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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
I just want to come off the bat and say this book is not a bad book by any means. I can see why so many people love it. It is well written, I love the language and use of metaphors and description. The core plot that follows the protagonist Eiji is one that everyone will be able to relate to somehow or at least recognise. Many of the side characters are lovable or interesting, and many of these characters show growth throughout the book (and I love that that attention is not only reserved for the main few). The reason I only gave this two stars is because it is a book where, if you want to really understand it and get all the nuanced meanings behind it, it felt like I needed to be following a study guide at the same time. I love books that bend reality and make you think - I cherish them - but with number9dream it just felt like I had to try too hard. Maybe one day I'll re-read it and like it more, and maybe I was just in the wrong mood. I guess I'll find out one day.
I never expected to be rating a David Mitchell book this low but it is what it is. The writing here is still masterful and Mitchell made me feel a lot of emotions. I really adored all the meta-writings so the goatwriter parts and the voorman problem were brilliant and many quotes and dialogues still hit me because of how beautifully they are written. Unfortunately the narrative is not well set up and reading it was highly frustrating at times because it was repetitive without a satisfying conclusion or effect and the resolution left much to be desired. Overall not recommended as the first Mitchell book you pick up because getting through it really requires some sort of trust in the author and in the end this book is not really a satisfying reading experience it terms of plot and character development.
dropped 149p in (3/7 chapters finished)
+ stylistically incredible. lots of clever prose, writing feels alive, visceral. tried keeping track of my favourite turns of phrase at first but quickly lost track!
+ interesting premise and execution
+ anju my love
- this is more of a me problem than an objective flaw of the book, but ultimately my weak attention span could not handle the surreal plot nor the dense, run-on scenarios the book flings at you non-stop. found myself getting frustrated every 5 minutes having to reread sections just to process what was happening. again: this is more of a personal issue!
- did NOT vibe with Mitchell's dialogue or sense of humour. ymmv but I wanted to throttle eiji. the quirky one-liners and tangents did not agree with me
- imo the japanese setting felt like more of a one-dimensional ~funky futuristic~ backdrop than a properly lived-in environment. neither the characters' values nor their mannerisms or interactions matched up with the cultural setting. a lot of people compare number9dream to murakamis works, but I'd say this is actually the biggest thing that sets them apart: murakamis books are massively entrenched in Japanese culture, number9dream is not.
might be an overly critical explanation for a book I dropped so early on. highly encourage anyone reading this to dip their toes in, anyway-- I'm sure its polarising nature means many others will enjoy it much more than I did!
+ stylistically incredible. lots of clever prose, writing feels alive, visceral. tried keeping track of my favourite turns of phrase at first but quickly lost track!
+ interesting premise and execution
+ anju my love
- this is more of a me problem than an objective flaw of the book, but ultimately my weak attention span could not handle the surreal plot nor the dense, run-on scenarios the book flings at you non-stop. found myself getting frustrated every 5 minutes having to reread sections just to process what was happening. again: this is more of a personal issue!
- did NOT vibe with Mitchell's dialogue or sense of humour. ymmv but I wanted to throttle eiji. the quirky one-liners and tangents did not agree with me
- imo the japanese setting felt like more of a one-dimensional ~funky futuristic~ backdrop than a properly lived-in environment. neither the characters' values nor their mannerisms or interactions matched up with the cultural setting. a lot of people compare number9dream to murakamis works, but I'd say this is actually the biggest thing that sets them apart: murakamis books are massively entrenched in Japanese culture, number9dream is not.
might be an overly critical explanation for a book I dropped so early on. highly encourage anyone reading this to dip their toes in, anyway-- I'm sure its polarising nature means many others will enjoy it much more than I did!
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A very trippy but enjoyable ride. It was really an interesting book that shows David Mitchell's experience and observation of life in Tokyo front and center. The only think I didn't like was the [vague spoiler for middle of the book] Yakuza plotline, which felt very unrealistic and action movie-like. Ultimately, though, I loved this book.
