How Will I Know?

Whitney Houston sings, “How will I know if he really loves me?”

Pop Music asks some of the most probing questions we can imagine.

Many of them are secular versions of Spirituals, Gospel Music or Hymns.

How will I know if He really loves me?

How will I know if He really exists?

How will I know if He’s really there?

What would I say if he insists?

(Sorry, that last one slipped in from my review of "Glee: How to Plot an Episode in 70 Words".)

To which the tabloid press add:

How could I tell?

And, more significantly, in the Facebook era:

Who could I tell?

How would I tell them?


Can Anybody Find Me Somebody to Love?

Freddie Mercury sings, “Can anybody find me somebody to love?”

Can anybody find me somebody to love me?

We need somebody to love.

We need somebody to love us.

Need, need, need, need, need.

We are the most psychologically needy creatures ever to inhabit this Earth, but we are also the most skeptical.

We need to believe, we want to believe, we want to be believed in, but we are plagued by doubt.


How Could We Tell?

If Jesus or God returned to Earth, how could we tell it was Him?

Would we expect Him to perform a miracle?

Would we ask Him to show us His wounds?

What if She wore a dress?

What if He wore a suit?

What if She was a Democrat? (God forbid.)

What if He was a Republican? (God forbids.)

How would we know?

How could we tell?


Lift Up Your Heads, Read Joyce

As probing and insightful as these questions are, there is an equally important set of literary questions.

Would we recognise James Joyce if he was in our midst?

What if he wasn’t wearing a hat?

How should we laud him?


Re-Joyce, the Lord is King

On the other hand, there's the reader’s equivalent of the old chestnut: who is the next Bob Dylan?

Who is the next James Joyce?

Would we recognise them?

Would we recognise the next “Ulysses”?

Could someone in the 21st century write the greatest novel ever written?

Does it have to be a (or the) Great American Novel to qualify?

What if it was the Great Asian Novel?

What if it wasn’t written by Haruki Murakami? (I’d have egg on my face then, wouldn’t I?)

What if it was written by an Englishman?

What if it was “number9dream”?


2001: A Time and Space Oddity

David Mitchell released his second novel in 2001.

Having read the novel twice, I wondered what the blurb had said:

“David Mitchell’s second novel belongs in a Far Eastern, multi-textual, urban-pastoral, road-movie-of-the-mind, cyber-metaphysical, detective/family chronicle, coming-of-age-love-story genre of one. It is a mesmerizing successor to his highly acclaimed and prize-winning debut, “Ghostwritten’.”

The blurb-writer should be sacked.

This is understatement of the highest (or is it, lowest?) order.

“number9dream” is a time and space oddity.

But, more importantly, it is a time and space odyssey.

It is a 21st century “Ulysses”.

No, this is an understatement.

It is the 21st century “Ulysses”.


Prove It? These are Facts!

“It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams”: Don DeLillo, “Americana”

Proof? You want proof?

Must I show you Mitchell’s wounds? Must I document all his miracles?

Oh ye of little faith.

Must I bury reality, so that I can disclose his dreams?

OK. Prove it. Just the facts. The confidential. This case that I’ve been working on so long…


On Approaching “number9dream” (A Guide for Television Fans)

“First you creep
Then you leap
Up about a hundred feet
Yet you're in so deep
You could write the Book.
Chirpchirp
The birds
They're giving you the words
The world is just a feeling
You undertook.
Remember?”


It’s Juxtaposition (I Didn’t Imagine Getting Myself Into)

So, how would David Mitchell tell his story?

How would he know what to say?

“number9dream” is typical of Mitchell’s writing in that it is not a straight linear narrative.

It collects nine (apparently) disparate chapters and juxtaposes them against each other.

I have to confess that I didn’t really have a clue what was going on (and why) until the middle of Chapter 5 (“Study of Tales”).

Up until then, Mitchell seemed to be just assembling his paints and brushes on the table, getting everything ready, drawing an outline, only no picture was emerging.

But is it too much to expect a reader to wait 250 pages before they start to get it?

I think of Mitchell as a mosaic artist.

