This author is one of favorites. He is inventive, creative, incredibly talented. Novels about dreams are hard to pull off and this one mostly transcends the format. One storyline (the "goatwriter") I could have done without (since I skipped chunks of it, I suppose I did manage without it).

The gravitational tug of the star power leaking over from "Cloud Atlas" helped pull me through this earlier work. Obsessed fans of Cloud Atlas take note: the words "cloud atlas" appear in number9dream.

Another Mitchell for the completion. When one reads an author’s bibliography in a short period of time, themes and characters merge. Number9dream is an amazing ride in a mind I’m fascinated by. Loved Eiji.
Interesting how Mitchell makes a dream-like Lennon say Norwegian wood and number9 dream are the same but NW is solitude and number9 is companionship. I wonder if this aludes to Murakami’s novel…I’ll dig some more.

number9dream was nearly as awesome as  cloud atlas--and still a 5 star novel.

this book demonstrates one of the things i love most about mitchell--his ability to write in a number of different voices convincingly within the same novel (hardboiled/cyberpunk/actiony, the weird and whimsical goatwriter stories, the diary of a japanese soldier in WW2), which he accomplishes here without sacrificing the clarity and honesty of his narrator's voice. eiji miyake is one of the most likeable protagonists i've ever met!!

i love how mitchell messes around with fantasy/dreamery/memory/fiction/reality, so much that in the end i still can't necessarily sort out what was really "real." eiji starts out as a self-consciously unreliable narrator, tacitly admitting he's led the reader on by presenting his fantasies as fact. but in the end, it's unclear whether he might be the subject of someone else's fantasy... he acknowledges that he's imagined himself to be the dream of the real eiji miyake... but does acknowledging that make it untrue?? once you realize you're dreaming, is it still a dream? the dream/fiction/fantasy sequences are laced with double-edged clues about imagination and reality ("How do you smuggle daydreams into reality?" "My imagination is my worst enemy--no, that is not true, but the comfort it gives me is never warmer than tepid.") ... i sensed even more crazy existential shit lurking beneath the surface (the lost property office? anyone?) but i can't figure it out without going all High School English right now, and i stopped reading this book with a pen after page 50 or so because it was just getting too insane.

much has been made of the comparison between mitchell and murakami, particularly in this book (#9 Dream/Norweigian Wood, etc.), and people have pegged it as "murakami lite" or a "murakami wannabe" sort of thing. i tend to like mitchell's books MORE than murakami--it's like, similar themes, but less abstruse and oppressive. i also think mitchell's writing style is so much more colorful and pleasing than murakami's, down to individual words. my boat is particularly floated by "mandolineering gondoliers" and "zombie spawn abseil to earth" (the NYT calls mitchell's prose "comically overripe"--but funnily enough, that review is titled "Zombie Spawn Descend to Earth"...) and i was totally tickled by the linguistic-schtick in the goatwriter tales: "I daresay you had another writing dream, sir, like the time you dreamed you wrote Les Miserables. You very nearly took Victor Hugo to court for flagellism."

i have decided that mitchell should write some children's stories. he has a tongue-in-cheek way with words and sounds that rings of Carroll, Seuss, and Snicket: "Don't you dare clomp your mucky mudluggers on my clean carpet!" and "the tracks end in this m-mulch m-mound of Stiltonic stench" ... and it should come as no surprise that i got a good giggle out of this one: "'An unwashed rodent?' verified Goatwriter. 'Bigger than a mouse? Aha! We m-may conclude, thusly, that the thief is a d-dirty little rat! We m-must apprehend this scallywag and teach him a thing or two about copyright law!'"

Do you ever set books aside for a special occasion? I like to keep certain novels on hold for holidays, so that when I reminisce about a particular vacation, I will also think about what I was reading at the time. I have very fond memories of devouring The Goldfinch on a visit to London a couple of years ago, and being so immersed in the story that I almost missed my plane. David Mitchell is one of my favourite writers and I had been saving number9dream for a while now. I took it with me on a trip to Munich last week and I'm happy to report that it didn't disappoint.

Eiji Miyake is our hero, a nineteen-year-old boy from the tiny island of Yakushima off the coast of Japan. He arrives in Tokyo on a mission to locate his father, whom he has never met. Eiji feels alone in the world, abandoned by a troubled mother and still mourning the loss of his beloved sister Anju. But his visit to this restless, pulsing city will take on him a wild adventure of gangsters, hackers and potential love interests. Whether or not he finds what he is looking for, his life will never be the same again.

