Number9Dream

Twenty-year-old Eiji Miyake travels to the hyperkinetic, frenetic city of Tokyo in this second novel by David Mitchell, the English expatriate author of 'Ghostwritten' who lives in Hiroshima, Japan. Eiji-san has come to Tokyo to discover the identity of his long-lost father, and it's this quest that propels the narrative through the twists and turns, bumps and bells of its pachinko machine-driven plot. Eiji-san can only control the speed at which he plays this game of life that often slips over into the surreal; otherwise he haphazardly bounces around Tokyo and its environs, bumping into random people who befriend him and betray him.
Mr. Mitchell readily admits that he has been much influenced by Haruki Murakami ('The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,' 'Sputnik Sweetheart') and Don DeLillo ('Underworld,' 'White Noise,' 'The Body Artist') in writing 'number9dream.' Readers who are fond of these two authors and their works will love this book. The title, 'number9dream,' echoes the fascination that John Lennon had for the number nine; his 1974 song '#9 Dream' peaked at '9' on the charts. ('So long ago / Was it in a dream, was it just a dream? / I know, yes I know / Seemed so very real, it seemed so real to me.')
The story begins: 'It is a simple matter. I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time: Eiji Miyake. Yes, that Eiji Miyake. We are both busy people, Ms Kato, so why not cut the small talk? I am in Tokyo to find my father. You know his name and his address. And you are going to give me both. Right now.' Or something like that.' Yes, something like that, because it's not such a simple matter after all. Slipping into the surreal, the realm of sci fi and phantasmagoria, Eiji Miyake soon inhabits a parallel universe. He goes about his day-to-day affairs, yet the narrative glides onto a giant turntable where the record that's playing repeats 'number nine . . . number nine . . . number nine.'
Eiji's quest leads him into the underbelly of the Tokyo scene, where he encounters the Yakusa. Does his father have a connection to the Yakusa? The origin of the Yakusa - Japanese for 'they without worth to society' - can be traced back to 1612; they were masterless samurai, ronin, wandering robber bands, who, after the industrialization of Japan, have transformed themselves into Armani-suited gangsters, who some call the Japanese Mafia. The code of the Yakusa and the structure of their organization is complex, but David Mitchell navigates their terrain with consummate skill.
After Eiji-san has met up with the Yakusa, he is then warned that he 'must persuade himself that tonight was another man's nightmare into which you accidentally strayed.' Yet the reality of Eiji Miyake's life is haunted and tainted by nightmares and dreams as he time-travels from his cozy capsule in Tokyo to his grandmother's home on the foggy island of Yakushima. In these flashbacks, he confronts ghosts and thunder gods while he seeks clues to the mystery-shrouded death of his twin sister, Anju. As Leatherjacket had told him earlier, 'nightmares are our wilder ancestors returning to reclaim land. Land tamed and grazed, by our softer, fatter, modern, waking selves.'
Through an unusual encounter in the Amadeus Tea Room with an elderly gentleman who may be Eiji-san's grandfather, he comes into the possession of a diary that was written by a kaiten pilot, who, while part of the Japanese Imperial Navy, was stationed off the coast of an island in the Ryuku chain during World War II. The journal entries, as they are read by Miyake in his capsule, are enthralling. Woven throughout other sections in the novel are a fabulist's tale, with oddball characters named Goatwriter and Mrs Combs, and a love story with Ai Imajo, a talented pianist. Unlike the narrative of 'Ghostwritten,' a novel of nine interlinked short-storied chapters plus one, the well-knit storyline of 'number9dream' doesn't unravel or drop any stitches as it goes along.
Some may say that 'number9dream' is no more than a Manga comic strip with cartoon characters and gratuitous violence, but they are missing the allusions and subtleties and humor that lightly grace the pages of this postmodern odyssey. 'number9dream' is a nonlinear novel in nine parts, a multilayered narrative that explores the nature of dreams and reality. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001, this novel is so extraordinary that you'll want to read it again and again and again.

Is Eiji Miyaki really storming the Pan Opticon skyscraper and breaking into files that finally reveal his father's identity, or is he just daydreaming about it? That is always the question in Number9Dream, David Mitchell's fast-paced new novel which bobs and weaves between its main character's real-life search for identity and his rich fantasy life, between his initiation into a corrupt, money-driven megapolis and his quest for young love. Mitchell, who won considerable acclaim for his first novel Ghostwritten, is sure to garner more attention for this inventive, mysterious book.
By far the most interesting thing about the novel is its Tokyo setting -- rendered as a shimmering urban nightmare, alternately realistic and futuristic. Eiji, a green boy from a remote Japanese island, comes to Tokyo to find the father who abandoned his mother when she became pregnant. Soon, he is adrift in a stew of syndicated crime, private sex clubs and an illegal trade in human organs.
Underneath the surface drama, Number9Dream is also a novel about parents and children. Eiji puts the rest of his life on hold until he can connect with his father. But Ai, the girl he falls in love with, shows him what true strength is. When her parents threaten to disown her if she pursues a musical career in Paris, she chooses the City of Light and lets her mother and father go. Eiji's love for Ai and his own risks and brushes with disaster eventually teach him that not all dreams are worth dying for, and that a young man learns his identity by making his own hard choices, not by trying to recapture a lost past.