I see him as an author who might feel that meaning and society have become fragmented or broken, but whose counter-strategy is to fix it by making it whole again.

He is one of a group of artists who shepherds us from disintegration to integration. Individually and socially.

As long as people feel that alienation is not a natural or desirable state, I will look to culture and artists like Mitchell for this experience and outcome.

Yet, I had started to believe that this work might be an artistic failure, that he was trapped in mere juxtaposition.

The chapters didn’t seem to be conversing, they weren’t informing each other, they weren’t relating to each other.

It was only in chapter 5 that the mosaic started to take shape for me.


Father On Up the Road

Eiji Miyake is a 20-year old boy from the country who now lives in Tokyo.

His father abandoned his family when he was very young.

His twin sister, Anju, died nine years ago when they were 11.

Eiji’s mother became an alcoholic, and he more or less ran away from home.

It’s about time he started to make something of his life.

In a way, Eiji is a composite of both Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom from Joyce’s “Ulysses”.

Eiji and Stephen are on a quest to find a biological or metaphorical father, to flesh out, contextualise and complete a family.

Eiji and Bloom are on a quest to consummate or repair a sexual relationship, which in Eiji’s case will mark the completion of his passage through adolescence (in the same way it does in Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood”).

Joyce took 18 Episodes, Mitchell takes nine Chapters (one of which is wordless, apart from the digit “9”).

Joyce’s work is structurally modeled on Homer’s “Odyssey”.

Mitchell’s work takes “Ulysses” and leaps from it into a postmodern waterfall of meanings.

Only, paradoxically, like “Alice in Wonderland”, he leaps upwards rather than diving downwards – hence, “First you creep/Then you leap/Up about a hundred feet/Yet you're in so deep/ You could write the Book”.


Playing with Some Ballpark Figures of Speech

While Joyce explores different styles of writing in each Episode, Mitchell’s pyrotechnics are on display throughout.

However, the stylistic resemblance is most apparent in Chapter 5, where Mitchell playfully works his way through as many figures of speech as he can in the space of 66 pages (alliteration, assonance, consonance, euphony, hyperbole, puns, rhyme, probably many more that I’ll leave you to detect).

This happens to be a chapter in which Mitchell conjures a novel within a novel and the character in the internal novel realises that he is being written.

It’s important that you not take him too seriously.

He’s not using purple prose to display his intellectualism.

He’s playing with words in the most Joycean or Nabokovian fashion.

”First frost floated a wafer of ice on edelweiss wine.”

”The fourth noise, the whisperings which Goatwriter was waiting for, was still a way away, so Goatwriter rummaged for his respectable spectacles to leaf through a book of poems composed by Princess Nukada in the ninth century.”

”Suddenly the sky screamed at the top of its lungs.” (Note the Pynchoneque screaming.)

”A hoochy-koochy hooker honked.”

Then there are sentences you just read for the pleasure:

”The naked eyeball of the sun stared unblinkingly from a sky pinkish with dry heat.”

”A desert wind did nothing to cool the world it wandered through.”

”The road ran as straight as a mathematical constant to the vanishing point.”

”A quorum of quandom quokkas thumped off as Pithecanthropus flexed his powerful biceps, drummed his treble-barrelled chest and howled a mighty roar.”

Don’t worry if they don’t appeal to you. There are plenty of other jelly beans in the packet. There’s bound to be a flavour that you’ll savour.


Lookin' for Soul Food (and a Place to Eat)

Of course, sooner or later, one of us must know that Mitchell’s journey concerns stories and dreams.

Goatwriter seeks out and tells “truly untold tales”, yet is a character in one that is being told.

A character in one of Eiji’s dreams tells a story and remarks:

”Stories like that need morals. This is my moral. Trust what you dream. Not what you think.”

An Ogre in Eiji’s dream warns, “Be very careful what you dream.”

An old lady exchanges persimmons for dreams that give her nourishment and replenish her soul:

”You are too modern to understand. A dream is a fusion of spirit and matter. Fusion releases energy – hence sleep, with dreams, refreshes. In fact, without dreams, you cannot hold on to your mind for more than a week. Old ladies of my longevity feed on the dreams of healthy youngsters such as yourself.”

