Audio ended up being a poor choice for me in this one. We have multiple first person POVs and I kept missing the points where they changed. It was either "Wait what? When did it change?" or "Did it change again?!?! No." or "Is this someone different? Do I really care?"

Also, accents and pronunciation are important. If your character has a New Zealand, Texas, Irish, or Scottish accent then it really really helps if the narrator can actually do those accents.

The narrator was not good enough to pull this book off and I find that I really regret choosing that option. I'm not sure how well I would have liked the book in written form, or even if it would have been better if I had a hard copy for backup, but I'm sure I would have liked it better in written form.

I have no wish to compete with some of the wonderful reviews that I have just read. What I will say is that I am having a "what the hell happened" moment. Ghostwritten? Who by?

Okay, so first of all: Don't get me wrong, this is a mighty fine book. There's a reason David Mitchell is among my all-time favorite writers, and it's mostly because he does beautiful things with the English language and knows how to tell a story both well and differently. Hell, I even picked up this book as a fictional escape when"Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell" got to be a little too heady and, even though this book is more than twice the size of Huxley's two essays, I wound up finishing it before I even got halfway through "Doors/Heaven." Unfortunately, as much as I hate when other people do it, I couldn't help but compare this to "Cloud Atlas," which is still my favorite of Mitchell's works. "Ghostwritten" is original, dazzling and an impressive first novel, but it just didn't win me over like the later book did.

Unlike the boomeranging technique employed to tell the story in "Cloud Atlas," "Ghostwritten" strings together 10 seemingly unrelated narratives told from nine individual vantage points; like "Cloud Atlas," the voices within "Ghostwritten" are all connected and, when pieced together, tell a much bigger story. And you'd better pay attention to the whole thing, because sometimes those connecting threads are not immediately apparent. Some of the novel's narrators even cross paths, though they are wholly unaware of the importance those casual encounters hold. Mitchell even takes it one step further by taking characters from "Ghostwritten" (Timothy Cavendish, Luisa Rey) and later dropping them into "Cloud Atlas," which adds a hovering sense that something bigger is happening to both novels. The unexpected treat of familiarity made for an enjoyable surprise.

It is pretty interesting to see how the smallest gestures and grandest actions affect each subsequent narrative. There's a reason Mitchell's novels constantly seem to be nominated for this award and that recognition -- he's a great writer who really knows how to craft multidimensional characters. Even if a new voice didn't grab me right away, I found myself completely fascinated by the way Mitchell employed in media res and variations on a theme to make his reader want to keep going. And it simply made for a fun read to see a writer so masterfully force his audience to consider seeing an event or a mindset from myriad perspectives. The whole novel toyed with the idea of right and wrong in ways most writers wouldn't be able to juggle.

I really wish I had read this book first. It's as compelling as it is ambitious, and getting to know its characters is as interesting as they are varied. It's a shame I couldn't force myself to either be more objective or stop comparing it to the poetic brilliance that is "Cloud Atlas." If "Ghostwritten" had been penned by a lesser writer, I'm sure I'd be laying the complimentary superlatives on right thick.

David Mitchell's first novel is a striking and stylized Piece of writing, that lights the fuse and fires off into ten different narratives, globe-trotting from Asia to Europe and back again. Starting with the sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, we would move to a young jazz buff falling in love, a tea shack in a China gripped by the revolution, a spiritual awakening in Mongolia, some dodgy characters involved with art fraud in Petersberg, and a ghost writer in London that lives above a pub.In a complex web of intrigue the stories are linked in some way, but nothing straightforward ever comes into play, leaving the reader pondering, and going back and forth trying to join the dots.
With its high-octane speculations on chance and fate, this is no doubt a novel based on idea's, rather than plot. And with a range of alternative writing styles there is never a dull moment. Profound, moving and lyrical in places, cynical, laughable and cartoonish in others, Mitchell just goes for it, letting his imagination run here, there, and everywhere!.

