Every year between Christmas and New Year's Day, I choose one author whose unread books I want to complete. I attempt to read as many of those as I can in one week. This year my author was David Mitchell. I had only read Cloud Atlas and it was a tough read for me so I decided to see if I could crack Mitchell's code by reading his novels in order of publication.

He has published seven books, so it was unlikely I would get through all of them. I managed to read the first three and I did crack the code, at least for myself. I had come across some reviews that mentioned how characters from earlier books show up in later ones. Intrigued by such a concept, I decided to take notes and keep track because this literary puzzle appealed to me.

Ghostwritten is his first novel. From Okinawa, Japan, to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Mongolia to Saint Petersburg to London to Ireland to New York and back to Okinawa, characters appear, re-appear, or migrate to new bodies. Their stories intertwine in various ways. The construction is like a kaleidoscope or a prayer wheel. Each person, for good or for evil, encompasses a universe of hopes, dreams, success, failure, and redemption or karma.

I know this sounds a bit presumptuous, but as I read I felt surges of love for my fellowman and an increased awareness of how we are all connected. I found myself wondering how often I interact with another person and we are influencing the course of each other's lives in ways we will never know.

I finished the book rather in awe of how much David Mitchell must have had to hold in his mind to construct such a story. Even more that that, I felt at home with a worldview that seemed familiar because I hold a similar one.

For the last year or so I have been reading and rereading the chapters of Lao Tsu's Tao Te Ching as a daily meditation. I wonder if David Mitchell reads it also.

Who paints historical murals? Who writes the annals of history?

History is made of people’s desires.

And quite so often it is made of failed desires…

The double-crossed, might-have-been history of my country is not the study of what actually took place here: it’s the study of historians’ studies.

The history we know isn’t the real history – it’s a ghostwritten history.

Evolution and history are the bagatelle of particle waves.

All in this world is interconnected by the play of chance and history is a product of this play.

There are so many people living in the world. We jostle up against each other in subway stations in Tokyo.



We crowd into art galleries in Petersburg, vying for the best location to view the masterpieces on display.

[image error]

We take trains and planes around the world, with mountains, plains, rivers, valleys, and, above all, people rushing by us, in a blur.


Holy Mountains, China

Where is there a place for the individual in the midst of this overwhelming motion?


Still from Koyaanisqatsi

In his first novel, Ghostwritten, David Mitchell innovatively explores our quest for understanding, for meaning, for connection, in the crowded isolation that makes up human life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This is a novel that explores big questions: is our life ruled by chance? Do the coincidences and parallels that help to connect people to one another have a deeper significance, or are they simply akin to the random effects of a ricocheting pinball? What is our connection to the planet -- is there a story that we can discover to explain our origins and, perhaps, point our way to the future? And in the end, are our lives and deaths marked by continuity and connection with others, or are we truly isolated, even when surrounded by so many others?

Mitchell’s novel is remarkable, not only because he explores such crucial questions, but also because he provides such poignant depictions of individuals and their settings. He structures the novel as a series of interconnecting chapters, each taking place in a different location, and each centering on a specific individual, from a cult member in Japan, to an employee in a jazz music store in Tokyo, to a woman selling tea in the shadow of one of China’s holy mountains, to a ghost or spirit moving from human host to human host in search of understanding of its origins. Although I have heard others describe these chapters as linked short stories, Mitchell’s careful attention to connecting themes, characters, and episodes provides them with a sense of coherence that gets stronger the further the reader gets into the book.

Making Your Place/Marking Your Place


Tokyo

Mitchell imbues the novel with a remarkable sense of place. He has a particular interest in representing city life in all its diversity. For example, in the Tokyo chapter, Satoru describes Tokyo as follows: “Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It’s so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It’s long since filled up the plain, and now it’s creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it’s already become out of date. It’s a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one. Things are always moving below you, and above your head. All these people, flyovers, cars, walkways, subways, offices, tower blocks, power cables, pipes, apartments, it all adds up to a lot of weight. You have to do something to stop yourself caving in, or you just become a piece of flotsam or an ant in a tunnel. In smaller cities people can use the space around them to insulate themselves, to remind themselves of who they are. Not in Tokyo. You just don’t have the space, not unless you’re a company president, a gangster, a politician or the Emperor. You’re pressed against people body to body in the trains, several hands gripping each strap on the metro trains. Apartment windows have no view but other apartment windows.
No, in Tokyo you have to make your place inside your head.” (37)
In this passage, Satoru conveys one of the central questions of Ghostwritten: how can humans carve out a place for themselves that provides them with a sense of identity and belonging, in the face of the postmodern weight which threatens to bury us?