”Dreams are the 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.”

In a world of telephones, televisions, computers, technology, we have lost touch with the tactile and the spiritual, we have become too analytical and serious.

We have lost our sense of humour and absurdity and play.

We are not being refreshed the way we need to be.

We are consuming too many spirits of an alcoholic nature and too little soul food.


number9dream (Lennon’s on Sale Again)

Of course, “#9 Dream” is the name of a John Lennon song, and Lennon features in the novel.

Eiji plays guitar and learns how to play all of John Lennon’s songs.

He meets Lennon in a dream and discusses the meaning of three songs: “Tomorrow Never Knows”, "Norwegian Wood” and “#9 Dream”.

Eiji asks Lennon about the meaning of “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

John jokes, “I never knew” (and they “giggle helplessly”).

John explains that the song wrote him, rather than him writing it.

Character John is being a bit disingenuous here.

In the song, real John advises “turn off your mind, relax and float downstream”, “lay down all thoughts and surrender to the void”, “listen to the colour of your dreams” and “play the game ‘Existence’ to the end/of the beginning”:

“Love is all and love is everyone
It is knowing.”

These messages are consistent with the themes of the novel.

Character John also reveals that “#9 Dream” is a descendant of “Norwegian Wood”.

Both are ghost stories. While “Norwegian Wood” is concerned with loneliness, “#9 Dream” is concerned with harmony: “two spirits dancing so strange”.

John also explains that “the ninth dream begins after every ending”.

In a sense, there is a sequence of eight dreams, the eighth dream ends the first cycle and is followed by a ninth dream which starts a new cycle.

This explains why chapter 9 of the novel is blank.

It is an empty capsule or container for Eiji (and the reader) to fill with our new vision.

After eight chapters, we have simply reached the end of the beginning.


If Sex was Nine

By the end of chapter 8, Eiji has completed his quests for his father and a partner, in different ways.

At the very end, we see him running from the news that there has been a massive earthquake in Tokyo.

Having resolved his own concerns, he must still live in a world dictated by the vagaries of Nature.

He might be Mother Nature’s Son, but he cannot impose his Will on her.

However, just as he might be running from disaster, he is running towards his future, hopefully towards the embrace of his new love, Ai.

He is escaping from something to something else.

As real John says, he is floating downstream, he is not dying.


West Meets East

There is much more I could say about the detail of the novel.

However, I will leave that to you and to others to explore.

I want to say something more about why I rate David Mitchell so highly as an author.

Mitchell doesn’t just write within the Western literary tradition.

His wife, Keiko (to whom he dedicated this book), is Japanese and they lived for many years in Japan.

Henry James sought to understand himself by exploring the relationship between the new America and the old Europe.

Joseph Conrad sought to understand the Enlightenment of Europe in contrast to the Darkness of Africa.

Like John and Yoko, Mitchell works at the intersection of East and West.

While at the time of writing he understood and was influenced by Murakami, he has his own distinct and unique voice.

The world is not dominated by America or Europe anymore.

The future will contain (already contains) Asian DNA.

Mitchell understands this and has been exploring it since he first sat at a writing bureau with a pen.

His Odyssey extended beyond the Middle East and discovered the Far East (sorry if I offend anyone by using that term, but it says what I need it to say in this context).

Whereas Ulysses returned home to Helen of Troy and Bloom duplicated his journey internally within Dublin, Mitchell and his characters have made their home in a global village.

They don’t need to return anywhere, because they are comfortable anywhere on this planet.

Despite the fragmentation of society by technology and modernism, Mitchell is a Great Integrator.

I said at the beginning that I wanted to make a case that Mitchell is a 21st century James Joyce.

This case is closed.


Postscript: ”If You'll Be My Bodyguard”

On the occasion of her death during the week of this review, I want to dedicate this review to Whitney Houston, who I totally adored in “The Bodyguard”.

I wore a hired uniform for a week after that film.

