The Bone Clocks: A Novel

“The Dusk follows you as you go through it. If it touches you, you cease to exist, so one wrong turn down a dead end, that’s the end of you. That’s why you have to learn the labyrinth by heart.

“On to the final page, now, Brigadier. ‘By all that’s wonderful it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself—or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here—you all had something out of life: money, love—whatever one gets on shore—and, tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives noth

ERNARD KRIEBEL PHILATELY

All the strength drains from my legs and arms, like I’m a puppet with its strings cut, pushed into the corner.

The girl in the mirror’s a woman, with her cropped black hair, her Quadrophenia T-shirt, her black jeans.

For the Vinny Costellos of the world, love is bullshit they murmur into your ear to get sex. For girls—me, anyway—sex is what you do on page one to get to the love that’s later on in the book.

“Agreed, Ersilia. A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardize your relationships, and distend your life. You have been warned.” My ten postgrads look sober.

BACK AT CHETWYND-PITT’S chalet, floating in the tub, Nirvana’s Nevermind thumping through the walls, I smoke a joint among the steam serpents and peruse the Case of the Body-Hopping Mind for the thousandth time. The facts are deceptively simple: Six nights ago, outside my parents’ home, I encountered one mind in possession of someone else’s body. W

Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose. Halve your adverbs and your prose pumps twice as well.