I've got problems enjoying books which've been translated from their original language. I gave up on Soul Mountain after 20 pages, quit on 100 Years of Solitude with 20 pages to go and barely held out Kafka on the Shore (maybe because I couldn't stand not knowing where the heck Murakami was going towards the end, maybe the translator did an above-par job, maybe I was more patient).

So when someone slams David Mitchell for being a Murakami rip-off, I'm saying, "It's about time an English Murakami came about!" (although this probably just shows how poorly read I am). Number9 Dream is lucid, complex (what do Yakuza members blowing each other up have to do with a Silence-of-the-Lambs-like scene in which a prisoner who claims to be God proves the truth of his identity to his interrogator?), verboise, un/cyber-real (one page the main character is laser-battlin drones, another he's being swallowed by an alligator in a massive city-wide flood), weird(!), philosophical at times (can the meaning of life be both unique to individuals and shifting with said individuals' life-situations?). It doesn't hurt that this book was nominated for the Booker in 2001 (as was Mitchell's Cloud Atlas in 2004).

I think a book like Number9 highlights, for me at least, the importance of being a master of diverse disciplines. There is severe need today for "adaptive experts" (high in both innovation AND efficiency), instead of the common "routine expert" (good at what he does best but hopeless in everything else).

Mitchell is an adaptive expert to the max, his one book demonstrating his casual mastery of multiple genres: fantasy, sci-fi, romance, "magical realism", letter-writing (a'la Blind Assasin), football, computer-hacking, even comedy.

No doubt Mitchell knows reality enough to make it his page on which he writes life to its fullest.

Eiji Miyake comes from a small Japanese island to Tokyo to look for his father, whom he does not know. Via various ways to tries to get his identity and meet him and in the meantime he works on all kinds of odd jobs, from pizzaboy to employee of the railway lost and found office. He lives in a "capsule" above a video store together with a stray cat and a cockroach who are appropriately called Cat and Cockroach. Everywhere he meets people who are trying to help him in one way or another, but also some seriously bad guys. Slowly but surely he gets to know the identity of his father's family and later also of his father. But every story has its price...

It hardly ever takes me 5 weeks to finish a book, but this one did. This does not mean that it is not an interesting book: I found the story amusing, scary and sad at times, and the story about the Japanese kaiten (suicide torpedo's) pilots was interesting, strange and sad at the same time.

While not as good as his first novel "Ghostwritten," "Number9Dream" is an unforgetabe book, and satisfying read for those who are familiar with David Mitchell's style. The book begins in Tokyo with a young man from the countryside sitting in a coffee shop, plotting the best time to invade the building that houses his fathers lawyer. He plaans to extract from her, information as to his fathers where-abouts, which are the focus of the novel.

Though a good novel, it would probably be difficult for people to understand who've never read Mitchell before. My only noteable complaint about the book is that the dream sequences become somewhat jumbled at first, leaving you confused and somewhat angered. I nearly put the book down before the first section had finished. You'll fiure out what's real by the time the second section is about half-way through. Sometimes grusome (that bowling scene is disgusting), sometime beautiful (Mitchell really has expanded on his touching and lovely way of speaking) and like "Ghostwritten," leaves you no really clear-cut ending (something else that might enrage new readers). So basically, a good read for veterans of Mitchell, confusing and annoying for everyone else.

..., David Mitchell is obviously a fan of Haruki Murakami. In Number9Dream there are many cameo appearances of the works of Murakami, and the overall theme of the novel seems to be derived from Murakami's stable: disenchanted loner living in the crazy world of Tokyo's youth culture. Haruki Murakami has written some fine material, especially his brilliant The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. How does David Mitchell's Number9Dream hold up in comparison? Not very well.
The story itself, a complex tale of an illegitimate country boy going to Tokyo in search of his father, is interesting enough. Mitchell is most confident in his prose when delving into a side story concerning the yakuza, the Japanese crime syndicate his father obviously rubs shoulders with. But unfortunately our lead character is, quite literally, an avid dreamer. These weird dreams, constantly sprinkled throughout the novel, detract rather than enhance the story. Haruki Murakami is the expert in weaving surreal elements into his novels. David Mitchell fails, quite badly.
However all is not lost. There are vignettes within this overly complex novel which are actually quite interesting, and often the characterizations and the prose work very well. David Mitchell also captures the feeling of frenetic Tokyo quite convincingly. With better editting Number9Dream could have been quite a decent read.
Bottom line: Murakami fans will be appalled at this derivative material by Mitchell. Certainly not a terrible novel, but one has to wonder why Number9Dream was nominated for the Booker Prize?