The film was directed by Lawrence Kasdan (one of my favourite directors, who also directed “The Big Chill”, from which Kevin Costner’s role as "Alex" - the dead guy - was cut).

However, the film was also an important statement about the portrayal of inter-racial romance in Hollywood, only it involved a relationship between a white man and a black woman.

Hollywood hasn’t had the guts to feature a relationship between a black man and a white woman (like Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie).

I’m sorry if I offend anybody by saying that.

David Mitchell writes for and about a world in which the answer to the question “how will I know if he really loves me” is color-blind.

All hail, David Mitchell and the ship you sail in.




Genesis 9:09 (Unauthorised)

"So they went into the ark with Noah, by twos, of all flesh and of all colours, in which was the breath of life."

Mild Seven
Parliament
Cabin
Peace
Kent
Hope
Philip Morris
Marlborough Light

That's the number of different cigarette brands cited and smoked in this novel. Frankly, it's a good job that this book only covers 8 weeks in the life of narrator and protagonist, Eeji Miyake, because he's unlikely to live for too much longer.

Follow Miyake as he smokes, gurns, fantasises and bull-shits his way around Tokyo trying to find his long-lost Pops and enjoy the literary games and jousting word-smithery that accompanies this. David Mitchell has once again cleared his literary throat and spewed forth a load of different writing styles. Mostly you are left with the impression that he write to amuse himself; it's a way of stretching some newly formed literary muscle that he's developed.

Very clever Mr Mitchell, and better than Cloud Atlas (for me anyway), but cleverness and a big collection of exercises in grammatical madness be it alliterative, metaphorical, tautological, allusion or allegorical can only take you so far before the reader decides they don't want to have to look that hard for a story within a complexly constructed chain of words. The vocab equivalent of the Gordion knot where a clean slice at it will only get your paper cuts and not answers.

Ik hou wel van David Mitchell, vooral van het ongehoord spectaculaire "Cloud Atlas" en het prachtige "The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet". Toch heb ik zijn nieuwste roman, "Utopia Avenue", niet uitgelezen. Wat mijn echtgenote had voorspeld: zij las het met plezier uit, maar zei meteen dat ik mij snel zou vervelen. En aldus geschiedde. Een tijdje later echter ried ze mij "Droom Nummer Negen" aan, Mitchells tweede roman, die zij veel fantasievoller en mooier vond, en die mij vast wél zou boeien. En ze kreeg alweer gelijk. Ik vond deze vroege Mitchell erg onderhoudend en gevarieerd, en meerdere passages en hoofdstukken uit "Droom Nummer Negen" vond ik ronduit meeslepend en spectaculair. Bijna zo spectaculair of soms zelfs net zo spectaculair als "Cloud Atlas". Kortom, ik vermaakte mij prima. Het schijnt dat Mitchell zelf zijn eerste romans wat aan de overdadige kant vond, en te rijk aan metaforen en grillige wendingen, maar ik heb daar geen enkel probleem mee.

Hoofdpersoon en ik- verteller is Eiji Miyake, een Japanse jongeling die zijn verdwenen vader zoekt, gefrustreerd mijmert over zijn gevluchte en weinig geliefde moeder, en behoorlijk veel traumatische treurnis voelt over zijn verdronken tweelingzus. De zoektocht naar de verdwenen vader is tegelijk ook een symbolische en soms mythische zoektocht naar het verloren anker, het ontbrekende richtpunt in het zo chaotische universum, de ontbrekende sleutel van de eigen identiteit. Zoals de treurnis over de verloren tweelingzus wellicht ook het gat in Eiji's identiteit symboliseert, het gemis van een hem completerende zusterziel. Hoe dan ook draait alles in "Droom Nummer Negen" om zoeken en niet vinden, en om oneindig dolen in de wereld en het eigen hoofd. Wat dan gebeurt in negen erg in stijl van elkaar verschillende hoofdstukken, waarin realiteit en droom op vaak onnavolgbare wijze met elkaar vermengd raken. Ongehoord spectaculaire passages in manga- stijl over Japanse maffiosi (de Yakuza) worden afgewisseld met post-apocalyptische sprookjeswerelden met o.a. een verhalen vertellende "Goatwriter" (vertaald als "Bokkepoot"), een pratende kip en een voorhistorische mens in de hoofdrol; passages met het jachtige ritme van videogames worden afgewisseld door dagboekpassages van een Kaiten- piloot (een soort onderzeese Kamikaze); adembenemende nachtmerrieachtige horror wordt afgewisseld met ontroerende scenes over moeizaam op elkaar verliefde adolescenten; de denderende en chaotische dynamiek van het moderne Tokio wordt afgewisseld met de bijna pastorale sferen van het afgelegen eiland waar Eiji geboren en getogen is. of met verhalen waarin een droomfantasie is ingebed in een droomfantasie die weer ingebed is in een andere droomfantasie die..... En zo voort.

