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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
When I was twenty years old, I left the region of my rustic childhood home to live in a tiny apartment in the big city, scraping by on menial work and searching for meaning in my existence, while others my age were going to college. By and by, I found the love of my life. So maybe I didn't have the tragic history of Eiji Miyake - hero and narrator of David Mitchell's second novel - but thematic elements were eerily familiar.
Eiji is also obsessed with the music of John Lennon. To employ his kind of analogy, 'Number9Dream' is to 'Revolver' as 'Cloud Atlas' is to 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's not as mind-boggingly ambitious as its follow-up, but it's as innovative and agile in its own fashion. Each of the eight chapters in Eiji's quest to find his biological father in Tokyo has its own distinct shape and style, allowing Mitchell's formidable storytelling skills to flourish. You've got your ultra-violent yakuza, love hotel debauchery, a 'Phantom Tollbooth'-like children's book-within-a-book, WWII journals, and more.
My few nitpicks: some too-neat plotting and an excess of cutesy sardonic dialogue from even the most minor characters. Also the problems of writing English dialogue for a foreign setting without sounding too stilted or too Western, but that's tough to avoid.
With that out of the way, 'Number9Dream' is a lovely, hilarious, gross, psychedelic, romantic story of Japan with one of my favorite narrators in some time. Murakami's masterpiece 'Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' gets a brief shout-out, and fans of that book will find a lot to adore here.
Eiji is also obsessed with the music of John Lennon. To employ his kind of analogy, 'Number9Dream' is to 'Revolver' as 'Cloud Atlas' is to 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's not as mind-boggingly ambitious as its follow-up, but it's as innovative and agile in its own fashion. Each of the eight chapters in Eiji's quest to find his biological father in Tokyo has its own distinct shape and style, allowing Mitchell's formidable storytelling skills to flourish. You've got your ultra-violent yakuza, love hotel debauchery, a 'Phantom Tollbooth'-like children's book-within-a-book, WWII journals, and more.
My few nitpicks: some too-neat plotting and an excess of cutesy sardonic dialogue from even the most minor characters. Also the problems of writing English dialogue for a foreign setting without sounding too stilted or too Western, but that's tough to avoid.
With that out of the way, 'Number9Dream' is a lovely, hilarious, gross, psychedelic, romantic story of Japan with one of my favorite narrators in some time. Murakami's masterpiece 'Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' gets a brief shout-out, and fans of that book will find a lot to adore here.
number9dream is more like a nightmare that you have after you eat too much cheese: kinda weird, a little uncomfortable, a little scary, but you'll forget all about it by the time you eat breakfast. It also reminds me a hell of a lot of [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1285812707p2/3354.jpg]'s style. Is it a coincidence that at the end of the book Mitchell compared the songs "#9dream" and "Norwegian Wood"? Hmmmm.
meh. imo, this is far and away a book for boys.
I enjoyed some of the action-movie-like sections, and how it got sort of surreal in parts. but overall i think Mitchell had a higher concept to do w/ #s and coincidence vs. fate, which didn't work for me. maybe i would have had a diff opinion if i finished it, but it was dragging on and i was bored, so i ditched about half way through. i still love david mitchell, tho, and plan to check out his other books.
I enjoyed some of the action-movie-like sections, and how it got sort of surreal in parts. but overall i think Mitchell had a higher concept to do w/ #s and coincidence vs. fate, which didn't work for me. maybe i would have had a diff opinion if i finished it, but it was dragging on and i was bored, so i ditched about half way through. i still love david mitchell, tho, and plan to check out his other books.
This is a totally wild, trippy, soaring ride. Eiji Miyake, about to turn twenty, comes to Tokyo from his small island home to find his father, and his journey, in dreams and reality, brings him into contact with yakuza, hackers, video games, the Ueno Station lost property office and a waitress with a perfect neck. It's moving, funny, violent, surreal, atmospheric and wonderful.
A book about finding purpose, about a country bumpkin losing himself in Tokyo, about family, about reality and fiction, about unfortunate run-ins with the yakuza. It sounds like something that would be incoherent and trippy, but it really isn't. Each chapter weaves the main story together with some other thread, be it a series of daydreams or the protagonist's flashbacks or a WWII-era journal. But at the same time, David Mitchell manages to write (unlike his other books that I've read) a fairly linear story with one protagonist, which is saying something given the author.
There *is* a lot going on in this book, and I feel like I would need to give it multiple reads (plus maybe familiarize myself with more of the John Lennon discography?) to appreciate all of its layers , but I found it very satisfying all the same. As always, Mitchell's a great stylist, bringing characters and Tokyo to life and crafting an enticing twisting-and-turning story along the way.
There *is* a lot going on in this book, and I feel like I would need to give it multiple reads (plus maybe familiarize myself with more of the John Lennon discography?) to appreciate all of its layers , but I found it very satisfying all the same. As always, Mitchell's a great stylist, bringing characters and Tokyo to life and crafting an enticing twisting-and-turning story along the way.
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Just finished this book, speechless. Mitchell is the greatest living fiction writer I know of.