London

Mitchell’s sense of place is so strong within the novel that he often represents cities almost as human characters. For example, Marco notes, “The top of the hill. Breathe in, look at that view, and breathe out! Quite a picture, isn’t it! Old Man London, out for the day.... Italians give their cities sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London’s middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay. I know its overlapping towns like I know my own body. The red brick parts around Chelsea and Pimlico, Battersea Power Station like an upturned coffee table.... The grimy estates down Vauxhall way. Green Park. I map the city by trigonometrical shag points. Highbury is already Katy Forbes. Putney is Poppy, and India of course, not that I shag India, she’s only five. Camden is Baggins the Tarantula. …” In spite of this personification, London still poses the danger of engulfing its residents: “A city is a sea that you lose things in. You only find things that other people have lost.” (282)


Hong Kong

London is a Language

There are many ways that Mitchell’s characters attempt to make their place. One is through a quest to explain experience and existence through language, which extends beyond humans to include cities and places as well. In the London chapter, Marco notes, “London is a language. I guess all places are.” (269) Throughout Ghostwritten, Mitchell returns repeatedly to the theme of language -- and its limitations. As the spirit notes in the Mongolia chapter, “Once or twice I’ve tried to describe transmigration to the more imaginative of my human hosts. It’s impossible. I know eleven languages, but there are some tunes that language cannot play. When another human touches my host, I can transmigrate. The ease of the transfer depends on the mind I am transmigrating into, and whether negative emotions are blocking me. The fact that touch is a requisite provides a clue that I exist on some physical plane, however sub-cellular or bio-electrical. There are limits. For example, I cannot transmigrate into animals, even primates: if I try the animal dies. It is like an adult’s inability to climb into children’s clothes. I’ve never tried a whale. But how it feels, this transmigration, how to describe that! Imagine a trapeze artist in a circus, spinning in emptiness. Or a snooker ball lurching around the table. Arriving in a strange town after a journey through turbid weather.
Sometimes language can’t even read the music of meaning.” (158-159)

Given the limitations of language, some of Mitchell’s characters gravitate to music instead, which features prominently throughout the novel. Satoru notes, “My place comes into existence through jazz. Jazz makes a fine place. The colours and feelings there come not from the eye but from sounds. It’s like being blind but seeing more. This is why I work here in Takeshi’s shop. Not that I could ever put that into words.” (38) Marco is a drummer in a band called The Music of Chance, named after Paul Auster’s novel. And in the apocalyptic chapter “The Night Train,” DJ Bat Segundo’s choice of music provides a soundtrack for the critical questions that arise when New York is faced with the prospect of its destruction.

Ghosts, Spirits, Doubles, and the Human Spirit

Throughout the novel, Mitchell explores the limitations of physical boundaries. In spite of the walls and buildings and other physical barriers that separate us from each other, is there any indication that people transcend the physical? That physical boundaries are permeable, and that people can interact the most meaningfully with spiritual elements in their earthbound lives?

In some cases, the ghosts appear in forms familiar to Western readers. In the Hong Kong section, Neal Brose describes the ghost that shared an apartment with him and his wife Katy:
“Unless you’ve lived with a ghost, you can’t know the truth of it. You assume that morning, noon and night, you’re walking around obsessed, fearful and waiting for the exorcist to call. It’s not really like that. It’s more like living with a very particular cat. For the last few months I’ve been living with three women. One was a ghost, who is now a woman. One was a woman, who is now a ghost. One is a ghost, and always will be. But this isn’t a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she’d be a person.” (93)

In other cases, Mitchell describes spirits that he models from Eastern traditions, as seen in my two favorite sections of the novel, “The Holy Mountain” and “Mongolia.” In “The Holy Mountain”, the unnamed tea shack lady describes her living in the shadow of Mount Emei with ghosts and a spirit-laden tree as her companions over decades of hardship: “In the misty dusk an old woman came. She laboured slowly up the stairs to where I lay, wondering how I could defend myself if the Warlord’s Son called again on his way down.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Tree will protect you. The Tree will tell you when to run, and when to hide.’ I knew she was a spirit because I only heard her words after her lips had finished moving, because the lamplight shone through her, and because she had no feet. I knew she was a good spirit because she sat on the chest at the end of the bed and sang a lullaby about a coracle, a cat, and the river running round.” (113)