Die afwisseling van stijlen en vormen vond ik erg opwindend en opvrolijkend. Te meer omdat je door de vermenging van droom en werkelijkheid steeds voor nieuwe verrassingen staat, en steeds op het verkeerde been wordt gezet. Daar hou ik wel van. Bovendien produceert Mitchell de ene verrassende zin na de andere. Soms verstild en poëtisch, met een soort haiku- achtige toon die doet mijmeren over de helaasheid der dingen. Soms hamerend en ongerijmd en vol moordende dynamiek, wat de denderende en ongerijmd- veelvormige dynamiek van de metropool Tokio wel heel invoelbaar maakt. Een dynamiek die voor de zoekende wees Eiji nog heftiger is dan voor ons, te meer omdat Eiji een vreemdeling is in Tokio, en als eilandbewoner totaal onbekend is met zulke chaotische metropolen. Ook voor spectaculaire, humoristische hard- boiled zinnen draait Mitchell trouwens zijn hand niet om. Zie bijvoorbeeld hoe Eiji na een heftige nacht met een enorme kater ontwaakt: "Uitgedroogde zonnebloemen hangen voorover in hun vaas. Mijn hoofd zit vastgeplakt van slaap tot slaap. Mijn tong is gezouten, zongedroogd en door woestijnwezels ondergescheten. Mijn keel is bewerkt met een geologenhamer. Mijn ellebogen en knieën zijn ruw van wrijvingswarmte. Mijn liezen ruiken naar garnalen". Van dat soort zinnen word ik echt klaarwakker. En ook bij veel andere Mitchell- zinnen veerde ik helemaal op.

Al die razendsnelle wisselingen van stijlen maken het boek wel erg heterogeen, en daardoor soms ook ongrijpbaar. Wat nog versterkt wordt door de snelle afwisseling van droom en werkelijkheid en door het surrealistisch-onwerkelijke karakter van die werkelijkheid. Of, beter misschien, van de vele verschillende werkelijkheden. Want al die werkelijkheden zijn droomwerkelijkheden, en omvatten eerder een mogelijke realiteit (of zelfs een bijna onmogelijke realiteit) dan een kenbare alledaagse realiteit. Maar juist dat maakt ze significant. Zie de volgende mijmering van Eiji over zijn oudoom, die als Kaiten- piloot stierf in de tweede wereldoorlog: "Wat zou Subaru Tsukiyama nu zeggen van Japan? Was het de moeite waard om voor te sterven? Misschien zou hij zeggen dat dit niet het Japan is waarvoor hij is gestorven. Het Japan waar hij voor stierf is nooit tot stand gekomen. Het was een mogelijke toekomst, die bij het heden auditie heeft gedaan, maar tegelijk met andere dromen afgewezen werd". Dat vind ik significant. De voor Eiji's oudoom richtinggevende toekomstbeelden en idealen waren dus niet meer dan dromen, alleen virtuele werkelijkheden die op dat moment "auditie deden" om als geaccepteerde werkelijkheid erkend te worden. Maar ze waren wel richtinggevend, hoe virtueel en droomachtig ook. Ze hebben het toenmalige Japan wel sterk vorm en inhoud gegeven, en de Japanse geschiedenis sterk mede bepaald. En alleen daarom al maken ze deel uit van Eiji, al was het maar omdat ook hij via zijn oudoom verbonden is met dat Japanse verleden en de dromen uit dat verleden.

