Ghostwritten

This is one I read with my "guy" bookclub, which counts among its members serious fans of magical realism and demanding authors such as The Russians and David Foster Wallace. David Mitchell is not as difficult to access as DFW, but his magical realism challenges one to follow his storylines and keep track of his characters because the complicated lines of plot and personalities will eventually intersect, intertwine and resolve. OR WILL THEY?!This book is a collection of what seems to be short stories, each worthy on their own. But one or two characters from other stories crop up in whatever story one is reading, calling upon the reader to either have a really good memory or have taken notes on the main (and minor) characters of the previous stories. Since I usually listen to audiobooks, this type of setup is difficult for me to follow audibly so I often purchase the hardcopy book and do a fair amount of cross-checking and re-reading in the physical book to help my ailing memory.The book opens with a seriously fantastic story about THE SERENDIPITY, but other stories are much more mundane, set in rural Asia on a mountaintop, or in modern day London. What makes this book worth reading is the investigative quality of the reading experience. You must follow the trail of crumbs to figure out what is going on.... In my case, I didn't actually truly figure out everything but that's part of Mitchell's charm, I think. His imagination is so vast and his writing skill so honed that instead of developing characters within his storyline, he actually develops his story as a character. His story grows, bifurcates and develops characteristics that normally one sees in a character. I can't wait to get through Cloud Atlas.Do I recommend? YES, but with caveats. There are so many books and so little time that if you are not a fan of magical realism, you might want to pass on this one.

Ghostwritten Quasar, a doomsday cult member on the lamb after killing hundreds; Satoru, a young employee at a vintage record shop in Tokyo who has just spotted the love of his life; Neal, a Lawyer working for a firm in Hong Kong is running very late for a very important meeting while also dealing with the fear that his account full of laundered money is going to be discovered; A girl living in a Tea Shack on the path to the top of The Holy Mountain where a Buddhist Temple is located. History takes place around her as she lives her meager life selling noodles and Tea to tourist traveling to the temple with only her talking tree to provide comfort to her; A noncorpum (a bodiless entity who transmigrates from person to person by touch) body hops from person to person seeking the origin of a story it thinks will lend insight to what it is and where it came from; Margarita Latunsky, works in an art gallery in Petersburg as part of a team of thieves whose aim is to steal the most valuable works from the gallery. She goes with the plan while dreaming about the future: Marco, a musician, a writer and a shameless player has just woken up in the bed of his latest conquest. After being invited to leave Marco heads to the house of his current ghost writing project while contemplating life and the future; Dr. Mo Muntervary , a physicist flees to her home in Ireland attempting to spend time with her family before her former employer the CIA catches up with her; Bat, a late night DJ in New York is about to receive a call that will change his life and the lives of everyone.Each character is the narrator of his/her own story which is loosely connected in one way or another to the others.As with all of Mitchell's work, this book isn't for everyone and this isn't David Mitchell's best work. Having read Mitchell's work before it should have been obvious that it wouldn't be. Mitchell's writing can be a little meandering and his stories and characters need time to develop. Once they do, the novels of his I have read turn into great reads. This book however being only 426 pages and being broken into 9 different stories never really gave any of the characters or stories time to evolve into greatness and instead delivered something a little bit mediocre.The good: Mitchell's writing is still there and that is always enjoyable. The concept of the book was very good, it just never developed as fully as it should have.The Bad: The stories were a little too meandering with not enough time devoted to any of the stories or characters for them to ever reach greatness. This pushed the book to being almost boring.Overall: Not a terrible book to read. If you are a fan of Mitchell's you will probably find some enjoyment in this book. If you have never read Mitchell do not start with this book. Try starting with " Black Swan Green: A Novel " or " Cloud Atlas: A Novel " first.

I wanted to like this book a lot, but I am really conflicted. This is the first David Mitchell book I have managed to my teeth into, so perhaps this author is just not for me. All I can say is that there are so many interesting ideas explored here, many of a philosophical nature - questioning the beauty and chaos of humanity. 70% of the novel was a breeze, but because this is more like a collection of short stories, than I linear narrative, I still found about 30% was a real slog. I did almost give up near the end, but am glad I ploughed through. I struggled to connect all the dots in the end, but felt satisfied enough. The authors knack for creating extremely textured and engrossing worlds and characters that also seem very familiar, is astonishing. At least two chapters would make great movies, I am sure. I am a little hesitant at what to read next by Mitchell, but, I think I can overlook those few moments where I really struggled to get through the pages.