Mount Emei, China


Tea shack, Mount Emei, China

In the chapter on Mongolia, Mitchell memorably presents a noncorpum, or a spirit that travels from human host to human host, as his central character. This spirit clearly differentiates itself from its human hosts: “I have my gifts: I am apparently immune to age and forgetfulness. I possess freedom beyond any human understanding of the world. But my cage is all my own, too. I am trapped in one waking state of consciousness. I have never found any way to sleep, or dream. And the knowledge I most desire eludes me: I have never found the source of the story I was born with, and I have never discovered whether others of my kind exist.” (165)


Trans-Mongolian Railroad

At the same time, the spirit does acknowledge some similarities between himself and some of the humans it encounters: “Backpackers are strange. I have a lot in common with them. We live nowhere, and we are strangers everywhere. We drift, often on a whim, searching for something to search for. We are both parasites: I live in my hosts’ minds, and sift through his or her memories to understand the world. Caspar’s breed live in a host country that is never their own, and use its culture and landscape to learn, or stave off boredom. To the world at large we are both immaterial and invisible. We chew the secretions of solitude. My incredulous Chinese hosts who saw the first backpackers regarded them as quite alien entities. Which is exactly how humans would regard me. All minds pulse in a unique way, just as every lighthouse in the world has a unique signature. Some minds pulse consistently, some erratically. Some are lukewarm, some are hot.
Some flare out, some are very nearly not there. Some stay on the fringe, like quasars. For me, a roomful of animals and humans is like a roomful of suns, of differing magnitudes and colours, and gravities.” (153-154)

As the noncorpum continues on its quest for its origin stories, it demonstrates another profound similarity with humans -- the need to anchor identity, and future, in one's beginnings. This parallel helps to provide this chapter with its strong resonance and significance -- in spite of the unfamiliar trappings of this story, the central theme within it is all too familiar to human readers.


Central Mongolia


Quantum Theory, Chain Reactions, Chance, and the Human Zoo

In the concluding chapters of Ghostwritten, Mitchell develops the questions of the role of chance in governing people’s lives, as he describes the experiences of Mo Muntervary, a quantum physicist appalled by the apparent uses to which the US government is putting her work. She attempts to buy time to address her concerns by returning to her home, Clear Island, Ireland. Throughout this chapter, Mo intersperses details of her return to the island with her memories of her work on this project, and her reflections on the role of quantum physics in explaining human life and cauastion: “The strong force that stops the protons of a nucleus hurtling away from one another; the weak force that keeps the electrons from crashing into the protons; electromagnetism, which lights the planet and cooks dinner; and gravity, which is the most down to Earth. From before the time the universe was the size of a walnut to its present diameter, these four forces have been the statute book of matter, be it the core of Sirius or the electrochemical ducts of the brains of students in the lecture theatre at Belfast. Bored, intent, asleep, dreaming, in receding tiers. Chewing pencils or following me.
Matter is thought, and thought is matter. Nothing exists that cannot be synthesised.” (335-336)

Mo’s references to the modern world as a zoo relate to the novel’s penultimate section, in which Bat Segundo, a late night DJ and talk show host strikes up a prolonged conversation with an entity that refers to itself as the Zookeeper. The Zookeeper demonstrates an eerie omniscience into human life and devastation throughout the planet, while also discussing the profound limits of its omniscience in keeping human life in balance. I will leave it to you as a reader to discover how Mitchell develops these themes.


Clear Island, Ireland


The Breath

Mitchell threads references to a breath throughout Ghostwritten . The breath provides a strong sense of continuity, as well as raising the question of which entities are threading through the novel, surrounding the human characters. Is there an impermeable boundary between them? Are these entities observers, or do they have a more crucial role to play in causing events to happen -- or preventing events? In the end, are they as human as any of us living in the zoo?