"Droom Nummer Negen" bevat flink wat directe en indirecte toespelingen op Murakami. De Japanse wereld is bovendien net zo onwerkelijk surrealistisch als dat hij bij Murakami vaak is. De surrealistische en veelvormige stijl waar Mitchell voor kiest is dan geen vlucht uit de werkelijkheid, maar volgens mij een manier om de soms zo onwerkelijk lijkende werkelijkheid van het moderne Japan in al zijn grilligheid te vangen. Dat is bij Murakami zo, maar volgens mij ook in dit boek van Mitchell. Bovendien is het werk van Murakami één lange uitnodiging om af te dalen in werelden van het onbewuste, en in ervaringen waar de ratio geen greep meer op heeft. Ook dat element is volgens mij in "Droom Nummer Negen" aanwezig. En de ongewisheid die dat oplevert wordt een boek lang mooi volgehouden: elke ontknoping is alleen aanleiding tot nieuwe verwikkelingen, elke cruciale ontmoeting loopt anders dan je zou verwachten, elk verhelderend inzicht mondt uit in weer een nieuwe droom. Of zelfs in het onbepaalde wit van onbeschreven pagina's, of de oningevulde leegte van nog niet gedroomde dromen....

Die Murakami- achtige afdaling in irrationele diepten vond ik zonder meer fascinerend. Maar ik vond "Droom Nummer Negen" vooral erg onderhoudend en amusant. Met name omdat Mitchells zo inventieve en gevarieerde stijl borg staat voor meerdere verrassingen op welke pagina. Zelfs zijn meest tragische passages maken mij daardoor vrolijk. In vond het bovendien een grote verrassing dat Mitchell al voor "Cloud Atlas" zo'n spectaculair swingende hand van schrijven had. Zou die ook al zichtbaar zijn in zijn debuut, "Ghostwritten"? En zou die nog steeds zichtbaar zijn in "Utopia Avenue" zonder dat ik dat heb gemerkt?

This book has been a little more crazier than crazy!

There was Ghostwritten, every jigsaw piece fitting perfectly, and logically! And then comes a stream of hazy dreams, none of them making any sense, but adding on to the abstractness.

In most of the chapters, I had the urge to just DNF it. There were some funny conversations and equally good situations. Its the main plotline of hunting his father that failed me.

Overall, felt like I wasted more than a month's reading time to be outplayed by this prank!!!

Well, I suppose all of Mitchell's novels can't be absolute home runs! Reminiscent in many ways of a Haruki Murakami novel, "number9dream"'s propensity to shift between the real and the imagined burdens the novel with a frustrating format despite the compelling story that lies at the novel's core. Set in Japan, where Mitchell spent eight years of his life, "number9dream" follows Eiji Miyake as he goes on a quest to find his estranged biological father he has never met. The novel is divided into 9 chapters, each with a different companion story that accompanies and reflects Miyake's journey through modern Tokyo. The opening chapter itself is frustrating in that the repeated, albeit altered, fantastical situations dreamed up by Miyake are never revealed as fantasy; it is up to the reader to discover the imagined nature of the proceedings for themselves. Despite this extremely confusing and willfully obtuse opening, Eiji Miyake's character is quite likeable and his journey for discovery is thoroughly interesting. Miyake's blunders through minimum wage jobs, finds himself in the middle of a Yakuza feud, slowly falls in love, all the while maintaining his unique perspective and disposition.
Another aspect of the book that is immensely enjoyable is the depiction of Japan. I have previously enjoyed Mitchell's superb "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" for its portrayal of the port city of Dejima in the year 1799 and the appreciation and understanding that he brought to Japanese culture. Proving he has a keen eye for the culture in multiple eras, "number9dream"'s modern Japan is wholly realized and believable despite the fantastical and psychedelic sections that permeate most of the book. As an addendum to my aforementioned complaint, not all of the sections are frustrating and some of them do end up being quite enjoyable. In particular, the "Kai Ten" section was easily my favourite as it brought Miyake's quest to a more fulfilling conclusion than his previously intended goal. As for to whom I would recommend the novel, it's a tough one. Fans of Mitchell's more recent output may be frustrated with the book, but I think that Murakami fans may find a lot to like. Experimental in an entirely different way from his other novels, "number9dream" just failed to resonate with me to the same degree as Mitchell's other novels.

