„Number 9 Dream“ wird gelegentlich als David Mitchells Haruki-Murakami-Roman bezeichnet. Und obwohl der Vergleich schon allein wegen des Handlungsortes Japan naheliegt, muss ich einräumen dass da etwas dran ist. Insbesondere in Bezug auf „Naokos Lächeln“, der im Englischen „Norwegian Wood“ heißt, und eben jener Beatles-Song wird auch mehrfach ausdrücklich erwähnt, und zwar immer in Kapiteln in welchen die Geschehnisse der Handlung eben jenes Romans ganz auffällig ähneln (dass „number9dream“ außerdem der Titel eines Stücks von John Lennon ist, ist ebenfalls kein Zufall).
Es gibt aber auch entscheidende Unterschiede, so ist „Number 9 Dream“ zum Beispiel deutlich brutaler und witziger als Murakami es in der Regel zu sein pflegt. Dafür ist der poetisch-melancholische Fluss der Erzählung der Murakamis Texte so unwiderstehlich macht hier nur selten vorhanden. Das macht aber gar nichts, schließlich ist der Roman so randvoll mit verrückten Ideen, absurden Abschweifungen und auf dem ersten Blick völlig unpassenden Nebenhandlungen dass man nur Staunen kann. Besonders auch darüber dass das nicht alles irgendwann völlig auseinander fällt, sondern am Ende tatsächlich so etwas wie ein sinnvolles Ganzes ergibt. Tolles Buch!
4,5 Sterne

Brilliant! Every book that I read by David Mitchell makes me a bigger fan of his writing. He is probably one of the most gifted authors who can weave incredible narratives while masterfully juggling a variety of styles; he makes his way through them seamlessly and beautifully, his stories take you on a journey across time and place, and the versatility of his style makes it seem unreal that the same author has written the various chapters. Much like Barnes, Mitchell seems to welcome the reader to delve into his prose, the books provide the ease of access that many "literary" authors might not.

The book is very Murakami-esque in the story and the way it is written. The constant reader can sense the recurring themes and motifs that the Japanese writing supremo is known for. It has the same sense of urban alienation and the sense of a search for something (literally and metaphorically) that Murakami's protagonists are knows for. Mitchell provides an incredible dash of his own style and it makes for a heady mix of story-telling and prose. The narrative structure is disjointed and is meant to take the reader aback, it creates a sense of magical realism as the characters weave across circumstances. Dreams are a recurring motif that runs through the book and the author makes it apparent from the first chapter itself that he likes to mess around a bit with conventional structures of narration. Thus, we get time jumps, historical accounts, third person perspectives read by the narrator, surreal dream sequences peppered with thought provoking lines.

This book was short listed for the Booker's prize in 2001 and deservedly so, it's a winner in my book! I have come to be a big fan of the author and would want to read everything that he has published.

number9dream by David Mitchell is a great read. It's somewhat like a rollercoaster with cuts between reality and dream life that can be sometimes confusing but often breathtakingly fun (and sometimes scary). I grew to care a lot about the narrator, Eiji and his adolescent search for identity and for his struggle to come to terms with the death of his sister Anju. I liked the people and enjoyed the riffs into different styles of writing (which Mitchell is extremely skilled at, witness Cloud Atlas).

David Mitchell is clearly paying tribute to Haruki Murakami. Luckily, I love Murakami but there are times when the heavy-handedness of the tribute detracts from Mitchell's own amazing talent. Nevertheless, I'm very glad to have spent time with this text and Mitchell's gift.

I apologise in advance if this seems more incoherent and rushed than anything I've written previously. I'm just so in awe of the bizarreness of number9dream that my thoughts are not settled on the book.

Okay what I want to know is what David Mitchell was taking when he wrote this...so I can join in with the elixir! Seriously this is a whacked out, crazy kind of book that's strangely compulsive reading but doesn't make a lot of sense in places. I must admit that the whole time I was reading it went like this:

First few chapters: Interesting, like the little anecdotal stories, don't see what they have to do with anything
Around 100 pages: Hang on the protagonist did what? What's he doing in that weird hotel (this was the part that I personally hated the most)
Around 200 pages in: Still doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's gripping reading
300 pages in: I still don't get it...
400 pages in: Done, I still don't get it, it's like a roller coaster ride on hallucinogens (not that I know what hallucinogens are like), fun but you don't know what ride you were on exactly

This was my second try at David Mitchell and I must say that this was as far from my usual reading as anything I have read. It was very, very different to Cloud Atlas. Where I saw some interesting ideas in Cloud Atlas, a kind of depth (personally) beyond the stylistic choice of writing, number9dream was more about the stylistic choices and fun entertaining tale than any depth. I think I'll have to try the other three David Mitchell books I have waiting to read rather than mull over this.