Four stars, or even four and a half stars cannot adequately define this novel, yet five stars appears overgenerous. Though Ghostwritten is a brilliantly ambitious novel it is also a tangled and convoluted novel. If you as a reader disliked Cloud Atlas it is unlikely that you would find this novel any better. Where Cloud Atlas seemed a more whole and structured novel this felt a little more twisted and in sections muddled knots of prose appeared to form. That said it shall receive five stars as a standing indication of the type of novel this was revealed as in the end.

My perception of the author's work

David Mitchell appears to be, like most authors and readers, interested in stories. He appears particularly interested in the stories that bind together cultures, identities, individuals and events. He is also fascinated in challenging and analysing the various perceived realities of the world. In many ways this makes him a relatable author to myself, appealing to me through his novel's thematic values and his metalinguistic approach to writing. He reminds me, in how his characters reappear in various novels of Brandon Sanderson. However where Sanderson in Mistborn: The Final Empire and other books is interested in creating a shared fantasy universe of different worlds and magic systems David Mitchell seems to throw his characters into different books simply as part of playing around. He seems to genuinely enjoy playing with words and seeing what can be done. His work is experimental literary pulp and often comes across as too sterilistically* pristine or in some ways smug. However I view this perceived smugness as more the personal fancy of an author playing about with ideas and words slightly beyond him in some measures. Certainly this novel lacks the same linking ability and refinement I enjoyed in Cloud Atlas but the big ideas and interesting ideas are still present in this novel.

Reality

Ghostwritten had two main themes which I particularly found interesting. In following nine characters across nine stories with links between each Mitchell I believe attempts to discuss the idea of how realities intersect between individuals. By this I mean the ways in which my reality might interact and cut across the reality of another person. Mitchell links together each story in a way that while less structured than Cloud Atlas ends up forming a unique loop of continuity. Lovers witnessed by one character may become key characters in the next story, an artificial intelligence may be seen as the god figure of a death cult and so on the links continue until you end the story in a manner not dissimilar to the film Memento (though I believe that film is far more fascinating than this book's plotted course). What I mean to say is that Mitchell starts with one line and almost ends virtually on the same line. In this way he questions how various characters intersect in life and how there is some kind of continuity despite differences in continuity. I believe that what Mitchell tries to do is challenge his readers to question their realities. As one of his characters notes: n  "Disbelieving the reality beneath your feet gives you licence to print your own."n**

Stories

The interesting thing that I reflected upon while reading this book was how many stories had gone into creating this one work. Originality in literature is a hotly debated topic*** particularly in genres which depend upon originality to develop such as fantasy and science fiction. My view on the subject is that originality develops through a unique mixture of the stories that have gone before. It is impossible for someone to have a story completely free of other stories. If those stories are mixed correctly there will be a unique narrative. That is what I love about childhood favourites such as The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia or even Peter Pan as I come back to them in young adulthood. I see that they build upon stories gone before in their own special way.

In the same way Ghostwritten is a novel created out of the various stories Mitchell has no doubt devoured. I felt hints of Douglas Adams, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Franz Kafka to name a persona few and caught references to other writers such as Nabokov****, Tolstoy*****, Graham Greene******, Samuel Becket******* and perhaps even Dostoyevsky********. In this way the book serves as an argument in many ways as to the power of literature and the novel. Non-fiction teaches us many truths but so too can fiction by cognitive estrangement, taking those things, those realities we accept into a strange environment and forcing us to consider the truth of it all.

The characters of this novel (arcane terrorists, seductress art thieves, body snatching spirits, men struggling to get by, radio jockeys, vilified women, travellers, young lovers...) may not be typical. I for one am yet to find a parasitic body jumping spirit for instance. However in their atypicality there is an example of humanity, elements which by taking them out of the normal environment serves to reflect upon the seething mass of people who exist. They remind the reader that every person, no matter where they come from, is an individual amidst a crowd of different individuals, individuals whose stories are often lost - as ghostwriters are lost behind the story of another individual.

Conclusion

As the book states: n  "The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting."n Mitchell's overall unsubtle exaggeration in this book is that we are all ghostwriters for the world around us. However despite Mitchell's tendency to often 'lay it on thick' this is well worth reading. I highly recommend this novel particularly if you liked Cloud Atlas and could navigate that book easily enough. David Mitchell may appear more profound than he is at times but its in the things he hints at for the reader personally that the beauty and magic of his writing exists.