I am so torn over this book! But I figure that being this conflicted between ratings probably means that I should err on the side of the fewer stars. Still: My kingdom for a half-star option!

There are lots of things I liked. Eiji, the main character, remains likable even as he's shuttled between hell and back, like, five thousand times in 400 pages and disappointed by nearly everyone who matters to him. There's a chance that his blossoming relationship with Ai contributed to my increasing fondness for him but I'm okay with that because their last exchange of the novel was so believably reminiscent of what it's like to be 20 and falling hard for someone you don't quite know. I liked the dreamy, Murakami flavor, especially after finding out that Mitchell counts him among his influences (according to the internet, which I totally trust all the time). I liked the David Mitchellness and how minute details wind up mattering very much, though I think his hallmarks are far less defined here in his sophomore effort than they are even in his debut novel. References to "The Man in the High Castle," "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and some music for which Eiji and I share an affinity were all tasty bonuses -- what can I say? I've got a mile-wide soft spot for fictional characters who have the same tastes as I do.

But there were also things I wasn't so crazy about in this book. It felt a little disorganized, which, intentional or not, didn't sit perfectly well with me. Some characters and a few scenes hogged a few too many pages: Had I found Eiji a little less interesting, the many detailed accounts of his odd jobs would have been downright tedious. And, okay, fine: The ending was a little too abrupt for me to be satisfied with it. Though I suppose having my way would mean that every book I ever read is at least 100 pages longer than the author intended.

Ultimately, this book suffers as "Player Piano" did, in that I'm cherry-picking my way through a writer's back catalog instead of chronologically working my way to the newer stuff: When I was planning this winding-down tour of my literary favorites' unread offerings, I actively chose "Number9dream" over "Thousand Autumns" in anticipation of that very reason. The lingering, negligible sense of dissatisfaction this book left me with is very much appeased by knowing that my sole remaining to-read Mitchell book is his most recent piece.

Video review
Imaginative storytelling and linguistic flair swirled into a machine at once explosive and tightly controlled, like the engine of a muscle car.

There: this book is a Ford Mustang. I'm not saying it's flawless (guzzles fuel like a camel, driving it to the office makes you look like a twat), but if you're worried about the flaws - if you seem them at all - you're not the product's intended customer.

If I thought the author could not follow up his debut I was mistaken. This was a cracking read, fun in fact. Chapter 4, Reclaimed Land, was sensational, an absolute hoot!!! Onwards and upwards as I read through the oeuvre of this very good author. For what it is worth Chapter 9 is a hoot as well!!! I played Lennon as I read it. And I have not read Murakami so what do I care.

This book was a pain to read... Mitchell loves to describe every possible dream sequence, every book read, etc. All of that probably took up more than half the book. There was very little actual plot. Around 3/4 of the way through you start getting interested in the story, and it becomes easier to read, even some letters the main character reads you for literally tens of pages. It could be a matter of me slowly getting used to enjoying the literature itself instead of focusing hornily on the plot, but still my enjoyment of the book as a whole was a 2.5/5.

A story about a 20 year old boy-man looking for the dad he's never met. In theory. Yawn. It's like someone said to David Mitchell "Take this cliched plot, drop some acid and see what happens."

And what happens is a lot.

The first chapter had me scratching my head. Wait no, I'll be honest, it wasn't that civilized. It had me kicking my feet and sighing and slamming down my coffee cup and internally screeching what the eff is going on here?! Not much later I realized, oh, ohhhh, this is what's going on. Sort of. He's doing stuff. Good stuff. Dream sequences and fantasies and what ifs and all that jazz. The result was starting to seem like Murakami - if Murakami had consumed seventeen red bulls and a baggie of speed. Chaotic and frantic and the makings of awesomeness.