The plot of this is 'boy tries to find father in city, never having met Dad.' Yes the plot has been done to death but the way it is done is what matters and I think Mitchell was trying to write this book in a way to show that sometimes in life dreams turn out in the end to be disappointing failures and not how we think they should turn out. I think his encouragement is that that doesn't matter, that it is the process of trying to find our dream and who we meet that counts. Along the way through this story Mitchell throws in other little stories (humorous stories about religion which I found quite amusing), references to John Lenon, a diary of a human torpedo, sci-fi technologies and a whole plot involving the Yakuza.

On the whole a bizarre and zany novel with lots of quirkiness, but still highly entertaining. It was also a very fast read, much faster than Cloud Atlas but I didn't like it as much. If you liked Cloud Atlas you might like this. If you hated Cloud Atlas you might still like this. It's a book that I think will be liked depending on the individual's taste rather than it being a book that the majority of people will like.

It's not you, it's me.

“Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk amid the still-are”

number9dream is the second novel by British author, David Mitchell. Nineteen-year-old Eiji Miyake arrives in Tokyo looking for his father, a man he has never met, a man whose name he does not even know. He has a letter from a lawyer warning him not to try to find his father, so his first move is to stake out the lawyer’s office from a café opposite, the Jupiter Café, where works a girl with the most beautiful neck in the world.

So begins another foray into the world of David Mitchell, one that takes the reader on an interesting (and occasionally, slightly bizarre) journey. As Eiji moves from the café to the Lost Property Office of Ueno station to a game parlour to an unfinished development on reclaimed land to a safe house to a video shop to a pizza shop to a mountain retreat, he also moves in and out of danger and encounters quite a cast of (often quirky) individuals. Claude Debussy and John Lennon play significant roles, as do the Yakuza organised crime syndicate, an overabundance of cigarettes, some seriously weird pizza recipes, a cat, an absent mother and a dead twin sister.

Mitchell manages to seamlessly include the journal of a WW2 Kaiten pilot, scenes from a surreal black and white movie, a fantastic tale starring a stuttering goatwriter, a hen and a Pithecanthropus, an account of sex slavery and organ theft, and, of course, quite a few dreams. The number nine and its elements, unsurprisingly, feature heavily but in quite a subtle way. As with all of Mitchell’s novels, there are characters who appear in earlier and later books.

Mitchell’s characters, for all their oddities, are appealing; their dialogue and Eiji’s inner monologue provide plenty of humour; and they manage to express some insightful observations: “Weird. All these people like my mother paying counsellors and clinics to reattach them to reality; all these people like me paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality” and “Maybe the truest difference between people is exactly this: how they see why they are here” also “Maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it”.

The (perhaps) abrupt ending that leaves things very much “up in the air” may not be to every reader’s taste, but the characters, plot and prose more than compensate, especially the delightful feast of rhyme, alliteration and incredibly clever wordplay of the goatwriter piece. An excellent read.

The Philip K Dick is strong with this one. In a futuristic japan, Eiji Mikaye sets off to find his dad, who happens to be one of the most powerful and dangerous men in Tokyo. There are lost twins, playboys, evil gods that expose themselves through the movies, and lots and lots of corporate overlords and Yakuzas. Mitchell is good at writing about fantasies within fantasies. This is a Blade-runner style adventure quest with a number of false starts, a bit like a character being killed off repeatedly by a video game. Great atmosphere and clever use of language. Although, by the end, you find yourself less rooting for him to find his dad than yourself to figure out what the actual plot of the story is. But, no worries. Half the fun is getting there. And yes, as one other reviewer noted, side effects include a craving for katsu and sushi.