*this should be a proper adjective
**p.401 for anyone who cares (i.e maybe me)
***I'm very glad everyone is so different since it means there are people to debate with
****Okay I promise to get around to reading him some time soon, suggestions?
*****Him too!
******And him!
*******Him too!
********And yeah I have books to read :)

This book is bad. Wow. It's really bad. Mitchell's description of a fly as "a Gothic tricycle" will be forever burned into my mind. There are so many reviews here stating something along the lines of "his prose is lyric and great, and he has such a knack for storytelling". I'll give him credit for the plot; it's dense and it appears that he put a little time into linking up all of the loose ends. But complexity =/= virtuosity, and the book suffers from terrible, terrible prose and poor characterizations. His women are completely unbelievable as women; from 'Holy Mountain' ("I am a girl.") to 'Petersburg' ("When I want something from a woman, I get angry. When I want something from a man, I pout.") Seriously? From the way he writes, it would seem that David Mitchell has never really talked to a woman. He's also never had a hangover ("I felt my hangover being shooed away", before which coffee is described as "magic brew"), nor has he ever been involved with music ("I wanted to add a distorted bass, maybe a snare drum," concerning a Vaughn Williams record). The flat fakeness of his characters is insulting, but his prose is even worse. "The shower deluged my head." He's just going nuts with the thesaurus. So is a young girl from 'Mongolia': "You are so facile!" Every metaphor is ridiculous and corny: during a sex scene with a rotten old man, there's something about the guy '[groaning] like a kid on an out of control go cart speeding down a hill'; a honking van is described as an 'angry muppet' (Mitchell uses the 'beepy' muppet thing a second time too).

It's his first novel. That's cool. For that I can forgive clumsiness with language and storytelling. That's what the book is, really, an exercise in clumsiness, right down to the weird interjection of a consciousness-jumping-noncorporeal-entity and the sudden "surprise, gotcha" quantum-cognition plotline in the end (wikipedia says that Mitchell 'hints' at Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics, but it feels like he read "I, Robot" before finishing Ghostwritten and thought: "oh man, I gotta work that in somehow!!") But what's unforgiveable is the fact that somehow, there was no editor around to fix this hot, hamfisted mess.

If things truly do happen for some 'reason' that runs interconnected between humans worldwide, I wish it would have planted some seed that kept this thing from being published. I therefore would not have spent thirteen or so dollars on it. Those thirteen dollars would have gone to a grocery purchase which could have directly lined the pocket of a greasy cashier. That cashier might have been crossing the road after work with the cash in hand to buy beer, not seeing the car in the intersection swerving right into him! He might have died, and the money may have been blown to the wind. A homeless man might have picked up the money and used it to buy a corn dog and a stack of porno mags. He might have discarded the corn dog stick off the pier of a major river or lake, and what if that stick were picked up by a bird, a mind controlled robot bird? Maybe that bird flew North, along the coast, and dropped the stick onto a shipping freighter bound for Japan? And what if that stick had a joke on it, and when the ship arrived in the harbor in Japan, it was swept off onto the pier where it was picked up by a dockworker who took it home to his teenaged daughter who was trying to learn English, and she read the joke but didn't understand the meaning of it? She might have taken her inability to read the joke as a message that she must learn English, lest the world mock her forever with its unreadable stick jokes. She might have gotten so good at English that she could eventually write a better book than Ghostwritten, one with correct punctuation and believeable characters. But none of that happened. So thanks, David Mitchell. I spent 13 dollars on this book.

Oh my God. Can David Mitchell write.

Reading this book, you will never think it's a first novel; Mitchell's mastery of the written word is so consummate. The prose flows, one word after another, forming sentences, paragraphs and chapters in natural progression. The skill of the author is evident in the fact that he himself is invisible - the story seems to write itself, thus justifying the title of the novel in a fashion.

This novel -"in nine parts", as Mitchell calls it - is a series of interconnected narratives. It foreshadows Cloud Atlas, but is more loosely structured. Each part is narrated by a different person, as the story moves across the world from Japan to America via China, Mongolia, Russia and the UK. The voices are stunningly different, as are the themes: we have terrorism from a doomsday cult, financial intrigues and gangsters, love and rock music and a disembodied spirit searching for its origin and perhaps the origin of the world. All these parts are interconnected in time and space through characters who bump into each other, intentionally and unintentionally.