An incredible novel, and my 2nd by Mitchell. For me, I may have enjoyed it more than Ghostwritten. Ghostwritten had a more straightforward narrative, Number9dream does not, which seems to be what many reviewers disliked about it. I'll try to explain. The book is separated into 8 sections, and each section has two narratives. The main narrative propels the story, while the sub-narratives usually relate to something Eiji is reading or dreaming. They include WWII kamikaze diaries about what constitutes true honor, surreal fables about the essence of writing and myth, Eiji's cyberpunk action hero musings, video game alternate realities, and dreams about John Lennon. These sections are usually delineated by bullet points, so you know what you're about to get into. Often though, the reality of the quest narrative and Eiji's dreams gets blurred. If this sounds like fun to you (it is), read this book. It's really not as challenging as other reviewers make it out to be, this isn't Finnegan's Wake, people. I enjoyed every second of the dream-like narrative. Mitchell's prose is flawless, his metaphors cause synesthesia, and he plays around with form like an improvising jazz master plays with notes. One thing I would like to point out, if you have never been to Tokyo or Japan or do not know much about Japanese culture, some things may seem confusing or quirky. Just one example I remember, he uses jankenned as a romanized verb. If you don't know that "Jan-Ken-Pon" is the Japenese equivalent of Rock, Paper, Scissors, you may find yourself looking in a dictionary for a word that doesn't exist. And yes, they really do put quail eggs and squid ink on pizza's in Japan. And mayo. Ew.

Also, I listened to "Mother" by John Lennon on vinyl after reading this book and almost cried. The ending is a bit abrupt, but I think I may find a conclusion in a dream, someday. Whether I remember the dream or not is a different story.

What impresses (or depresses) me most about the prior reviews is that no one at all seems to have paid attention to the very title of the book.

As is made clear in the first few chapters (which are the hardest to get through, because the author's design is not yet clear and one tends to read it like an ordinary novel), we are not ever to be sure from the narrative what has "actually" gone forth in the world and what has gone forth only in the head of the protagonist.

This is something more or less, but assuredly different from, "stream of consciousness" writing. What the significances of the various episodes are is for the reader to puzzle out in the light of her or his experience and understanding of--as Doug Adams so charmingly put it--Life, the Universe and Everything; a novel this complex is not to be reduced to a short plot summary.

The briefly interleaved para-fiction about Goatwriter and his entourage started as a strength, but stumbled, I think because Mitchell wanted to be *sure* we got it; but as a whole, those episodes remain nonetheless delightful--and perhaps relevant to the greater whole.

To frame this book in one's mind, it is important to pick up at least the obvious clues: "dream", John Lennon, "number 9", and the concatenation of those things.

I wonder, from the ending of the book, how many other readers might have given thought to the idea--just an idea, mind--that the protagonist is in reality dead, a ghost, reliving endless variations on the theme of what really happened in his life . . . .

At any rate, as others have noted, the book is well written, and that alone, in this day and age, is a recommendation to all literate readers. (Also, lest there be misunderstanding, I give it 3 stars because I grade on a -5 to +5 scale, so anything over zero is worth reading--we just need to leave latitude at 4 and 5 stars for the remarkably few really superb works of literature.)

Fantastic, in all senses of the word. As in Ghostwritten, Mitchell's smooth metaphors and unique observations constantly make you stop and think. This novel, like his first, hints at "a world within the world," as Delillo would say, and probably cannot be understood in a single reading. But it can be enjoyed for its touching and powerful story, with or without grasping the eerie subtext. His many allusions to Murakami are a bit more overt than in Ghostwritten -- he even has his lead character reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, with a key reference to a situation in that novel, and he uses the title of a John Lennon song for this book, as Murakami did with Norwegian Wood. Share this with friends. I can't wait for his next one.

Provided as a gift to an avid and critical reader, the book was devoured in days with satisfaction. One amazing item within the book that the reader loved was a short called "The Voorman Problem." That small section of the book became an award winning short and available on the store. The reader described the book "well written and surprising." Recommended.

For those of you who wish to watch the short, "The Voorman Problem" please note it is available as well on the store.

A jumbled cacophony of blurs. Mitchell's second book is frustrating and tiresome. The plot is essentially about a young many trying to find his father in Tokyo, and in the meantime we are wound through the labyrinth of his fantastical mind, interspersed with some memories of his traumatic past. It is frustrating in that you want to know what will happen, but there is no pay off. We are left unenlightened and ungratified, a bit like a hit of Ecstasy in the middle of a neon, flashing, buzzing, hypno nightclub, that never ascends to a high.
Knowing Mitchell there is some complex, complicated structural play at hand here, but the text is so dense and the plot so diluted that it's impossible to unravel. You're better off reading Cloud Atlas.

