David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a weird book. It's not a bad book, per se, but it does require that the reader suspend rational thought a bit and simply embrace the story.
So: Jacob de Zoet signs on with the Dutch East India Company to earn his fortune and, he hopes, the hand of his beloved Anna back in the Netherlands. He arrives in the strange world that is Dejima in 1799 for what he anticipates will be a relatively short stint; through the corrupt dealings of the highest ranking officers, Jacob ends up more or less marooned on the tiny island that is the foreign trading post adjacent to Nagasaki (they are in fact connected by a closely-guarded and tightly-controlled land bridge).
On Dejima, Jacob's path will intersect with any number of characters, both Dutch and Japanese, from the wily cook and gruff doctor, to interpreters who may also be spies and the mysterious, badly disfigured midwife who captures Jacob's imagination almost immediately. Ultimately, he uncovers a dangerous secret implicating one of the most powerful - and dangerous - men in Nagasaki.
As I said, not bad, just improbable. Like, really, really improbable. (But perhaps no more improbable than the ship-wrecked Blackthorne/Anjin-san becoming a daimyo. Nevertheless, there was just too much here that was too improbable for me to really love this book. From the scene that allows Jacob (who is a sympathetic character, by the way, and one who's easy to like) to earn the trust of the magistrate to the secret shrine to the final resolution...well, bizarre might just be the best word for it.
Three-and-a-half stars.
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