The Guardian also gave an uncertain review. In his earlier books, the disconnect of stories across time and space were fascinatingly and proddingly jarring. "It is a brilliant fairy tale," he said, but that wasn't entirely a good thing: "Even nightingales, as a Russian proverb has it, can't live off fairy tales." Meanwhile, the LA Times socked it to Mitchell: "The narrative is pockmarked with too many meanwhile-back-at-the-temple leaps, and the thread shows too often when Mitchell tries to stitch together the book's set pieces and character studies. No less than Dave Eggers wrote in the New York Times: "It offers innumerable rewards for the patient reader and confirms Mitchell as one of the more fascinating and fearless writers alive." But while James Wood told New Yorker readers, "By any standards, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a formidable marvel," he also had a few doubts. That doesn't entirely fit the critical consensus.
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