Literally, indescribable. There's something about this book. It's virtually incomprehensible, I'm not sure I empathise with anyone in it, and it weaves in and out of being ironic, philosophical and puerile, but damn, if there isn't something about it. Reading it is like staring through a whirling kaleidoscope, one in which, upon closer inspection, there are no true symmetrical counterparts. Science fiction, fantasy, metaphysical fiction? Who can bother. It's not a novel. It's an experience, and trying to decipher every aspect of it is like trying to decipher a hallucinogenic trip. It's not the meaning that matters. It's the simple act of things that happen and don't happen, things that can believed and things that can't. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Can I recommend it to anyone I know? Not sure. But it demands your attention, and for most of the way, it had mine.

David Mitchell doesn't need to see my eyebrow raising: he's an extremely well-established novelist, with homes in three different countries, who's considered to have a Midas touch by the opinion making caste of English language fiction.

I just think he rips off Murakami far too much.

Other reviewers have commented on the overwhelming debt to Murakami in this work. It's there, although I'd say it's more indicative of cliched 'point of view' tricks. But the Murakami shadow is no small complaint . . . indeed, I'd say the outright lifting has gone beyond homage to blatant imitation. Not uncommon, of course. But it's trouble in this example for two reasons . . . Mitchell is copping a Japanese voice, and loading it down with the shinto-neon effects (and lotsa yakuza!) that clearly came from his oft-mentioned decade teaching in Japan. For a man who spent so much time there, he has admittedly mastered little of the language. And, by extension, seems to have only vague nuances of its society.

The structure of this work is interesting, and is Mitchell's usual technique of one world/many versions. In this case, the nine 'dreams' are the surrogate realities that Eiji conjures up to fill the basic void of absent-father syndrom. Computer viruses, secret societies, mobsters, these are all the 'Fight Club' fantasies for inventing a reality where there is one. Have you heard of an author doing this before? They have, and Mitchell hardly stands out from the metaphysics of parralel lives. What is it with drowning sisters and guilt-ridden brother using magic to avoid the truth of premature death? This plotline, featured in the character of Anju, is almost *exactly* the same in texture as Karen Russell's "Haunting Olivia". Do hip phantasmal writers just all love dead drowned little girls, and the magic realism the brothers conjure up as replica siblings? Oh, but this time it's in cool Japan! And Mitchell's version of it sounds a lot like 'Norwegian Wood'. If you enjoy stories in which a main character develops narrative strategies for negotiating the past, try Cees Nooteboom's _All Soul's Day_, in which a cinematographer puts all his skills to the test in coming to terms with the death of his family. Nooteboom, to my mind, had a much more human vision, whereas Mitchell likes his laser-shooting droids way too much.

That's not to say the book is without merit . . . I really enjoy Mitchell for breaking the creative writing rules. It's got tricks, great phrases, all that writerly stuff. His narratives are byte-pixels of strange images and inhumane visions of people. At other times, the potent lyricism that Mitchell can muster serves the wrong master. The 'Kaiten' chapter is truly haunting in a Letters from Iwajima kind of way (recovered letters tell the human story) . . . and its portrait of military comraderie is so lush that the Shinkaze of the far right would be pleased. And it's moments like this that frustrate me the most: the 'Kaiten' diary has some fantastic writing, if you stop to consider that, in the time after a failed suicide mission, a submariner pens a poetic diary entry in English, within total darkness, about Life/Death. If Mitchell had just committed himself to two or three sub-plots, and wove them in more tightly to Eiji's plight, I really would have taken my breath away. Instead, I just choked on so much excess *stuff*. Honestly, and I love long novels, but this could have had 200 pages hacked out easily.

His writing can be gorgeous: I like Mitchell best when he's not trying so hard . . . the kids' football match was gloriously funny . . . I can set aside whether a Japanese coach would really yell "Sphincter" repeatedly at schoolboys . . . or his threat to disembowel them . . . but the stereotype of the Spartan coach has some truth I guess. But it definitely reads like a Westerner's version of Japanese life and culture, pantomimed from the 'inside'.