Edit: Coming back about a month later to bump this review up to 5/5 (it was 4.5). On later thought I really loved it and the characters and imagery have really stuck with me.
Edit: Coming back about a month later to bump this review up to 5/5 (it was 4.5). On later thought I really loved it and the characters and imagery have really stuck with me.
http://www.danscanon.com/2020/04/number9dream-by-david-mitchell.html
I like the idea that an author’s personal travels are reflected in their writing. You can know nothing about Hemingway’s life and still know, from reading his stories, that he travelled to continental Europe, East Africa, the Caribbean and the upper Midwest – and apparently nowhere else. Similarly, David Mitchell’s novels are largely focused on East Asia, as he spent nearly a decade working in Japan as an English teacher. On the other end of the spectrum is Stephen King, who sets virtually everything in his home state. I hope that my own works one day reveal a rich history of globetrotting.
Number9dream, Mitchell’s second novel, takes place entirely in Japan as 19-year old Eiji Miyake travels from his sleepy island home to seek out his long-lost father in Tokyo. This is one of those time-honoured stories about a young man hitting the road with nothing but a guitar case and ten bucks in his pocket, taking a series of crummy jobs and sleeping in a tiny rented room, gradually networking his way through the grand adventure that is life, making friends and falling in love. These stories are always overly romanticised, but I’m a young man myself and I’d be lying if I said they don’t appeal to me.
This novel is something more than that, fortunately, because it is written by David Mitchell, a god among men. Number9dream takes us on a beautifully evocative tour of the gigantic, incomprehensible sweep of Tokyo, the subways and teahouses and love hotels and construction sites, the hackers and gangsters and lawyers and pizza delivery boys. Not only that, but this is a book about dreams and fantasies, the power of the imagination, and Mitchell mixes this in to make a dazzling, fantastic narrative where what is real and what is not are not always distinct.
There are other stories mixed in as Eiji navigates his way through Tokyo. Memories of his childhood on an idyllic island, which reminded me strongly of both a Miyazaki film and Final Fantasy X (with a sports team taking a ferry to another island for a tournament, come on). Bizarre and poetic stories featuring a fairytale character called Goatwriter, perused by Eiji as he sits in an attic. The journal of his great-uncle, a kaiten pilot in World War II. It’s not as pronounced as in Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas, but Mitchell’s talent for voices emerges once again. There are also, as always, some nice links with his other works, in this case a character and a secret government facility from Ghostwritten.
The only problem I had with this book was the story thread in which Eiji falls in with the Yakuza, which I thought was unrealistic, even for a Mitchell novel. Mitchell likes to push all our buttons at once. He wants to write profound literary fiction dripping with beautiful prose, he wants to write about slice-of-life journeys of discovery, and he wants to write about Yakuza gunfights and satellite weapons and post-apocalyptic wastelands. In novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, consisting of distinct narratives where these conflicting urges can be safely filed away in separate drawers, this works a charm. In Number9dream, not so much. Eiji goes from spending an evening with a Yakuza grandmaster, watching men get gunned down and cars explode as though he’s a character in Grand Theft Auto, to sitting in his apartment on a hot summer night ruminating on the mysteries of life with his girlfriend. The Yakuza chapters are brilliant, they just don’t fit with the rest of the book at all. Similarly, I found the Goatwriter stories to be tedious, and the great-uncle’s WWII journal to be surprisingly mediocre for such a rich opportunity.
On the whole, Number9dream was better than Ghostwritten, but not quite as good as Cloud Atlas or Black Swan Green. It’s still an amazing, awesome trip through a fascinating world with a gifted author as a guide, always readable, always intriguing, every page covered with beautiful sentences and paragraphs. I discovered David Mitchell at the beginning of this year, reading Cloud Atlas in Japan; now, on the last day of the year, I’ve finished reading his collected works and he has become my favourite author. How appropriately cyclical. Happy New Year!