Eiji is a daydreamer and dreams are a very important part of this novel. Indeed the story begins with a number of his fantasies as he summons the courage to enter the office of his father's lawyer. It gives David Mitchell the license to exercise his colourful imagination - Eiji pictures himself assassinating Yakuza mobsters like a scene from an action movie, and becoming the saviour of a flood that rapidly engulfs the city. Later on the book Eiji's dreams seem to take on greater meaning, as his subconscious attempts to make sense of everything that has happened to him on his Tokyo expedition.

Readers of David Mitchell will know how ambitious his novels are, and it is something I admire him for. He takes great risks with structure, and number9dream is no different. We are served up stories within stories - one chapter contains excerpts from the journal of Eiji's great uncle, a suicide bomber during World War II. In another section Eiji hides out at the home of a writer and passes the time by reading her latest manuscript, which features three talking animals who ride around in a self-driving coach. Parts of this bizarre tale are interspersed with the main text.

Not all of these literary tricks work and to be honest I grew a little weary of the distractions from the principal story. Though dreams have a major role to play in this sprawling tale, it works best when it is anchored in the real world. The slow blossom of Eiji's relationship with Ai, his desperate longing for his unseen father, his heart-wrenching memories of Anju - these were the parts of the novel I loved most and will remember.

This was Mitchell's second novel and it is the work of a writer still honing his craft. Though it doesn't quite hit the heights of Cloud Atlas, it is a true delight to experience his unfettered imagination in full flow. number9dream an audacious, dazzling book - an acrobatic feat of storytelling that never fails to entertain.

David Michell's (b. 1969) sophomore slump, written 2001 while he was still in his eight-year stint teaching English to technical students in Hiroshima, a step down from the 1999 debut 'Ghostwritten' and definitely weaker than the charmed 'Cloud Atlas,' number9dream sounds better in concept than in reality: a "dream-like montage of modern Tokyo set against a boy's search for his father." Unfortunately, while that sounds good in idea, the actual execution suffers from the irredemable flaw of "dream novels;" the non-linearity, the supposed "profound" switches between reality and daydream that amount to egotistical excess, if you really have to face it.

Redeemed by brilliant lines:
"Reflected airplanes climb over mirrored buildings."
*exactly captures Shinjuku

"'You straight citizens of Japan are living in a movie set, Miyake. You are unpaid extras.'"
*1001 expats make similar comments when drunk

"Inside, a man flies through the air, and through a mirror on the far side of the room. The mirror breaks into applause."
*enough said!

and so on.

described as England's Haruki Murakami, Mitchell's work here suffers because while Kafka of Kafka on the Shore has a distinct problem and fleeing home is a childhood dream for many, "the search for one's birth father" is a bit abstract and not really universal. Mitchell's fantastic ability to characterize modern young Japanese lives, conversations, settings, activities (the reverse, after all, a Japanese author talking about young English is a bit rare) is off-set to some degree by the relative unimportance of this topic. Which will win a Nobel? book about Red revolutionary farmers in Shandong with rape, murder, incest or Hitomi Inada, age 24, a part-time record clerk in Shibuya, Tokyo? obviously the former, and hence the continuing snobbery of China-studiers to Japan-studiers.

number9dream is not a one-star or two-star because of the technical merit in writing about foreigners, and because certain stylistic sequences; some of the dream-like fantasies, and the interplay with "letters from the past; parables recited by an author" do have some merit and power. glad to own it; glad for a several hour-vacation to tokyo, so to speak, but lacking overwhelming emotional impact

19 April 2013 follow-up

the problem with this book is that it has all the elements of the Haruki Murakami crowd-pleaser, the Tokyo setting, the surreality, the historical flashback, the lone male protagonist searching for an answer, but the combination is itself is not Haruki Murakami. actually, with regrets to the great reader crowd surrounding this work, I'm not sure I would have had this book published if I were a literary agent. (but then again, after Ghostwritten, usually second books get a more tolerant reception)

Revisionism: 27 August 2015
It’s a fine winter’s day in Sydney.

Earlier and somewhat dyspeptically, I threw my hands up about number9dream because I was confused. I found the story hard to follow and did not know what was real and what was fantasy.

