number9dream

this is a very disheartening dnf because i was soooo hyped about this book

but the writing style is just not for me, too dense too confusing & all over the place

and too many scifi shit going on with no simple explanation

Forced myself to finish out of respect for the author and wanting to see it somehow come together. Despite some truly amazing images, and demonstrations of language genius (how else to describe what he does?) it just never worked for me. Felt kind of self indulgent by the author.....

I was drawn to this book and David Mitchell because of the comparisons to Murakami and they are impossible to miss. The main character admits to having a half read book by Murakami. Still I enjoyed this novel almost as much as Ghsotwritten and I'm sure I'll be reflecting on the ending for a long time.

this is a very disheartening dnf because i was soooo hyped about this book

but the writing style is just not for me, too dense too confusing & all over the place

and too many scifi shit going on with no simple explanation

Okay, so first off: here's Mitchell, a white British guy, writing a book set in Japan, intentionally as homage, or in dialog with, or riffing off of, Murakami and especially Norwegian Wood. I think he got most of the details right, and I didn't know he lived there for awhile! But still. It's not exactly appropriative and it's not exactly derivative, but it does feel a little bit like he's trying to prove that he can out-Murakami Murakami (or perhaps criticize him by taking his tropes into the territory of the absurd?), and then bombard you with clever references and in-jokes. So that felt a bit weird. Especially coming to this book having read all of his later works, and knowing that he has plenty of original ideas and is a very talented writer.

I liked the first half or so a lot. It was especially fun to run into Mitchell “multiverse” references that also showed up in Utopia Avenue (the black and white movie and the weird cinema! whoa!). But, as the book progressed it really went off the rails. I found the last couple of chapters aggravatingly incoherent and the ending deeply dissatisfying.

There were also gory bits that I did not, personally, enjoy.

So many interesting plotlines were set up throughout the novel, and none of them had any payoff whatsoever. Instead, the book ends with the creation of a bunch of new, unresolved questions. Are we supposed to take some kind of meaning away from that? Like everything is essentially meaningless? Was this all a dream? Do I need to go reread Norwegian Wood in order to figure out what it is you're trying to prove here, Mitchell? Am I just too dumb to understand whatever meta-commentary is happening here?

A segment from the Guardian review, which I enjoyed, and which gets at why I still count Mitchell as one of my favorite authors:

Far more successful, because less overt, are the enjoyably arrogant dabs of intertextuality: one character and one secret facility from Ghostwritten wink tangentially into life here too, and contribute a pianissimo counterpoint to Mitchell's leitmotif. His guiding thesis is a comfortingly simple one: everything is somehow interconnected, even if we don't know why. This theme is most obviously celebrated in the novel's obsessive numerology. As though it were intended as a cyborg updating of the medieval dream poem Pearl , number9dream is everywhere infected with viral nines. Partly because of this suspicious arithmetic, it becomes possible to suppose that the entire action of the novel may have been a dream; Mitchell's greatest feat is to suggest this without making the reader feel cheated.

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.

DNF - At 65% I concluded that life is too short to waste on a writer's failed experiment.

I need to learn to arrive at these conclusions sooner.

I recently implied that David Mitchell could do no wrong. Without a doubt, he is a tremendously talented author. Then I began reading number9dream and was immediately worried I'd have to eat my words. number9dream starts unlike any other Mitchell book; sure Mitchell has an eclectic style, but there's a certain feel to his books—the idea that regardless of subject or genre, all the stories are somehow tied together. number9dream didn't feel like a part of the Mitchell universe—it felt more like a poor attempt at Murakami minus the cats.

What's surprising is that my feeling didn't change as I read: number9dream bears more semblance to a Murakami-hack than to anything Mitchell could've written. It's easily my least favorite of Mitchell's works and likely will always remain such –until I read The Thousand Autumns...– (it brings to mind the term ‘sophomore slump'). It doesn't tie into Mitchell's other works the way I love—or at least in no way I saw—and that was disappointing. All that being said, it is still David Mitchell. The writing is superb. In fact, relying less on tricks, number9dream relies more on great writing. The sentences and scenes Mitchell turns out are gorgeous. Sure, all of it feels like a horrible acid trip, but it's a riveting and beautiful acid trip.

number9dream lacks the continuity, relevance, and drive that one usually finds in David Mitchell, but hey, it's David Mitchell, and that was enough for me.

This book is a tantalizing ride through many dreams and realities experienced by Eiji Miyake. A 20 year-old looking for his father, who he has never met, in the bustling city of Tokyo. Which is of course a demanding task in a city so big and with all kinds of people distracting one from their initial mission.[a:David Mitchell 4565 David Mitchell http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1347623450p2/4565.jpg] is quite a genius and in my opinion one of the best contemporary writers the Commonwealth has to offer. He should be awarded a Man Booker in stead of just being long and short listed. It is clear he has submerged himself in other cultures (apparently living in Japan for 8 years),moving through different cultures and times as well as places in his novels. If you like intricate webs of stories within stories and different writing styles in one book you'll enjoy this book thoroughly.afterthought:I'm not sure but I think it is an homage to [a:Haruki Murakami 3354 Haruki Murakami http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1350230608p2/3354.jpg]. The book title is a reference to a song by John Lennon and is according to one the protagonist's many dreams a sequel to Norwegian Wood ([b:Norwegian Wood 11297 Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320451630s/11297.jpg 2956680] is a song by the Beatles and a book by Murakami). But I cannot be sure, as I have never read anything by Murakami (but am sure to do so quickly).