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A review by jacksontibet
Number9dream by David Mitchell
3.0
Having now read all of David Mitchell's novels, number9dream is definitely not my favorite, perhaps my least favorite (although I really liked the first part of Thousand Autumns, the second half was boring and got me out of it) of his books. This isn't to say it's a bad book but it doesn't come close to reaching the heights of Cloud Atlas or Black Swan Green, itself another coming of age tale, but done masterfully and succinctly. number9dream weaves and bobs through a serious of vaguely unbelievable coincidental scenarios, our protagonist rushed through a series of antiquated plot devices to keep the story moving, that is, when we aren't thrown without warning into a dream sequence, a fantasy, a journal entry, or a piece of a short story written by a character who doesn't even appear in the novel. That being said, those short stories were my favorite part of the whole book and I wish they had simply been collected and allowed to play as a piece rather than chopped up piecemeal throughout the fifth (?) section. The whole time, it just feels like Eiji is a character who things happen to, rather than a dynamic sort who makes things happen. It's only at the very end that he actually does something himself, although this may be part of the point given the coming-of-age storyline.
Now, the ending of the story was incredibly abrupt, confusing, and peculiar. If you haven't read the book and you want to then you may not want to keep reading...
By all accounts, the earthquake is not a dream. The parts leading up to it, as Eiji stumbles through his journey from Tokyo to his island home, are told in a sleep-deprived back-and-forth delirium that seems to differentiate reality from dream but by the time the typhoon hits and he's in the little garden shelter house and he's getting a blowjob while the witch lady watches (and this is supposed to not be a dream) I began second-guessing my assumptions. The basic fault I find here is that there isn't enough evidence to know what's real and what isn't, which would provide a satisfying ending. I'm all for ambiguous endings, sure, but to have him make this voyage only to wake up to a devastating news report and (as the book ends) cause him to race back to Tokyo is not very satisfying at all and seems to only indicate that Mitchell couldn't come up with a way to finish the story, so it keeps going, just off the page.
Now, the ending of the story was incredibly abrupt, confusing, and peculiar. If you haven't read the book and you want to then you may not want to keep reading...
By all accounts, the earthquake is not a dream. The parts leading up to it, as Eiji stumbles through his journey from Tokyo to his island home, are told in a sleep-deprived back-and-forth delirium that seems to differentiate reality from dream but by the time the typhoon hits and he's in the little garden shelter house and he's getting a blowjob while the witch lady watches (and this is supposed to not be a dream) I began second-guessing my assumptions. The basic fault I find here is that there isn't enough evidence to know what's real and what isn't, which would provide a satisfying ending. I'm all for ambiguous endings, sure, but to have him make this voyage only to wake up to a devastating news report and (as the book ends) cause him to race back to Tokyo is not very satisfying at all and seems to only indicate that Mitchell couldn't come up with a way to finish the story, so it keeps going, just off the page.