It's easy to make comparisons with Murakami (especially early on), with the western culture meets eastern culture thing going on, and even Thomas Pynchon, but I never for one minute consider Mitchell to enter with this caliber of company, as just found the whole "oh look at me, my first novel, trying to be clever, I am genius!" somewhat overly pedestrian. Great idea's does not automatically qualify for a great novel. The chapters basically start you off from scratch with people that are difficult to feel anything for, one in particular I wanted to bury alive in a shallow grave, just so annoying!.
Mitchell was treading on thin ice with me from about the half-way point, but there was always a little voice that told me to keep persevering, as in due course you will be rewarded. It did come, but still wondering whether all my frustrations were worth it?. It is at a meta-fictional level that Ghostwritten wobbles all over the place, put bluntly, how much of the pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo that regularly takes place does Mitchell want us to believe? Do I really care - mixing real life scenarios with that of pure gibberish just didn't do it so much for me.

On a plus side though, it was never dull, and considering his age at the time of writing this; and as a debut novel, it is a dazzling one. Had I just gone with it instead of wanting it to be something it wasn't, then maybe I would have enjoyed the experience more.

n  Bettie's Booksn

David Mitchell is just scary-smart. In addition to the prodigious writing talent and amazing imagination, his knowledge of world geography, history and politics, sometimes in places I’ve barely heard of, is impressive, not to mention his apparent understanding of physics, satellite technology, Eastern religion, contemporary music and any number of other subjects. Ghostwritten is the kind of book that is so dense I know that I need to re-read it to fully appreciate what he was trying to do here.

The book is set in a wide variety of locations – from Mongolia to London to New York – with characters just as different: An Irish physicist on the run from the Pentagon; a young record store clerk in Toyko, falling in love; a religious fanatic-terrorist; an art thief moonlighting, conveniently, at the Hermitage; a late-night DJ whose callers couldn’t get any weirder. Strangest of all, we get into the heads of numerous people through a “noncorpum” entity invading the minds of others as it searches for his (her? its?) own roots.

This appears at first glance to be a collection of 10 stories, each connected by references to other’s characters and events. However, as stated on the front page of the book, this is a novel, a fully integrated story in various chapters, which could almost be free-standing stories on their own. Almost, because they are dependent thematically upon their relationship to the whole and would certainly lose part of their value if divorced from it. I don’t believe the weaving of references through and between the wildly disparate tales is a gimmick or just a technique for its own sake, but another expression of Mitchell’s meta-fictional, metaphysical focus on interconnectedness. The world is a web is what I think he wants us to remember. I could be wrong. I do want to indulge in that second reading, which will help me clarify my thoughts on this, but not for a while. Other --though not necessarily better-- books await.

Really happy that I have finally read a David Mitchell book. I think I’m going to try and make my way through all his novels.

I really enjoyed the experience of this book. I can’t put it into words or describe it. It’s something you just have to read. I imagine that this sort of book isn’t going to gel with some people. It’s told in 10 parts each from a different persons point of view and in a different place. We have Tokyo, London, Mongolia, Petersburg to name a few. Each part is like a short story but there connections throughout that link everything together into one story. To be honest I liked almost all the characters and storylines and I loved how he captures each locale. It’s interesting to read and even more interesting to think about afterwards. My one negative about this book is simply that I wanted more after each part. By the end of each chapter you become used to the narrator and plot line then it would end and change to a new one. I want to know more about these characters haha. But I guess that’s the nature of the story.

I’d recommend everyone to give it a go. It’s honestly genre defying. It’s literary fiction on the whole but there are elements of other genres in there too. Sci-fi and fantasy to name a couple. Looking forward to trying more from him very soon.

Not even sure where to start here, friends. Ghostwritten is like a bunch of short stories that take place all over the world, and they all connect. Sometimes those connections are easy to find, and sometimes you have to go back to a previous story to remind yourself who someone was and what they did and all that.

It’s a wonderful book, really. It’s hard to even pin down to a specific genre. Hard to even convey coherent thoughts about it. Hard to even describe the plot to you, honestly. Do you like sci fi? Do you like literary fiction? Are you, like me, a Murakami fan? Do you enjoy short stories? Do you like see stories collide and lives intersect? Do you like the end of the world? What about other countries and cultures? What about being entertained and challenged at the same time?