Reading Mitchell is like riding a roller coaster in the dark--you feel momentum in one direction and suddenly there's a sharp drop or he veers you left in a way you wouldn't have thought possible or believable. You're not really sure where he's taking you but you don't want the ride to end. And his work can't easily be cornered--at various points I thought: "Oh, this is an action novel! Oh, this is a romance! Oh, this is just fucked up!" Number 9 Dream made me feel just as duped, confused, hopeful, and stumbling as Eiji Miyake, the main character, as if we were traveling through this tale together. Much like Cloud Atlas, there was a portion (maybe a fifth) of the book that dragged enough to keep me from giving it a full five stars, but overall an enjoyable ride with such wonderful turns of phrase (e.g., "I am hurled clean out of the ring by the sumo wrestler of embarrassment.") or pithy quotes (e.g., "Politicians and sports coaches both need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters.")

Ostensibly, this is about Miyake's search for his biological father in Tokyo. But like most Mitchell, this is only the topmost layer.

When I first started to read this book, it didn't immediately engage my interest, but, because it was a David Mitchell book, I didn't want to abandon it, so I decided to start again from the beginning, and I'm so pleased I did, because I ended up loving it.
Eiji is a young Japanese country boy whose life has been beset by tragedy. He travels to Tokyo to try to find the Father who abandoned him, and so embarks on an amazing journey.
In a summer time city of extreme heat and rain, he meets some amazing characters, some hostile, some who will become friends, and some who may or may not only exist in his dreams.
This book is a journey that can sometime puzzle, sometimes confuse for a while until the penny drops, and sometimes leave you amazed at its cleverness....not a quick read, but ultimately for me, worth every minute.

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams

Writing a book and telling a story are obviously two very different projects especially for an author like Mr.Mitchell. And so, in what is probably the most straightforward plot of a boy in search of his father, the author packs a whole lot of freudian pyrotechnics that blur lines between plots, between genres and between reality.

Eiji Miyake reaches 'Tokyo' in search of his father. The Tokyo of Mitchell is a surreal place with characters constantly in search/with dreams of something. The first chapter with sequence of dreams to find the identity of his father is sufficient to discourage a rational reader on the lookout for a conventional read. And then to the pleasant surprise the book introduces characters that recur across chapters! (a first for Mr.Mitchell). But that is about as normal as it would go.

We have underground mafia pulp fiction, psychedelic video game narratives, war memoirs, weird erotica of sorts (for the lack of better word) all are made to fit into the narrative. In one of the chapters we see a stuttering novelist Goatwriter in search of an untold story along with his hen assistant and neanderthal assistant which is a meta on the novelist. In another, we meet John Lennon who discusses his songs in a dream state. Plus the #9 Easter egg which you keep ticking off in your head whenever you encounter.

"#9dream is a descendent of Norwegian Wood says John Lennon"
A reference to both the songs by John Lennon and an veiled flattery to Haruki Murakami. (About time I picked up a Murakami)

The eruption of fantastic stories weave around the ordinariness of Miyake's 7 weeks in Toyota. His work in the lost property office, the video parlor or later on at Nero's pizza, his sleepless nights looking at the Neon clock, the Cat and the Cockroach as roommates are written absorbingly. The subtle romance between Ai Imagio and Eiji is warm and so is the friendship with his unlikely friends of Suga the hacker and Banturo his landlord.

In addition we have the changing cigarette brands that is maddening for a reader which makes you wonder if the entire book is actually a lucid dream of an insomniac. In fact, the book will make you wonder if you dreamed reading the entire book.

Genius tribute of Mitchell. Not for everyone

“Maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it.” “Who is right? Individually, we all are. Generally, none of us are.”

I have always been one to look for meaning in everything I do. Call me an idealist or a fool, I NEED to know that there is more, so much more. David Mitchell's book has given me hope to believe that there still is meaning in today's world. As the naive narrator, a youth from the country, journeys into the heart of the fast-paced, overwhelming Tokyo, he learns more about himself than about the neon world around him. Though at first skeptical of his contemporary, cyperpunk-esque language, I soon found myself completely enthralled by it. David Mitchell is truly a master of the English language, yielding it with extraordinary finesse and ease.

I liked it much better than Cloud Atlas. Also really enjoyed his word magic chapters about goatwriter - this guy can really turn prose into a sort of poetry.