Which brings us to the theme of the novel: connectivity. In the eighth part which describes the flight of a quantum physicist from her pursuers employed by the Pentagon, the concept of quantum connectivity with regard to the human condition is explored in details. In the realm of Heisenberg uncertainty, the quantum soup froths and foams, existence shifting between particles and waves; until everything is brought down to the realm of probability rather than certainty. In this world, a leaf falling in pre-revolutionary China will affect war in twenty-first century Arabia. Everything one does has an effect, but not one which can be predicted. Glorious uncertainty is the only certainty.

However, exactly what the author intends will become clear only when one reads part 9, which is a brilliant transcript of a radio talk show which rounds off the novel - though not quite. There is a sort of epilogue which loops us back to part one, turning cause and effect brilliantly on its head in true quantum fashion.

A truly magnificent piece of work.

Everyone has a story. And I am their observer.

The woman who ran over my foot with a stroller in a mall this morning was distracted by finding the perfect outfit to rekindle the lackluster fire in her marriage. Baby-weight, bags under her eyes, expensive purse, trendy haircut - her husband is an executive of some sort at an indistinguishable company making enough money so that his late nights at the office were justified, yet spent on on all fours with a ball in his mouth while Mistress Whoever walked over his spine screaming obscenities at him. Baby-weight's biggest problem in life today was the guy at Starbucks not getting her non-fat-decaf-soy-cup-o-crap correct. The barista was distracted because his girlfriend Mistress Whoever was pregnant and his wife's debilitating depression prevented her from leaving the apartment and the hang-up calls every hour on the hour were beginning to become obvious until she finally answered one and it was Baby-Weight in the middle of a chardonnay fueled paranoia calling the wrong number by one didget off.... Or something less obvious and soap opera-ish.

And so it goes. We all have a story. And maybe, in tiny obscure ways, we're all connected. Although Mitchell weaves the interconnection of humanity in such subtle blink-and-you'll miss it ways that it feels authentic and yet creepy. The woman you pushed out of the way of an oncoming cab today...her story connects with yours and his and hers...and all of us. And we will never ever know it. We will never even come close to suspecting it. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, and such.

This is the bulk of what I took away from this gorgeous book saturated in Murakami-melancholy and dream-like fuzziness. How could I not adore it? How could I not devour it? I'm a devout people watcher and story maker-upper. This is my element. This book had me smiling and aching.

Some chapters felt slower than others. Mitchell spared no details and perhaps that is my only criticism as there were times when my eyes skipped forward a little to push the story along. But it's a small price to pay for a delicious pay off and I look forward to reading more David Mitchell in the future.

Oh dear. All the cool kids love David Mitchell. I want to be one of the cool kids! But I won't lie to you, cool kids: this book frustrated the hell out of me, at times outright pissed me off, despite my respect for Mitchell's dexterity hat-trick (intellectual, narrative, verbal). It's the kind of book that made me scarf down the last 100 pages in a single day, breathlessly turning pages in the hopes of making sense of its head-scratching patchwork, only to put down the tome humming that Peggy Lee tune that's so helpful in moments of disappointment. Is this what it was like to be a fan of TV's Lost, I wonder?

It's really the structure that's the source of my headaches with this book. Individually I liked most of the stories/chapters/whatevers (only the "Holy Mountain" one straight-up bored me), but together they add up to something I'm not buying. And I hated how Mitchell undermined his own perfectly fine stories with confusing little twists and flourishes meant to blow our minds, I guess, like when he actually ends one of the more gripping tales with a sentence like "None of this really happened." Or the other story that ends with its protagonist keeling over in death throes only to offer some mumbo-jumbo about how he's dying "again" or remembers what it feels like to die, or something. Whatever, dude. As for the little dollops of interconnectivity that Mitchell drops in to "link" the stories, I found them either underexplained or just unconvincingly contrived.

The last story (not counting a brief, completely incomprehensible epilogue) is sort of a microcosm of my reaction to the book. I absolutely love the premise of that Manhattan-set chapter: the apocalypse from the perspective of a late-night radio DJ, sending out survivalist missives over the airwaves. (For a more satisfying variation on a similar premise, check out one of my favorite movies of last year, the awesomely brainy horror-comedy n  Pontypooln.) I was carried along by its strangeness, its current of pleasantly defamiliarizing prose, its intriguing narrative surprises. But at some point that all goes over the top and the piece ends in an act of imaginative self-pleasuring, Mitchell's intellectual showboating finally outstripping any and all chance of my what-the-hell-is-going-on curiosities being sated.