Do you like flying through sections of a book and sowing down through others? Do you like how my review has suddenly turned into an interview? Can I really think of another question to ask?

Those are all legitimate questions to ask yourself before reading Ghostwritten. If you answered “Yes” to at least 60% of those questions, you should read this book. I was hooked from the beginning, and I couldn’t put it down at the end, even though some sections were a little slower. I was always reading slowly just waiting to see how the precious story would overlap or how things would connect to something that happened at the beginning. Sometimes several stories would collide, and, boy, that was like a simile that I can’t even think of at the moment, but it was like something amazing. Like something you can fill in the blank with whatever you think is awesome.

I’m moving on to Mitchell’s next book, and the next, etc. I love reading a book that transcends what a book normally is and takes me down roads I’ve never travelled before. Do you like that, too? Do you...? Sorry.

The most admirable thing about this novel is its ambition. Had I read this when it came out and Mitchell was a new unknown author maybe I would have been a lot more impressed. But having read Mitchell’s best novels my expectations were, unfairly perhaps, up very high. The ten episodes that make up this novel deal with globalisation, terrorism, banking fraud, conspiracy theory, particle physics – in other words the most pressing issues of our times.

The biggest problem for me was I found the characters rather dull and soulless. Virtually all of them were trying too hard to be charming. Mitchell had clearly spent an awful lot of energy on formulating and weaving together his themes but perhaps expended rather less energy on creating autonomous engaging characters through which to tell his stories. The writing too and especially the humour seemed hit and miss to me, as if he still hadn’t quite found his feet as a writer. In this and other ways Ghostwritten is like an early trial run for Cloud Atlas. In Cloud Atlas every character returns; in Ghostwritten they disappear except for rather forced and threadbare cameos. You understand here how vital it was to the magnetic charge of Cloud Atlas that the characters all got a second narrative voice.

Mitchell uses the butterfly effect to connect the ten episodes of this book. I have to confess particle physics isn’t my strong point but as a unifying principle I found his pseudo-scientific musings on chance and fate and synchronicity just a little too glib and forced – the stories shoehorned into his ideas rather than dramatizing them into life. The episodes didn’t coalesce to form a continuity of narrative for me. And the window in each episode to other episodes was often little more than an irrelevance.

There are enjoyable moments in this novel but all in all it was like the literary equivalent of listening to early studio demos by one of your favourite musicians.

Sunkiai vertėsi puslapiai, ir tokia knyga, kurią perskaičiau ir iki galo nesupratau.

Το βιβλίο αποτελείται από μικρές ιστορίες-διηγήματα, ξεχωριστές μα με κάποιον τρόπο συνδεδεμένες.
Το ντεμπούτο του Μίτσελ υπήρξε πραγματικά εκπληκτικό κι αυτό το λέω έχοντας ήδη διαβάσει το Μαύρος κύκνος. Αν σαν πρώτη αναγνωστική επιλογή από το συγγραφέα επέλεγα το συγκεκριμμένο, ενδεχομένως να μην το εκτιμούσα το ίδιο.

n  n     B.R.A.C.E 2018 Το ντεμπούτο βιβλίο ενός συγγραφέα n  n

Книжно: На по книга, две
Току-що ·
„Написано в сянка“ от Дейвид Мичъл (Издателство Прозорец, 2018; превод: Петя Петкова) е първият роман на автора на „Облакът Атлас“.
И макар сякаш винаги да личи, когато нещо се случва за пръв път, Мичъл умело е успял да прикрие плахостта на перото си.
„Написано в сянка“ е виртуозно упражнение, в което Мичъл успява да създаде една наджанрова симфония, вълнуваща изповед на света, който се оказва създаден не от хора, а от истории.
И откровено казано, до известна степен бе много по-уютно четиво от Романа, с който Мичъл става известен.
http://knijno.blogspot.com/2018/06/bl...