But I really think ego got in the way here. Mitchell seems determined to make a Joycean multinarrative, mixed up with a science fiction of warp-core breech. In places, it's fun. Mitchell has style. I'd take his kind of writing over the prissy minions any day. But the problem is that underneath the surface, which Mitchell disguises with lots of effects, is a pretty flat bit of yeah whatever. Spoiler alert: here's the plot. Eiji's dad is a jerk lawyer who doesn't pay attention to him. So this lonely boy creates a manga-world of computer spies and martial artists to cover up for a sad reality. Some of this manga world is apparently true: lots of yakuza deaths and suicidal bosses (here's a game: count how many Japanese characters in Mitchell's oeuvre end up killing themselves). Oh, there's a dead sister too -- and when she died Eiji felt really bad and guilty in a Kierkegaard kind of way, so he plays video games to take his mind off of the guilt. Do you see what I mean? So many plot devices in this book, but the bare bits are pretty cliche. So instead we get like -- seven, eight? -- mystery packages showing up. I groaned every time a manilla envelope or unannounced stranger or mystery mobile phone message came about. It means that Mitchell is loading up for another tricky-dicky curveball

Flipping through it again, I do keep finding some marvellous passages! Just odd bits of description beneath all the heavy handed dialogue and weird plot mechanics. My stomach can only take so much. I don't know -- maybe it deserves three stars? I hate rating books, so let me put it this way: in the genre of science-fiction metaphysics in which daydreams compete against a Single Reality, Mitchell's is quite good, if not excessive in its Matrix fantasia.

Maybe it's the almost obsessive need to assume a Japanese voice of 'rural' Japan as well as the metrpololis. Here's where the author skids on politics, although I know most people won't give a darn. Mitchell claims in interviews that this book was intended to be an antitode to orientalist attitudes of cherry blossoms and geisha. OK, so you're corrective is yakuza and suicide cults? Honestly, there's some excellent books of montage trauma and dreams concerning modern Japanese society. They're written by Japanese people. Mitchell, much like the Hearn he slags, is playing naturalised citizen by way of marriage. Hearn at least brought the eye of the student to his studies. Mitchell has just found a quirky backdrop for what, if set in London, would have been a banal lump of crazy prose.

No one bothers to mention it, so I will. The Japanese milieu in this book is the 'trick' to decorate a typical sci-fi quest mystery of dreams and identity. One reviewer claims there are no 'English Murakamis'. If this means that no one in English has attempted warped narratives that butterfly-effect notions of self and relativity -- give me a break. Mitchell is no innovator, unless if by invention it's unique to use foreign culture as a framework of alienation. It's called Sophia Coppola, "Lost in Translation". Mitchell has given us wordy anime, served up as hallucinatory highjinks. Like most new age screeds, some will find it mind expanding, others will find hackneyed. I liked "Wild Sheep Chase" more, both for its twisted sense, but also for its insights into postmodern Japan. Mitchell is turning his EFL efforts into a Booker prize nominee, and I'm finding this kind of thing tiring . . . it's Lafcadio Hearn meets Donald Ritchie meets Blade Runner. I bet you Mitchell would be the first to moan if a Tokyoite wrote, in Japanese, a violent bust-up about bangers, chips, and football hooligans searching for Churchill's cigar. In short, a cliched version of Britain, with Noddy in a kimono. But, when a foreigner takes on Japan, it still has that fanboy anime chic.

Because, really, Japan as a 'setting' is the trick to make this novel work. This notion of many dreams replacing one sad reality is totally been done. Even this morning, I read a novella by a Canadian, aping the voice of a Polish refusenik, in which a professor travels by plane to a semiotics conference in Odessa. During the flight, he has different versions (dreams) of what will happen in Odessa. Each chapter is a dream. In the final chapter, we find out he's not a professor, but an unemployed factory worker who has to explain to his wife that the rent money was spent on drink. But the 'Polish' atmosphere, like Mitchell's use of anime Japan, is what makes an old narrative drick do new things. Japan certainly must have given him enough pyrotechnics for his now you see it, now you don't kind of narrative. But man I'm tired of it all -- give me some reality instead of all this botoxed prose covering up a hackneyed centre. Eiji and his dad don't get along. Ok, fine.
Eiji's sister drowned and that's a hard reality to cope with. Yes, of course. But that's the reason why we get about 100 pages of cyber-crime sprees and articulate goats? Or are you trying to outdo Murakami?

Indeed, Mitchell exhibits an unhealthy fascination for Japan as a suicide-prone nation. A great deal of this plot has to do with the 'kaiten' (human torpedo), just as 'Ghostwritten', his first novel, fixated on the AUM cult. So . . . yakuza, suicidal warriors, pachinko parlous, video games. Well, so much for doing away with stereotypes. No amount of cartographic references, or Lao Tzu wise man quotes, will lead away from that. I can't help but think that, had Mitchell written a plain book about being an ESL teacher and falling in love (as he did), we'd have a much better book than this digitized hyperbole. Mitchell's a brilliant writer, of course he is -- too bad he gives way to robots. If I had a beer with the guy, I'd tell him to put away the white oxford shirts for a while, stop hanging around romantic west Ireland, and give a try with something more to the point. Maybe 'Black Swan Green', his newest -- which is supposed to sound a lot like 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha ha' does exactly that. But with alllll the stuff in the world to read I think I've given him a fair go, and I'm moving on

