A review by rbreade
Number9dream by David Mitchell

challenging funny reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

 This tale of Eiji Miyake's search through Tokyo for the father who walked out on him, his sister, and their mother years ago was not quite as compelling for me as some of Mitchell's other novels, but his prose still delivers, and I'll always show up for a writer who can spark fireworks in my brain. Where other writers would simply give a solid description of a not-very-good busker, Mitchell gives us, "A street musician sings so off-key that passersby have a civic duty to smash his guitar on his head and relieve him of his coins." Or when Eiki describes a member of the soccer team he played on as a boy, someone by the name of Mitsui who was the favorite of their awful coach, Mitchell gives us this: "Mitsui chews gum, enjoying the taste of despotic favor. He is a gifted and aggressive goalkeeper--it is lucky he lacks the imagination to diversify into playground bullying." And in the lyrical column there is this passage from near the end of the novel, when Eiji reconciles to the fact that his twin sister Anju is long dead and therefore cannot be found: "I dream of a girl, drowning, resigned to her fate now that she knows there is no possibility of being saved by her brother. Her willowy body is passed from current to current, tide to tide, until it has dissolved into pure blue, and I am sorry, but she knows I am sorry, and she wants me to let her go because she does not want me to drown too, which I will if I spend the rest of my life looking for her."