I realize, of course, that in some respects I'm just being dim, and that some of Mitchell's project has flown over my head. Fine. I read lots of books that fly over my head; the difference lies in whether or not the author makes me aspire to fill the gap between my head and the book. The ending--and nearly all the individual pieces' endings--of this book made me shrug so insouciantly that I'm just enjoying the summer breeze of that book whooshing through my cranium's airspace.

Still three stars cuz it was consistently interesting and reading it made me feel like one of the cool kids, if only for a short while.

This book blew my mind. This book also ripped out my heart and stomped on it and then stuffed the battered organ back in my chest cavity, breathed feathery soft on it and set it pumping again. It was that good, that moving, that inspiring. It brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion and left me feeling that wonderful mind expanding, worldview shifting buzz that only art (or sex, or chocolate) of the highest order can accomplish. I feel subtlety changed by this book.

First off, it engaged my intellect. Its intricate puzzle of loosely connected stories kept my mind sharp to each twist and turning, looking intently for the next incident that would tie disparate characters, locales and chronology together. Mitchell has first rate literary gifts, he juggles more balls than most writers would even dream of-and to go with that metaphor he’s so ludicrously daring and audacious in his choices that he’s more akin to those lunatic jugglers who work with sharp, flaming objects then some tired clown with three fuzz-faded tennis balls. The fact that this was a first novel demands even more respect.

Mitchell mixes philosophical concerns of the greatest gravitas(death, reincarnation, identity, creativity and theft, corporate greed, freedom vs. security, class agonies and the oppression of women ) with the old-fashioned capacity to tell a good story in unobtrusive, yet supple prose.

It has come to my attention that Mitchell isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Some of my good pals here think he is a cold literary technician, empty of the wisdom he attempts to convey in this book. I couldn’t disagree more. Along with his intricate plotting and deft use of language, is a wonderful (wonder-filled?), compassionate view of the world that is inclusive, empty of petty judgment and wise to the hardscrabble shit of earthly existence, the commiserate joys of physical joining be it loin to loin, heart to heart, or in mere comradely shoulder to shoulder grinding through the days and the inevitability and sometimes desirability of that great equalizer, death.

So again back to the heart, the bruised organ I mentioned at the beginning of my review. I think I’m much more a man of the heart than a man of the head. I feel way too much. And I think maybe my loving of this book night be just as likely because I’m a rube and a sucker not because I’m a greater intellect than those that hated it. Maybe they are smarter than me. Probably I’m okay with that. Maybe I liked it because I’m foolish and open and willing to look for something, in this case an intricate Buddhist-inspired diamond-like view of humanity and its sufferings that showed that we are all connected, beyond boundaries of country, time, the accidents of birth and family, even to and beyond the gates of death. Even though my conception of a personal God has faded to practical non-existence I am still pulled to joy-filled myths of individual lives having meaning, and there being a benevolent seed of being at our centers and at the center of the universe.

And maybe I’m wrong. And maybe none of this matters. And maybe this book is just an intricate con-job. And maybe that is okay too. But this book made me happy. And I think you should give it a try.

Maybe the words will come to me later, but I'm at quite a loss currently. How do I review Ghostwritten? Others have certainly done a better job at explaining it, so I may have to rely on my tumultuous emotions as a form of review (which I often do). I'll start by saying: This is a book that demands to be reread. and soon. As much as I'd like to, I don't think I'll be lending this out to friends. Call me greedy, I just don't know when I'll need to crack it open again.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit, but I didn't know David Mitchell by name upon starting Ghostwritten. It wasn't until about a quarter of the way through, already deeply involved, that I remembered to look him up! So yes, I went into reading this unaware that he wrote Cloud Atlas, a book I'm even more excited to read! But based on what I know from watching the film, I'll just say it made sense that it was written by the same author.

But on to the tricky bits... Ghostwritten is narrated by a string of protagonists from across the globe. As I read each story, the links between each storyteller became clearer and more complex, as did the themes of the novel. If you're expecting a simple "we're all connected" message, prepare to dig deeper, for that's merely the tip of the iceberg. Mitchell expands upon that interest fluidly through chance, community, fate, DNA, and more. And often, he left me stunned in the process. As I found remnants of previous characters in new chapters, I actually began to get nervous that I'd miss something. And I probably did. This isn't a book to read while distracted.