On a technical note, Mitchell makes a number of historical blunders and botches many of his cultural references. For example, in the final dream-interrupted sequence, the narrator refers the Kansai Earthquake (Mitchell is using the earliest name for this disaster) through its effect on the Richter scale. Japanese earthquakes are almost never reported like this, following instead their own system for measuring magnitude. Eiji refers to kanji as 'Japanese characters'. For some reason, Mitchell supplies long vowels for all place names, but does so inconsistently (Kyûshû but not Ôsaka). The wrong omnomatopoeia used for the cicada. Descriptions of closets in rural homesteads. Small errors like this abound, and they're the kind no Japanese author would make. I know that I sound like I'm nitpicking, which I am -- but, if you're going to put on another voice, shouldn't you get the details right? People always complain about bad accents in films, or American novels set in Ireland where people buy 'gas' instead of 'petrol'. It's small details, and they don't matter to the plot -- but they do ring out like a bad accent.

If you must get your Mitchell fix, and you could do worse, I'd say this is his most unsatisfying version of the psesudo anti-novel, 'Cloud Atlas' is far more inventive, and perhaps offers a more satisfying view of Big Issues, using a very Mishima-like reincarnation trick. 'Number9dream' is supernatural and quirky, but also a big swollen love hotel in which Mitchell pays tribute to himself. Kissie, kissie. I don't mind long novels, or quirk mind-benders, but books like this seem so cutesy in their agenda . . . makes me yearn for some social realism. For the beautiful moments of description, and there are many, there's a lot of self-important dross to get through. Too much, to be honest, and I suspect much of it has to do with the author's own self-importance. I just don't think this book will matter very much in fifty years, not that its effect, aside from gushy reviews, was all that great now. That's ok -- the world need minor novelists. But no amount of verbal steroids can bulk a book to the point of purpose.

But here, for all of the fine phrases and Murakami ambitions, there's not much that lingered in my mind. In fact, I found the last two hundred pages to be an incredible slog, even with the hip use of weird fonts and typographic sleight of hand. It's like 'Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close' or that other super famous uber original book about a textual shark who eats memory.

Mitchell's science fiction gangster novel about Japan just doesn't go deep enough, even with a danse macabre Beatles soundtrack. Read it, enjoy it, and watch it become a second-hand book. Or please try Roberto Bolano instead. I thank Mitchell for the educational experience I learned from this text. Even the most profound of technicians, really wizards of prose, can't invent a soul where there isn't one.

I might have really enjoyed this book, had it something poignant to offer to plead the case of the human race. Like most fiction of this sort, however, once you brush off the highjinks and brawny similes, there's really not much to say. Identity, mystery, gigabytes of verbiage? You don't say . . .

This year I dedicated myself to reading all the novels that Granta and the Paris Review told me were Important and Truly Brilliant and Eternal Masterpieces. I surrendered myself to their instruction. Now, like the end of Ramadan, I feel that I am entitled to feast once more on true geniuses. What seperates the Greats from wonderful wannabes? I have no idea, but I know what books will endure forever.

I can't wait for '1Q84' to come out in English. It'll remind me why there's a big gap between what Murakami does, and what Mitchell is trying to do.

This book was, for me, Mitchell's most difficult. The story line is disjointed, and goes from reality, to fantasy, to dreams, and back to reality. This is not to say the book is unorganized or poorly written. On the contrary, taken as a whole it works very well.

In a nutshell, the books is about a young man trying to find his father. What happens along the way is what makes up the crux of this book. Reading it reminded me of the phrase, "It's not the destination, but the getting there." On the "getting there" to find his father, the protagonist endures some horrific things.

Although this book may require additional readings to really sink in (more so than Mitchell's other books), my experience tells me that those are the kinds of stories that stay with you for a lifetime.

I have probably been introduced to more writers' work through The Booker Prize than any other. I had already read, "Ghostwritten", which I very much enjoyed, so when this book arrived I had high expectations. Why the people on The Booker Committee chose this book is beyond me, and if this was the first work he had written I never would have picked up the second. These are 400 pages of fiction bordering on incoherent. When the book does stray into prose that is readable, the reader is then rewarded with a host of threads that have no conclusion.
Contrary to what has been suggested our hero has no clue who his father is nor where he can be located. We are exposed to this fact through a mind numbing series of daydreams fueled by caffeine and every cigarette brand you care to name. It's difficult to explain just how disjointed this book is. Through a good portion of the book when a storyline starts to unfold we are treated to the experiences of a sentient goat, chicken, and a prehistoric sidekick. Nothing wrong with sentient chickens, but when the chicken in distress is picked up by God on a surfboard, no amount of labeling can legitimize this book. Post modern, surreal, or my favorite, Dickensian coming of age all are just word bytes to cover over the substance that isn't there.
The other rationale used for books like this is that the references, metaphors, etc are so subtle that if the book does not appeal to the reader, the reader is the one who is lacking. There are some heavy handed clichés that are tossed about including a phone call from a customer to a computer help center that everyone has either been told or has read before.
A final word on the goat, this fellow is not only sentient, he is a writer, hence his name goatwriter. Now if this is supposed to be a reference to the use of goats in ancient theatre, specifically tragedies, it is so subtle that it has no meaning. Our goat author also keeps eating much of what he writes and then claiming his fragments were stolen. Some bits and pieces may have gone missing, but our author happily made them part of this work.