With time it has occurred to me that I should give more mature consideration to the essence of the story: the fluttering distractions have fallen to the ground and the broader landscape has become clearer. The story is a boy’s search; ostensibly for his father, but perhaps also about a boy becoming a man, gaining some experience, albeit not always pleasant, sometimes dangerous and even terrifying, searching for himself, and growing up.  Even though Eiji eventually finds his father this becomes unimportant, or certainly less important, of itself. The quest to find his father remains important, but the man himself and the boy’s relationship with him quite suddenly gets a new perspective.

Eiji’s reconciliation with his mother is the more meaningful development.

As is Eiji’s relationship with his dead sister Anju, with whom he shared much and feels her loss keenly. This reminds me of Holden Caulfield’s remembrance of his lost brother Allie in The Catcher in the Rye.

So I might not be able to sort out in my head the meaning of Panopticon and the cartoonish lawyer Akikoi Kato, the deadly adventures with the Yakuza, brilliant set pieces though they are, the story telling animals, mini submarines in World War Two; and why chapter 9 is blank. Why is chapter 9 blank?

I can see the truth about the waitress with the beautiful neck who plays music so well the truth about her and Eiji. That is real.

The weather in Sydney is pleasantly mild now. [Note to self: move book to three stars.]

***
This is what I wrote earlier:

This is by way of a preliminary review, done in a state of confused uncertainty heightened by near cyclonic weather conditions in Sydney and all along the coast of New South Wales.

I have finally got through this frustrating and difficult book after making at least four, possibly five attempts over the past twelve months. I always got to about page 50 or 60 and then stopped, confused and bewildered by the story/plot/goings on. But in recent weeks I have persisted. But to what end?

Eiji Miyake is a gormless youth looking for his father, who may be a cabinet minister, a yakuza godfather or a lawyer. His mother may have tried to kill him. His sister drowned. He appears to be engaged in a bizarre mission impossible single person attack on a law office; finds himself caught in the crossfire of a yakuza war; in love with someone who works in a café, plays the piano and has the hots for Debussy. Eiji's distant ancestor was a suicide mini submarine pilot in the bushido tradition.

And so on...what does it all mean?

I was not ill-prepared for this, I contend. I enjoyed, immensely, the intricate plotting and creative imagination Mitchell brings to Ghostwritten. But this one, I had to slog all the way through - I am trying to get to Cloud Atlas.

And what's with the nines? I get that they keep turning up, but to what purpose? Perhaps I should take up smoking again enjoy a Carlton/Parliament/Cabin and chill.

Somewhat disappointing, but only because I have such high expectations of Mitchell.

This is a coming of age tale set in Japan. A boy sets off to Tokyo to find the father he has never known. It contains all the Mitchell elements, but just not quite at the same level of his later novels. I have not read his first novel, Ghostwritten, yet so I don't know if it is similar in that respect. However, it is still a very well written and enjoyable book...though I'll admit the plot gets a tad frustrating. I'll even say that I thought about giving this three stars, but then I thought about all the books that I've given three stars to and well, this is a lot better than most of them.

9. Rüya okuduğum dördüncü David Mitchell kitabı. Dolayısıyla yazarın tarzını az çok biliyorum. İlk defa bu yazarın kitabını okuyacaksanız bu kitaptan başlamanızı pek önermem. Zira zaman zaman ne diyor bu adam dediğim yerler baya oldu, özellikle kitabın ilk çeyreğinde.

Kitap sekiz bölümden oluşuyor, dokuzuncu bölümün başlıgı var ancak boş bırakılmış. Bizim hayalgücümüze bırakılmış diyebiliriz hikayenin devamı. Kitap net bir sonla bitmiyor, bitmesi de gerekmiyor tabi ki. Eiji Miyake yaşadığı ufak kasabadan Tokyo gibi bir şehre hiç tanımadığı babasını bulmaya geliyor, onu ararken de başına gelmeyen kalmıyor. Kitap bir çok şey hakkında ama hiç bir sey hakkında değil bir yandan da. Yani net bir konu yok ortada, daldan dala atlayan bir çok konu ve bölüm var. Bazı bölümlerde Miyake'nin hikayesini okurken 1940'lardan kalma bir günlük okuyoruz, Miyake'nin bulduğu bir hikayeyi okuyoruz, Miyake'nin rüyalarına tanık oluyoruz. 4. ve 5. bölümde Yakuza mafyası konuya dahil oluyor (bu bölümlerin beni biraz sıktığını itiraf etmem lazım) Yani dediği gibi daldan dala atlayan bir çok konu var. Anlatım tarzı bu kitabı farklı kılan şey diyebilirim. Yer yer uçarı hatta çılgın, yer yer komik, bazen sıkıcı. Bu arada anlatılan farklı konular hikayeyle hiç alakası olmayan şeyler değiller, yazar son iki bölümde bütün bölümleri birbirine güzel bağlıyor hakkını yememek lazım :)