I still can’t quite believe that this was a first novel. It read far more like the work of an author who already has several great works under his belt and has finally decided to produce their “real masterpiece.”In fact I’ve already read Cloud Atlas and the 1001 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, so perhaps I was inclined to be biased. But I never expected anything quite so lateral in terms of narrative structure, so intricate in terms of plotting, or so profound in terms of concept.It’s a book that I immediately wanted to rediscover as soon as I’d finished it. Part of the fun of reading Mitchell’s work is the way his stories interlock. It almost becomes a compulsion to trace all the little overlaps and twists which precede and follow from one narrative to the next. But what makes the experience of reading Ghostwritten even more rewarding, is the growing awareness that all these little points of literary triangulation add up to something so much bigger. Something really big.This is, after all, a novel about the relationship between contingency and fate – about the way we structure our lives around narrative to give them meaning, about our inability to see the hidden points of connection, and ultimately I guess about our ability to tweak those points in order to radically change the world we live in. It’s a story which is global in scale, but never loses sight of detail, a book in which each character’s perspective sucks the reader into an entirely new reality which, fractal-like, functions as a miniature of the whole story.Just absolutely loved it. Can’t get enough of Mitchell’s work. He has to be one of the most significant writers of modern times.

David Mitchell's award-winning debut novel is a fine introduction to his brand of cosmopolitan fiction, a feature that would be evident in his later novels like Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. The novel not only traverses geographical locations from Japan (both Okinawa and Tokyo), Hong Kong, China (Holy Mountain), Mongolia, to Petersburg, London and Ireland (Clear Island), Mitchell also inhabits the skin of narrators who are natives in these places, so that it problematises the local/global perspectives.The narrative is fractured, and seemingly disconnected. But Mitchell manages to join them up into a composite whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. A member of a Japanese doomsday cult carries out a gas bomb attack in the Tokyo underground and flees to Okinawa, while he awaits instructions and divine messages from his leader, His Serendipity, supposedly through dog barks (I kid you not) and phone calls to his contacts, the latter which finds him connecting with an independent jazz record store in Tokyo, that Mitchell's next narrative focaliser, teenager-about-to-fall-in-love-with-Chinese-girl Satoru, works at. This then brings the narrative to Hong Kong, where Satoru goes with his girlfriend, but by which time, the focus is on a roguish British expat trader who is about to have a worst day of his life when all his misdeeds catch up with him.And so the story/stories go, switching gears, and even genres, as Mitchell patches them together with gossamer-like threads, that include a ghost and a "zookeeper" technology that possesses a consciousness, exhibiting the intersections of the spiritual, metaphysical and technological, and forcing us to contemplate philosophical questions like what makes us human, the relationship of fate vs chance, the value of truth, and the principles and laws that bind us as a human race.Heavy-going, no doubt, and truly mind-boggling, with no easy answers, or a clear resolution I can get my head round. Nonetheless, it is an ambitious and engaging work from one of the most imaginative writers today that warrants our attention.

I have perhaps read Mitchell in the wrong order so far, having started with Cloud Atlas several years ago and now reading Ghostwritten. These two books are written in very similar styles, each chapter is like a short story unto itself but the further you read the more you notice that the stories drift gently together and apart, like leaves on a breezy day.Ghostwritten was not as strong as Cloud Atlas for me. I can't quite put my finger on where it didn't sweep me away as strongly, it just didn't. Perhaps it was the stories all being set in a relatively contemporary time, it didn't have quite the same breadth that Cloud Atlas did.Anyway, still a very strong read and if you've enjoyed any of his other books then I'm sure you'll enjoy this one too.

Undoubtedly well written but ultimately disappointing.The short stories themselves are rather insipid and predictable and , whilst they do inter-link after a fashion, it’s a clunky and altogether simplistic mechanism : basically lets mention a passing acquaintance with a character or events in a previous chapter without it having any great impact on this one.I do rather think Mitchell has milked the Cloud Atlas formula to death now and needs to move on. Bone Clocks is worth a read though.