Eiji Miyake, a 20-year-old looking for his father in Tokyo. Seems like a simple plot? Well, you won't know what you're going to get. Centralled on a seemingly simple storyline, we follow the trials, imagination and dreams of Eiji Miyake in a chaotic world.
You either love it of hate it. You can either sit back, accept that the novel is out of this world and lose yourself in it to allow the story to whisk you away on a roller-coaster ride, or choose to question its logic and order. I adivse the former.

Eiji Miyake, a 20-year-old looking for his father in Tokyo. Seems like a simple plot? Well, you won't know what you're going to get. Centralled on a seemingly simple storyline, we follow the trials, imagination and dreams of Eiji Miyake in a chaotic world.
You either love it of hate it. You can either sit back, accept that the novel is out of this world and lose yourself in it to allow the story to whisk you away on a roller-coaster ride, or choose to question its logic and order. I adivse the former.

Between the twin glories of "Ghostwritten" and "Cloud Atlas," David Mitchell published the unsettling "Number9Dream." The narrative slides--often without warning--between fantasy and reality in contemporary Japan. In general, I found Eiji's reality far more interesting than the undisciplined fantasy scenes.

While this is no Cloud Atlas (a truly fantastic novel), Number9Dream is certainly a fun read. Obvious Murakami echoes; a bit too self-absorbed in its frenetic nature, sure. But this is a sharp, fun book. Not Mitchell's best, but Cloud Atlas is a tour de force. Yeah, much of it has been done before, but so what? At least Mitchell is having fun with the genre, which makes the ride fun for the reader as well.

This book is a unique piece of literature, unlike anything i have ever read before. The book begins with a nervous 20-something Japanese man sitting in a coffee shop contemplating the massize building outside it. This man Eiji Miyake turns out to be the main character, and the book is mostly about his coming of age in Tokyo.

The son of a prostitute, his mother went into rehab when he was young and he never met his father. Growing up on a rural Japanese island with his extended family Eiji lost his twin sister and became somewhat alone in the world. The book begins as he moves to Tokyo to begin a search for his long lost father. The basic plot is often interrupted by dreams, stories, diary entries, flashbacks, flash-forwards, fantasies, imaginings, daydreams, and more, which makes for an interesting, but confusing read. The novel takes alot of thinking to understand, and even more to fully process. By the end of the book you cannot tell what is the truth and what is the imaginings of Miyake, because you are so fully fused into this incredible character. Mitchell weaves an intricate web of the chance happening and thoughts in the life of Eiji Miyake, creating a beautiful and mysterious novel, with a heartbreaking twist.

Some truly amazing pieces (even the stereotyping yakuza parts were compelling), but Mitchell does not exhibit the control that he shows in different ways in Cloud Atlas: A Novel,Ghostwritten, and Black Swan Green: A Novel. In those books, he takes you somewhere you haven't been before. He switches voices with deftness. He demonstrates a thorough knowledge of popular fiction and how/why it works. These elements are present in pieces in Number9Dream, but without the overall control of the narrative. In the end, the book is unsatisfying. Pieces are evocative, but the whole is forgettable.

First of all, most of the other reviewers comments are true, even the comments of those who hated the book. Here's the scoop: Number9Dream is brilliant and moving, occasionally violent and shocking, and almost never boring. The scenes involving "Goatwriter" are everything you might imagine from what you have heard. They are puzzling. They are a distraction from the main story. They are also quite funny in their way. Be advised that these scenes do not pop inexplicably out of the ether, as you might assume from the other reviews posted here. The main character, Eiji, is hiding from those who might kill him, and he stumbles upon the text of a story. To bide his time, he reads this story about Goatwriter. It's odd, but it fits. Most importantly, readers who wade through that short section will find they've enjoyed one of the most satisfying novels they've read in a very long time.