Kitapta geçen hayatın anlamı nedir sorusuna verilen bir cevabı ilginç buldum. Hayatın anlamı , hayatın anlamını aramaktır belki de. Zaten kitapta da Miyake hayatının anlamı yerine koyduğu babasını bulma görevini tamamlıyor ama onu tatmin eden babasını bulmak değil, bulma yolunda basına gelenler oluyor bir bakıma.

Kitabı okuyunca Japonya'ya gitme isteği uyandı bende. Japon olmayan bir yazarın bunu başarması da enteresan aslında. Ama yazarın Japonya'da geçirdiği yıllar buna sebep oluyor tabi.

Sonuç olarak düz bir anlatım ile yazılmış bir metin okumaktan hoşlananlar için değil de daha ziyade hayalgücü geniş, farklı anlatımlara, daldan dala atlayan konulara açık okurlara daha fazla hitap edebilecek bir roman olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Yer yer Murakami (hayalgücü bakımından) yer yer de Murat Menteş (anlatım bakımından) okuyor hissine kapıldığım oldu.

A Study of Tales or
“Like watching a musician play his scales very, very well”

Source

The tension between style and substance dominates a significant portion of the David Mitchell conversation. Fairly consistently Mitchell’s writing falls into the style side of this writing dichotomy. As with anything, it's an issue of taste for anyone who has dipped their hand into the creative writing pot. It splits writers of all different stripes, in genre, literature or otherwise with geniuses on both sides. To me, the definitive distinction falls between those one care more about the content that the words purport to signify versus those who care more about the words themselves, deriving aesthetic pleasure from the effect that words can have, even if tangentially related to their referents. Finding a particular niche in workshops and MFA circles, accusations of purple prose and self-indulgent descriptions fly freely from minimalist tongues towards those of the latter camp. I am an inveterate defender of that latter camp. I've always considered content to be accidental; I read literature because I love words. I want to be dazzled by what they are capable of on their own, unburdened by the requirements of their referents.

I think anyone with a taste for poetry and excessive prose will agree with these sentiments. When I declare Mitchell a brilliant writer, I don’t mean it any capacity to strip down the prose and tell some brutally honest tale in the Hemingway sense; he’s not in that business. I don’t mean to say that he spins out a deft plot, a wildly original story (he wears his influences on his sleeves) but rather, I mean that David Mitchell is a level-ten wordsmither, capable of making any situation, no matter how banal or derivative come alive with soaring prose.

Goatwriter, the stutterer, writes an untellable story

I think that the frustration that most people find with this book is that it's scatterbrained and unfocused. My previous apologetic move was to point out a flaw in Mitchell’s ambition that he tried to cover too much ground and was unable to make good on his original intentions. Upon a second reading, I now see that the book is exactly as it should be. What seems to be a mess of splintered threads and tangential story lines is really the product of a book about the search for meaning. As it is with any book that treats this topic (Crying of the Lot comes to mind), it is part of the function of the book to simulate the frustration that arises from seeking meaning out of a chaotic external world.

On the one hand, Mitchell is showing us all the literary gymnastics he is capable of pulling off. On the other hand, he is imbuing us with the experience of Mr. Eiji Miyake, a twenty year old cast away in the big city for the first time, confronted with first loves, loss of innocence, struggling to find out what it is that matters to him. Of the thousands of avenues into the buildingsroman, Mitchell takes this route, an exploration into the fertile time period of your 20's ripe with existential crises, one night stands and cigarettes.

