saerryc 's review for:

Number9dream by David Mitchell

4.0

---

This was the first time in a while I’ve gone to the library and just picked something up without a plan, without researching beforehand, and it was weirdly exciting in that regard. This is a magic realism (but of the type that spends very long stretches as nonmagic literary fiction, mob thriller, and other stuff in between the parts that make you go “oh, this is definitely magic realism”) coming-of-age story about a young man who goes to Tokyo searching for the father he’s never met, whose name he doesn’t even know. I found Mitchell’s structural experiments hit-or-miss as usual, but I liked how this played around with the lines between dream and reality, and I found the hapless, maybe-cursed-by-a-vengeful-god protagonist increasingly endearing as the story went on, so I’d say it ended up being successful overall, though it did have a bit of a “fuck you” ending.