I have loved all of David Mitchell's previous books, especially Black Swan Green, Number9Dream, and, of course, Cloud Atlas. The Bone Clocks, though... when I finished it last night, I immediately texted a friend who'd also read it with, "Am I an idiot? Did I just not get this?" So, if you've read it, please talk to me about it. Here's some points to start the discussion:

• Holly's character -- she has two character traits: she loves her family and isn't very educated. Is there anything else to her? She felt like a paper-thin character to

• The supernatural plot -- Mitchell always puts some supernatural into his stories, but unlike in, say, Thousand Autumns, this one felt particularly tacked on and unimportant -- and even absent from the last section. I just never felt any urgency about it.

• Which section did you find most compelling? For me, it was Hugo Lamb, and his ending later in the book was incredibly disappointing, because it felt like he had enough complexity and interesting traits to actually carry the book somewhere; I kept hoping for a dramatic reappearance and it never really came.

• What were your general feelings? I never had a sense of this novel going anywhere and the writing wasn't compelling enough to spur me on the journey anyway.

That being said, there was some beautiful writing.