Confusion is justified. On my first reading, I was thoroughly confused by the misadventures of Goatwriter in his anthropomorphic fantasy land. Now it is my favorite part of the book. It is full of genuine hilarity and brilliant wordplay and it highlights the struggle to reach some elusive, ultimate meaning. It seems so ineffable. The only true story and the ultimate meaning therein is the one that hasn’t been told, the ninth dream that begins when all other dreams fall away.

Meaning is what we intuit from disparate facts after we’ve exhausted all immediate evidence.

The ninth dream is a blank slate for the reader to project his/her meaning upon the book.

The final words of anything hums with significance, a real goosebump affair that sends the reader back to the beginning to begin his search for meaning all over again.

Okay so I am actually awful at writing reviews these days. I can truly love a book and only end up being able to write a paragraph or two summing up why I love it. So apologies for those of you who used to read my essay length book reviews.

I did really enjoy this one, for many different reasons. First of which being the fact that it is set in Japan (mainly Tokyo). Japan is my happy place and so obviously I love reading books that take place there. Especially when they capture the feeling and motion of the cities. David Mitchell lived in Japan for several years when he was younger and you can tell by the way he writes about it. His writing breathes Japan. He manages to make the mundane everyday occurrences like travelling on the train, into something beautiful and notable. It might be something that you don't give much thought too but at the same time it's something that you are instinctually aware of. The way that the characters interact and talk with one another is also a very faithful description of Japanese customs and culture. I think sometimes authors writing about Japan that aren't Japanese don't always get it right. Their portrayal is somewhat skewed, they seem to present a unrealistic and an unfathomable view of the culture and lifestyle.

Don't be put off by the idea that this book is confusing. It's basically the story of Eiji trying to find and meet his father. But interwoven in these segments are dreams, daydreams, imaginings, writings and stories of not only Eiji, but many other people. It is often clear when what you are reading is a dream or when it is Eiji's reality. What I'm basically saying is this a case of it sounds more confusing than it actually is. There are moments where you will be left questioning what the fuck you've just read. Then you'll have a moment where you see a bit of yourself in Eiji. Also his dreams are utterly fantastic and hilarious (when they are not terrifying!).
Speaking of Eiji, as a main character I loved him. I really found him funny and infuriating. I also connected with him on another level. I'm not sure whether I've mentioned this before in a review but I'm actually a twin. So I get his emotions and connection with his sister. Although my life is completely different to his, I can still feel attached to him.

So who would I recommend this book to? This book is actually genre defing so it doesn't just appeal to one type of reader. There are elements of almost all genres present in this book.
If you've read any of David Mitchell's other books then you'll probably know whether you like his writing enough and you'll know what you letting yourself in for.
If you like reading about Japan and books set there and you want a story that is very true to culture.
I'd also recommend this to fans of Murakami's novels. Whilst they are certainly not the same there are some similar themes and character tropes. If you enjoy Murakami I think you'll enjoy this book.
But ultimately, if you read the blurb and fancy a damn good journey of self discovery, reality and Tokyo, then read on. Find the meaning.

This book is a surrealist tale of Eiji Miyake, a twenty-year-old young man from the rural island of Yakushima, who moves to Tokyo to find his father. Eiji has never known his father who had abandoned the family years ago. It is set in a near-future technologically advanced society. It blends mystery, adventure, and surrealism. Eiji encounters a diverse set of characters and becomes entangled in a series of bizarre and often dangerous events. Themes include identity, family, and guilt. It is written in a non-linear fashion. Dream sequences are interwoven with Eiji’s reality, and it is not always clear which is which. It is an intricately crafted complex story. There is humor and extreme violence. It contains multiple Beatle references scattered throughout the narrative. David Mitchell is one of my favorite authors, and I have loved several of his novels (e.g., Ghostwritten, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob deZoet, and Cloud Atlas). This one is a little too far “out there” for me. I enjoyed it but not as much as some of his others.

3.5

2 stars - Meh. Just ok.

I’ve read the two most recent works by David Mitchell and think they are both amazing. Then I read somewhere that it is best to read his novels in order as some characters make cameos in later novels.

I have now also read his first two books and both were a bit lackluster. This one, in particular, was disappointing. If you are new to this author, I highly suggest starting with his most recent novels.

I expect and look forward to weirdness when I pick up a Mitchell novel, but this one was just too much.
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Favorite Quote: Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still are.

First Sentence: We are both busy people, so let’s cut the small talk.