thru the mirror go round (Number 9 Dream - David Mitchell)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Number 9 Dream - David Mitchell
Date:	18/10/01 (149 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: WhizzBang! action.

Disadvantages: "the architectonics are non-existent" (Tom Paulin)

David Mitchell lives, teaches English, and has set his first two novels in Japan. His debut (Ghostwritten) received much critical acclaim (for more info check out nomie's review here on dooyoo).
Living and working in Japan does enable him to write about Japan the place and use it as a setting for his novels, but there's not much Japaneseness about his characters. They are Japanese people as seen from the outside by an Englishman; but it doesn't really matter though because his themes are international.
This is the age-old story of a young man's quest to find his roots, colliding with an ultra-modern world.

Eiji Miyake is 7290 days old and has grown up on a small island
in Japan. He goes to Tokyo to track down his unknown father,
and there he encounters sex and drugs and video games; some
virtual reality parents, a lot of paranoia, and the odd earthquake.
He also goes bowling with a Yakuza boss (not a pleasant scene).
I say scene, because it reads like the screenplay of an action
movie. The opening is pure James Bond - Eiji tricks his way into a high-security building to confront his father's lawyer, Akiko Katõ, and demand, at gunpoint, that she discloses his father's identity.
This is a breathlessly pacy, shot-hit, verbally dazzling opening. Exciting, witty and complete fantasy of course. Eiji is just a spotty teenager, sitting in a café, out of his depth in the big city.

He goes to the cinema and in the film an inmate of a mental institution tells a psychiatrist that he is God and proves it by making Belgium disappear - just as though it had never existed.
Nice one God. But wait, was Eiji really at the cinema,
or was it just part of another fantasy? Is it real or is it Multiplex?

There are nine sections, and each one has a different style.
The first (PANOPTICON) is James Bond-cum-science-fiction, while
in the second (LOST PROPERTY) we learn about the tr
agic death
of his twin-sister Anju, after Eiji offered the God of Thunder
"Anything" to make him the greatest soccer player in Japan.

The title of the third section (VIDEO GAMES) speaks for itself.
Here's an extract: "A mighty chokmakopter eclipses the sun,
and zombie spawn abseil to earth. I pulp dozens in mid-air,
but the semolina army of death sludges up too quickly." !!!!!

In part four (RECLAIMED LAND) Eiji gets caught up in a turf-war
between violent gangsters. In an interview, the author described his approach thus: "the trick to writing a compelling narrative
is so simple it's often overlooked: invent a character the reader
likes and make nasty or dangerous things happen to him or her."

Part five (STUDY OF TALES) came as a welcome change of pace, offering the chance to chill-out, but I soon became impatient with what seemed like an unnecessary diversion into fairyland.
The temptation to skim-read increased in section six (KAI TEN) which is dominated by extracts from his grandfather's war-time journal. But it gets back on track in part seven (CARDS) though with love, magic, mystery and a surprise or two.

By part eight (THE LANGUAGE OF MOUNTAINS IS RAIN) dreams seem to be taking over completely, and the ninth is a blank page. Oh, sorry, I've given away the ending!


This book is fantastic in every sense of the word, but it's also a gazillion light years away from the usual Booker Prize contenders, and I think it's fair to say that it's a boys book. I reckon that fans of Alex Garland and Iain M. Banks would enjoy number9dream.

I did.

~ More I cannot say, what more can I say?
~ Was it just a dream?
~ Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé.

¶ Paperback: £?.99 ¶ pp418 ¶ ISBN: 0340739762 ¶
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