is stuffed with character and plot, and much of it is engaging and interesting, but the tone shifts and the uninhabited vacant point of view ultimately distract and irritate the reader, who feels his investment (nearly 500 pages) in the world and these characters is betrayed by a writer who is giddy with his own inventiveness and ambition, and pushes the novel into cartoon/fantasy and dubious linguistic hi-jinks.  A disappointment then, but a compelling and unusual read.