P.S. Reading a few other reviews I’ve come across the notion that Mitchell is “looting” from Haruki Murakami. While this book clearly owes a debt to the tone and themes of Murakami’s works, David Mitchell is one of the greatest writers of his generation, whereas Haruki Murakami is one of the worst. Point, match, Britain.
Number9dream, Mitchell’s second novel, takes place entirely in Japan as 19-year old Eiji Miyake travels from his sleepy island home to seek out his long-lost father in Tokyo. This is one of those time-honoured stories about a young man hitting the road with nothing but a guitar case and ten bucks in his pocket, taking a series of crummy jobs and sleeping in a tiny rented room, gradually networking his way through the grand adventure that is life, making friends and falling in love. These stories are always overly romanticised, but I’m a young man myself and I’d be lying if I said they don’t appeal to me.
This novel is something more than that, fortunately, because it is written by David Mitchell, a god among men. Number9dream takes us on a beautifully evocative tour of the gigantic, incomprehensible sweep of Tokyo, the subways and teahouses and love hotels and construction sites, the hackers and gangsters and lawyers and pizza delivery boys. Not only that, but this is a book about dreams and fantasies, the power of the imagination, and Mitchell mixes this in to make a dazzling, fantastic narrative where what is real and what is not are not always distinct.
There are other stories mixed in as Eiji navigates his way through Tokyo. Memories of his childhood on an idyllic island, which reminded me strongly of both a Miyazaki film and Final Fantasy X (with a sports team taking a ferry to another island for a tournament, come on). Bizarre and poetic stories featuring a fairytale character called Goatwriter, perused by Eiji as he sits in an attic. The journal of his great-uncle, a kaiten pilot in World War II. It’s not as pronounced as in Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas, but Mitchell’s talent for voices emerges once again. There are also, as always, some nice links with his other works, in this case a character and a secret government facility from Ghostwritten.
The only problem I had with this book was the story thread in which Eiji falls in with the Yakuza, which I thought was unrealistic, even for a Mitchell novel. Mitchell likes to push all our buttons at once. He wants to write profound literary fiction dripping with beautiful prose, he wants to write about slice-of-life journeys of discovery, and he wants to write about Yakuza gunfights and satellite weapons and post-apocalyptic wastelands. In novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, consisting of distinct narratives where these conflicting urges can be safely filed away in separate drawers, this works a charm. In Number9dream, not so much. Eiji goes from spending an evening with a Yakuza grandmaster, watching men get gunned down and cars explode as though he’s a character in Grand Theft Auto, to sitting in his apartment on a hot summer night ruminating on the mysteries of life with his girlfriend. The Yakuza chapters are brilliant, they just don’t fit with the rest of the book at all. Similarly, I found the Goatwriter stories to be tedious, and the great-uncle’s WWII journal to be surprisingly mediocre for such a rich opportunity.
On the whole, Number9dream was better than Ghostwritten, but not quite as good as Cloud Atlas or Black Swan Green. It’s still an amazing, awesome trip through a fascinating world with a gifted author as a guide, always readable, always intriguing, every page covered with beautiful sentences and paragraphs. I discovered David Mitchell at the beginning of this year, reading Cloud Atlas in Japan; now, on the last day of the year, I’ve finished reading his collected works and he has become my favourite author. How appropriately cyclical. Happy New Year!
P.S. Reading a few other reviews I’ve come across the notion that Mitchell is “looting” from Haruki Murakami. While this book clearly owes a debt to the tone and themes of Murakami’s works, David Mitchell is one of the greatest writers of his generation, whereas Haruki Murakami is one of the worst. Point, match, Britain.
4 or 5 stars, well done David Mitchell, I do not like your books but you pulled it together here. It isn't Murakami as it's not contemplative but it's fast, sad and the protagonist is a wonderful character. I really loved the story actually even though it got a bit mad in parts. I can see that the switching between imagination and reality would annoy some but I liked it, it was different. I think the comparison to Murakami can only be limited to Tokyo. The book is realism so I don't know why it's marked as magic realism. I'd read it again for sure and if Mitchell could pull himself in and write like this all the time I'd be in.
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes