Ghostwritten

I did something with this book that I have never done before. I finished reading the last line of the book, closed it, took a long breath, and opened it right back up again to page one and began rereading. The only difference was for the second reading, I took copious notes to accurately map the story and the layers of people and places which make this book so wonderful. It was the only way to really absorb the minutiae of detail that collectively makes up the whole book.I imagine many readers were turned off by the intensity and layering of the detail, but I thrived on it. For me, the denser, more intricate the storyline, the happier I am, and I must say this book made me happier than any other book that I have read in some time for that specific reason.Each chapter is a story unto itself, and yet each story is tied to the others by layers of small detail. It was a stroke of genius on Mitchell's part to structure the book as he did. Chapter ten, the last chapter, detailed Quasar's act of terrorism in the Tokyo underground, but the action actually took place before the opening of chapter one. Quasar, the mentally unbalanced cult follower, experiences in his final moments on the train all the clues to the stories of the lives depicted in the previous chapters. This construction allowed Mitchell to tie together, in just a few paragraphs, all the loose ends that plagued each separate story. Very effective.I could go one at length about the richness of the layered stories and how one life is unknowingly built on the basis of another, and how Mitchell helps the reader through constructive symbolism to understand the basis of human interaction and interdependence. Bat Segundo (ch. 9) plays Satoru's (ch. 2) tenor sax piece on his radio show, how both Neal Brose (ch. 3) and Roy (ch. 7) make a mess in the kitchen by using two coffee filters in their machines, Quasar (ch. 1) and Mo Muntervary (ch. 8) both describe the world as a sick zoo, and everyone felt the breath on the nape of their necks. It is the clever layering of such detail that propels the story forward, and occasionally backward. The introduction of the noncarpum (ch. 5) seemed initially to be the element to tie the stories, but it wasn't. It was the human interaction that kept the story active, not unlike real life.

OK, maybe it's not the greatest book ever written, but it is pretty amazing, and I sure felt that "greatest book ever written" enthusiasm while reading it. If you are a public reader like I am (commuter trains), then this is the kind of novel that makes you want to shake the person next to you and tell them all about it. It is that good.Mitchell's tale is woven through a series of vaguely connected tales in that span Asia, Europe and the U.S. in gradual westward movements. Each tale is self contained, but each story also illuminates or expands previous stories until they ultimately intersect at the conclusion. Though I generally prefer novels to short stories, I would have to say that I think the strength of this book is in the individual tales rather the pattern of the whole. His characters are wonderful, and he is marvelously skilled at creating tension, drama and reader interest within the first few paragraphs of each story. It doesn't gel quite as much as I would have like, but I feel like that is more or a quibble than a complaint. Mitchell is an astonishingly gifted writer.I read a lot of books, but there are very few contemporary novels that I have so enjoyed in recent years. "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby and "A Conspiracy of Paper" by David Liss come to mind. "Ghostwritten" is very different from those books (and they are very different from each other), but like those novels, it is original, daring, entertaining, and very satisfying. I can't recommend this one strongly enough.

Ambitious, complex, and intriguing, Mitchell's first novel grapples with the paradox of a small, vast world. His nine interlocking chapters (plus a tenth which circles back to the first) are narrated by a disparate lot from around the globe, connected sometimes by only a glimpse and a fleeting thought, sometimes by more fateful encounters. As the book proceeds, more connections become apparent, most of them random.It's an intriguing organization, best followed by reading the book in one sitting, so as to keep track of the various plot threads and people. However, at 426 pages, this is unlikely for most readers.But Mitchell's novel is more than a philosophical play on fate and chance and the six degrees of separation that radiate from us in all directions. The novel is filled with real characters, some venal and pathetic, some appealing, a few remote, one repellant. The settings range from self-consciously contemporary Hong Kong and earnest, teeming Tokyo to a tight-knit island off the Irish coast, the Mongolian desert, a remote Chinese mountain, a late-night radio station in New York, the streets of London and the bleak underside of post-Soviet St. Petersburg.One narrator is a bent lawyer haunted (literally) by the ghost of a little girl, a pawn to his own greed, trapped by his estranged wife, his rapacious Chinese maid and his high-powered, crooked employer. Another is a self-deluded Russian woman, trying to escape her life by a big score in stolen art. The book opens with the fervid ramblings of a Japanese cult fanatic, a terrorist who planted poison gas on a Tokyo subway, and closes with the same or similar narrator.A young musician and writer in London, whose life is adrift, saves a stranger from being rundown by a taxi, drifts some more, then makes the big decision he's been wrestling with all along. A young jazz musician in Tokyo, also adrift, makes a leap for love. A brilliant physicist whose discoveries are used in the Gulf War flees home to Ireland but is forced to succumb to the strong arm of the American military.Some chapters are more successful than others. Which these are, however, is a matter of taste. The writing soars energetically throughout but styles, moods, even genres vary. Mitchell employs ghosts, apocalyptic scenarios, sociopathic thugs both criminal and sanctioned, as well as ordinary longings, ambitions, loves and failures.An old Chinese woman narrates my favorite chapter. Her long and eventful life is lived entirely around her tea shack on a rural mountain path leading to a Buddhist temple. Here she is raped by a warlord and abused and despised by her lazy father. The Japanese invasion comes to her mountain and then the Chinese Nationalists, the Communists and the cadres of the Cultural Revolution each in turn bring violence and destruction to her life and livelihood. And each time she rebuilds her shack. She finds solace and companionship in a speaking tree and grows wise in the ways of the world without ever venturing

A doomsday cult member. A jazz freak in Toyko. A British lawyer in Hong Kong. An elderly woman working in a tea shack. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. An art thief in Russia. A musician in London. An Irish physicist. A DJ in Manhattan. David Mitchell brilliantly weaves these transglobal stories together by the tiniest of threads, making it feel like a high speed express train of thoughts and ideas. One of the characters state, "The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed." Each character(s) is so fully realized, so immediately compelling in their sometimes simple lives I found it hard to put the book down. In fact, I would've liked to read it in one sitting to benefit from the whole dramatic sweep of his narrative. The book is not a light read, and it demands your attention, but it's so worth it. And don't be turned off if you don't like short stories. He weaves them together so well, you almost don't notice that one has ended and another's begun.

GHOSTWRITTEN is a startling original debut novel set in places as disparate as Okinawa, Mongolia, and London, each locale and its attendant narrator adding another story to Mitchell's tapestry. This is new millennium globalism, where people are connected by the most tenuous threads as they inhabit the same world run by coincidence and fate. You'll find that many reviewers will be unable to summarize the plot of this book; instead, they will describe the characters. That's because the plot IS the characters - who they are and what they represent. The rhythms of the prose are often staccato and simple, but there is a beauty to it, a sure truth to the words. I entered this fiction and emerged blinking in what seemed like sudden light. Sometimes Mitchell's inventiveness was simply too much to take in, and it struck me as forced, originality for originality's sake, but, all in all, he succeeds admirably.I suspect David Mitchell's GHOSTWRITTEN will be one of those books people either love or hate; you'll react to it on a visceral, not an intellectual, level. Certainly people who like only traditionally told tales will be disappointed, as will lovers of naturalism and realism. One thing is clear: this book will be discussed by serious readers. You should read it so you can throw yourself into the fray.