About 30 pages into "Number9Dream" I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard of the book before and was thrilled that I'd discovered a real gem. Another 30 pages on my enthusiasm was flagging, and soon I could barely compel myself to finish the thing. Mitchell's prose is sparkling and his ambition is refreshing, but this is a superficial and deeply chilly book. Like David Foster Wallace and other young hipsters, Mitchell seems to think it's enough to show off verbal pyrotechnics in his work without bothering to create characters you can actually care about or events that are remotely believable. And it's not modern Tokyo-an admittedly chilly and artificial place-that is at fault, as writers like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto manage to create a Tokyo as engaging and involving as Proulx's Wyoming or Davies' rural Canada. If you're interested in brilliant wordplay, you'd be better off reading Jonathan Safran Foer. If you're interested in modern Tokyo, read "Windup Bird Chronicle" or anything by Haruki or Ryu Murakami, but stay away from Mitchell. It's too bad that so many of today's literary stars equate playing with words with playing with yourself.

DESPITE WHAT YOU MAY HAVE HEARD

I love the condescension of this book's reviewers. Most of them see fit to deem Mitchell's novel as 'ambitious', that he was far too clever for his own good, but not quite clever enough for them. One reader was barely able to compel himself through the first 60 pages, but was still able to deduce that Mitchell's work was in this instance "fundamentally masturbatory" (I have no idea what book this guy was reading).

A FANTASTIC READ

If you want to read an excellent novel, I would hate to have you be dissuaded by numbskulls with a hazy grasp on the definition of the term 'disjointed.' For a novel that "challenges the defintion[sic] of plotting" the narrative thread is marvelously clear. It is, at its core, a book about a boy searching for his father. But more than that, its a book about a boy's life and everything that fits into that life: what he's thinking, where he comes from, what he wants.

I KNOW YOU'LL LIKE IT

I think reviewers who gave this book 3 stars or less had difficulty with the novel because in Number9dream Mitchell deals in the fabric and machinery of human imagination, how it compels us through the mundane, how it propels us through our fears, and how some of us are driven to nurture it, to stoke its fires and, at times, to give ourselves over to its power.

So if you are not willing to surrender, if briefly, to imagination, this is not the novel for you. But otherwise, give it a chance, let yourself go, and for God's sake love this book. I do.

Here is my previous review for this book:

I read this novel in preparation for Mitchell's latest, "Cloud Atlas", and was totally in awe of the depth of his insights, the eagerness of his narrative, and the beauty of his characters (among my favorites: Pithecanthropus, the tender neanderthal in the service of his secret love, and Kusakabe, the anti-war kaiten pilot on the eve of his suicide mission).

On the ending: I have heard a lot of grumbling. Personally, I finished the novel at 2am (an hour when I couldn't be sure I wasn't dreaming myself) and went to bed frustrated, maddened, making plans to hunt Mitchell down and slap him a couple times. In the morning though, I was awakened to its simplistic and absolute genius. It was perfect because A) it was not a sludge of sappinness pandering to the most obvious emotional responses the novel had been building throughout (writers, take note) and B) it was marvelously descriptive of a quintessential human experience, without overtly being a description.

Is the novel challenging? Yes, but not in the sense of confusing the reader, as some previous reviewers have intimated. Rather, it challenges perception, death, purpose, and the very mechanisms of modern life. All that, and it is supremely enjoyable, brilliant, really really good, funny, smart, genius, flying, and running.

So delve inside number9dream, be carried by its venerable rhythms to your own violent waking...

I recently discovered David Mitchell. I first read Cloud Atlas which I enjoyed, and then read Number 9Dream, which is somewhat different, but just as intriguing. His books remind me a little of Haruki Murakami who is a fantastic writer in that his plots and characters seem a little surreal. I'd recommend both authors to anyone who enjoys novels "served with a twist."

Not bad, I would recommend borrowing over buying. Too many weird turns (Goatwriter ? ).and annoying twist/deceptions in story-line
i enjoyed reading the love story and about his relationship with his mother and sister.
A good, if confusing book. Not as strong as Cloud Atlas or Ghostwritten.

I've read Ghostwritten, and having just read Number 9 Dream, I can easily say that David Mitchell is one of my favorite authors. Number 9 Dream is brilliantly done, weaving in and out between dreams and reality, often merging the two. The story and world of Eiji Miyake is totally engrossing. If you get a chance, definately pick up this book.

Number9Dream is a story from David Mitchell (who is also known for his bestseller Ghostwritten). It takes place in Japan and is about a 20 year old "man of the world", Eiji Miyake. It's a fine book about a young man "growing" up and eventually making his own dreams.
Mitchell put in everything a good book needs (ie humor, tenderheartedness, and those horrifying scenes, you know).
I reccommend this book to everyone.

The scope of David Mitchell's imagination is astounding. This book moves through the unreal realm of video games, the horror of mafia retribution, the futility of war and the phantasmagorical world of inventive language. I laughed, I cried, I was horrified. I am in awe of Mitchell's ability to move through different worlds yet always with a foot planted firmly in the present. The book is about the here and now, the young.