Unfortunately for me, I began reading Ghostwritten on one of the worst travel days of my entire life. It held my attention exquisitely, but it makes me wonder how the miserable version of myself (and all miserable acts I committed while utterly miiiiiiserable) affected the seemingly random strangers around me in the long run. On the other hand, the few kind strangers I encountered while traveling will never know their own impact. I suppose it wasn't unfortunate that I began it in that instance, because looking back on the experience I feel something that opposes misery completely. Of course, this hardly touches the immeasurable musculature of this story, but it made sense of my adventure.

To put it really simply, I think this is just one of those "Don't ask, just read" kind of books. Maybe on the second go around I'll find the right words, but for now I'll end by saying I highly recommend it.

Boston, December 12th, 2004

If you liked Cloud Atlas, pick up ghostwritten. And give it until page 38.

Shades of Murakami and Borges (both of whom briefly grace the pages) and Hornby (who doesn’t), a warm up for the pyrotechnic doppleganger genre switching of CA. But mostly its David Mitchell all over again (or really for the first time if you still believe in linear time).

Not as archly triumphant as CA and with one or two sour notes (I’d recommend fast forwarding through “Petersburg” skipping any pages without Jermone), but still brilliant. And something of a sequel/prequel to Cloud Atlas, though it would puncture my favorite reading of CA (that Cavendish is the only “real” person, the rest fiction) if I considered Mitchell a reliable narrator. Which I don’t.

Just 50 pages left to go, but I might have to circle around again to “Okinawa” for a wrap. (especially as I feel “Night Train” might be a weak ending, however that is more then balanced by the excellent “Clear Island” which I imagine has nearly universal appeal, but felt decidedly Bujoldian to me)

Perhaps the most frustrating piece of Mitchell is the plotting is so good you don’t have time to stop and really get down the literary pearls strewn so carelessly around.

Now is there anywhere in JP to pick up a copy of number9dream or do I need to head over to the Brookline Booksmith I wonder?

http://laughingmeme.org/2004/12/12/gh...

FIRSTLY: If the entire novel had bristled with the same energy and momentum as the bottom half of the book (i.e., from "Holy Mountain" through to "Night Train") then my review here would bristle with five stars. That said, I also do not believe that those subsequent chapters could have been nearly as successful without the supporting cast of Okinawa, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. (Jury is still out on the closer, Underground.)

David Mitchell delivers a very strong novel here. Stylistically, it is very mature -- especially for a first novel from such a young author. He is able to bring themes, concepts, and phrases from one section into another apparently disjointed section fluidly, naturally and -- most of the time -- without that recurrence or repetition feeling like a gimmick. Mitchell is screwing with you (the reader), and you both know it, but the reason that you believe he is screwing with you is a little bit different than the reason he believes he is screwing with you. Meanwhile, the narrative has an agenda of its own. The comparisons to  Haruki Murakami are justified but not all together accurate; Murakami blissfully and accidentally trips into an improbable parallel universe while Mitchell begrudgingly tries to inch his way back from a very possible tangential universe.

Now there were two thematic elements of the story that jumped out at me as worthy of commenting upon:

(1) Varying shades of apocalypse. Maybe my sensitivity to the subject is up because I'm also neck-deep in the  John Joseph Adams collection " Wastelands" but there is a sense of penultimate destruction within each of the disjointed narratives in Ghostwritten. We start with a cult member trying to hurry along a very eschatological apocalypse and over the course of 400 more pages, we work our way through every flavor of personal or global threat we can stomach. The whimsical, speculative damnation of the "Night Train" component was clearly my favorite. (Though "Holy Mountain" blew my mind for the way tone and voice was used as the treatment for personal and national world-ending.)

(2) Have any other readers picked up on the sub-text that concerns conception and birth? Every one of these tales somehow works in a child (real or imagined, material or emblematic) that I presume is supposed to function as a cue for each story's theme. But the children aren't safe and sound. They're adopted orphans, aborted fetuses, ghosts of infanticide, bastards, parents that can't conceive, a precocious matricidal AI... I have not quite figured out this sub-text yet (hence the "to-re-read" shelving) but it's definitely there. And it is haunting me.