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Number9Dream

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Customer Reviews
Rating:

- Not as good as his other books.
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.

Rating:

- C'mon, it's fun
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.

Rating:

- Better to watch Primetime Television than read this book
I am by no means a vehement critic of all things David Mitchell--on the contrary, I would count his "Cloud Atlas" as among the best books I have ever read. However, the two books I have read from his beginner days--Ghostwritten and Number 9 Dream--are simply trashy.

Both these books, in their quest to be edgy and postmodern, just throw gobs of offensive imagery at the reader. There are extensive references to cheap sex, illegal drug use, and extreme violence. It's a tactic that makes these books glean good reviews on account of the fact they "take risks" or "push the envelope." Don't be fooled by it!

Reading "Number 9 Dream," in my opinion, is little better than watching an episode of "CSI" or "The Sopranos" on television. In other words, this book isn't literature--it's cheap pulp.

Rating:

- Half Baked And Disjointed But There Are A Few Bright Spots
The quaintly named Number9Dream by David Mitchell is a novel that lies uneasily between sleep and wakefulness and is unfortunately as half baked. I've read and enjoyed Mr. Mitchell's Ghostwritten (with qualifications) and couldn't quite get past the first fifty pages of Cloud Atlas.

The problem with Mr. Mitchell's writing is that he seems too much in love with his own prose and seemingly pays little attention to plot, story or characterization. It is hard to think that Mr. Mitchell is not aspiring to the style of a favorite author of mine, Mr. Haruki Murakami, but they turn out remarkably different kinds of work. Number9Dream, like Ghostwritten, has some dazzling writing, the work of a true artist. It seems to fall short however in actually narrating a story which is a major sore point. Some of the plot elements in Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, especially the whole "nuclear device, save the world" theme was just too thin for a novel not written during the Cold War. Like Ghostwritten, this book has several seemingly different stories, or dreams, with very little apparent continuity.

The saving grace for Number9Dream is some of the wonderfully imagined episodes - so I'd give the book a half hearted thumbs up.

Rating:

- Mitchell the Adaptive Literary Expert
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.

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