By chapter two I began to think the trick to this book was to stop trying to get it and just go with it. Just let it take me at breakneck speed through the underground imaginary dreamy creepy deathly tunnels and streets of Mitchell's Tokyo. (Stop trying to make it Murakami's Tokyo, Mary!) By chapter three I was immersed and thinking back to chapter one and how much fun this whole crazy book is. Escapism. I'm doing it and so is Eiji. Dozens of realities exist in our heads, hundreds of forks in the road, which would we take? How much fun is it to blow up buildings and people and be a super hero in our heads while sipping coffee in a diner and people watching?

By chapter four and five I was annoyed and slightly bored. This book is like a sugar rush and halfway through it I crashed. It was like a Monday morning at work when everything is busy and phones are ringing and corporate heads are quacking and I'm zoned out and living twelve different lives in my head, like the early parts of the story....and then mid way through the book I look up and it's mid afternoon and people are feeding quarters into the office vending machine to purchase the will to keep going and I'm spent and just wanna go home already (it's hard work pretending to work hard).

So yeah. This book is like that.

The key I think is to just not take it so seriously. There is something sterile, something detached about Eiji and his life. His world/s are cold and dark and so is this book. Yet, it downright hysterical throughout. It's creative and different and challenging - and those are all wonderful things for a book to be.

David Mitchell’s novel Number9dream sees his readers thrown head first down the rabbit hole; entering the streets of Tokyo while gasping for air as they follow twenty year old Eiji Miyake on a quest to find his father.

Yet this is not the first time that Mitchell has revealed his Asiatic inspired Wonderland: his debut Ghostwritten published in 1999 received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for writers aged thirty-five and under. Ghostwritten was praised not only for its intricate plots, but also for its weaving of East Asian geography and intertextuality, where Mitchell references works from fellow postmodern writers Paul Auster and Isaac Asimov. Number9dream published in 2001, proves to be stitched from the same thread, as alternative worlds and “serialised memories” meet the rapidity of Japanese youth culture.

The opening of Number9dream certainly delivers a punch, where an influx of multi sensorial images of city life mixed with interior monologue hit out in short and snappy sentences. This, however, can prove disorientating, for as soon as we familiarise ourselves with Eiji’s mission impossible-esque antics, from shooting drones to stealing case files, Mitchell throws us off the scent. How? Well, in the same way that the ‘cavernous…belly’ of the PanOpticon lobby swallows Eiji whole – Mitchell toys with us, only to spit us back out by blending Eiji’s fantasies with reality.

As the novel progresses, Eiji’s memories dip back and forth, and again, fuse so seamlessly with fantasy and fable, that it is often hard to differentiate from what is real and what is imagined. But this, of course, is the joy. By the end of later chapters, Mitchell has shed clarity on these dreamlike episodes and gives further dimension to Eiji’s character. When Mrs. Sasaki’s remarks, ‘all we are is our memories,’ it is a revelation that proves particularly fitting as Eiji’s recurring memories of his sister Anju effectively destabilise time and space limits.

Aside from Mitchell’s interwoven narrative style, what is perhaps most impressive lies in his rich portrayal of Japan. As Tokyo, we soon learn, is to Mitchell what New York is to Frank O’Hara. His crystallised depictions of various Tokyo jaunts, from the Jupiter Café to the Shibuya bar in the depths of the pleasure quarters, hold an enigmatic quality and yet retain something eerily familiar. Ultimately, while at times you can feel yourself spiralling a little too out of control, where you catch yourself losing footing, just ever so slightly, it is still an astonishing novel.

I probably shouldn't be giving this any stars because I didn't even finish it. This was a book club read and none of us got through it, not even the most die-hard David Mitchell fans. I guess this is proof positive that a knack for writing will not save your book if you have nothing particular to say. As one person in our group described it, reading this book is like watching a musician play his scales very, very well---but after a while, you just want to hear him play an actual song for a sustained period of time. Perhaps I'll have better luck reading Cloud Atlas or Black Swan Green.