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jwmcoaching 's review for:
Number9dream
by David Mitchell
Well, shit... This was problematic. I would consider myself a Mitchellite (I've now read all of his novels and think he's a genius), but this was a mess. Mitchell's prose is as great as ever and this seems so authentic that you would be forgiven for thinking this was written by an actual Japanese writer. However, this happens to be problem #1: this reads so much like Murakami that it's less of an homage and feels more like a copy. I kept forgetting as I read that Mitchell even wrote this.
My #2 problem is that there's just too much plot. Yes, even more than Cloud Atlas or Ghostwritten. Maybe even more than both of those combined. The plot is broken into nine sections, but then each of those have two or three tangents within each one. After awhile, it's just too much. You can only care about so many yakuza, kamikazes and pimply geeks.
Not surprisingly, there were several points during this that I figured I would give it two stars, but, by the end, even with all of the problems, I still liked it enough to do three. It's my second least favorite Mitchell (after Slade House), but he's such a damn good writer that I guess I just couldn't resist.
My #2 problem is that there's just too much plot. Yes, even more than Cloud Atlas or Ghostwritten. Maybe even more than both of those combined. The plot is broken into nine sections, but then each of those have two or three tangents within each one. After awhile, it's just too much. You can only care about so many yakuza, kamikazes and pimply geeks.
Not surprisingly, there were several points during this that I figured I would give it two stars, but, by the end, even with all of the problems, I still liked it enough to do three. It's my second least favorite Mitchell (after Slade House), but he's such a damn good writer that I guess I just couldn't resist.