A novel never really ends for Mitchell, who’s said he likes “digging tunnels between books.” One of the key characters in Cloud Atlas turns up here, a half-century later, an eccentric crone of a mentor. Mitchell’s always leaving clues to a larger world, even amid the tiniest slice of space and time. Wherever he goes next (he’s mentioned a “Dutch-Japanese historical novel”), it will still seem part of his universe, and—thanks to his talent and compassion—a part of our own as well.

Black Swan Green
By David Mitchell. Random House. 304 Pages.

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