Scan barcode
armadilloterror's review against another edition
3.0
This book started off pretty strong but as it went on it just fell off for me a bit. Not in a bad way, it just didn’t hold the same level of excitement I had in the beginning. Perhaps this type of book doesn’t “read” well in audiobook format?
Mitchell is similar to Murakami in my opinion and I had. Similar experience in his 2 books. But Number9Dream by Mitchell I read in paperback and I loved it
Mitchell is similar to Murakami in my opinion and I had. Similar experience in his 2 books. But Number9Dream by Mitchell I read in paperback and I loved it
teresatumminello's review against another edition
3.0
3.5
The ghost of reading haunted me as I traveled earlier this month: I'd started [b:A Journal of the Plague Year|6801649|A Journal of the Plague Year|Daniel Defoe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312500020l/6801649._SY75_.jpg|12755437] with my destination being Amsterdam and that city is mentioned in Defoe's first paragraph; I switched to this book rather quickly and as I was flying into Copenhagen, I met the Danish character Caspar; I was in the city when the Irishwoman Mo mentions "Custard from Copenhagen."
The theme of the interconnectedness of the many inhabitants of our planet hit me hard when we kept running into the same people on our trip, from an Amsterdam museum to an Oslo hotel to a Copenhagen ferry to a city shuttle and onto the streets themselves. Sure, we were all tourists, but we were bescarved wives; a young family with a huge stroller; a sharp-nosed, iron-haired woman with a nondescript companion; and a solitary distracted orange-haired woman from the States. As if it were Mitchell's human-blood-carrying mosquito, the ghost buzzed in my ear, mocking me for what I said in my review of Atwood's [b:The Year of the Flood|6080337|The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327906873l/6080337._SX50_.jpg|6257025], showing me that coincidences don't work just in Dickens' novels.
Mitchell has been accused of great writing that has no meaning, but I think the opposite is true of this, his first work: much meaning can be found here, but the prose is perhaps overly ambitious, despite lucid, perceptive paragraphs scattered throughout.
The ghost of reading haunted me as I traveled earlier this month: I'd started [b:A Journal of the Plague Year|6801649|A Journal of the Plague Year|Daniel Defoe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312500020l/6801649._SY75_.jpg|12755437] with my destination being Amsterdam and that city is mentioned in Defoe's first paragraph; I switched to this book rather quickly and as I was flying into Copenhagen, I met the Danish character Caspar; I was in the city when the Irishwoman Mo mentions "Custard from Copenhagen."
The theme of the interconnectedness of the many inhabitants of our planet hit me hard when we kept running into the same people on our trip, from an Amsterdam museum to an Oslo hotel to a Copenhagen ferry to a city shuttle and onto the streets themselves. Sure, we were all tourists, but we were bescarved wives; a young family with a huge stroller; a sharp-nosed, iron-haired woman with a nondescript companion; and a solitary distracted orange-haired woman from the States. As if it were Mitchell's human-blood-carrying mosquito, the ghost buzzed in my ear, mocking me for what I said in my review of Atwood's [b:The Year of the Flood|6080337|The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327906873l/6080337._SX50_.jpg|6257025], showing me that coincidences don't work just in Dickens' novels.
Mitchell has been accused of great writing that has no meaning, but I think the opposite is true of this, his first work: much meaning can be found here, but the prose is perhaps overly ambitious, despite lucid, perceptive paragraphs scattered throughout.
hburgardt's review against another edition
5.0
The predecessor to Cloud Atlas introduces a number of names that will be familiar to those who read Mitchell's more popular work. While its message is in the same vein as Cloud Atlas, it is a darker collection of lives that wanders through time and consciousness to a conclusion that leaves the reader questioning what reality means or even what reality is.
c4553ll's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual assault
gillianhagenus's review against another edition
challenging
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
An explanation of how I can deeply love this book and also give it only 3 stars:
Ghostwritten is David Mitchell's first ever novel. And if it's not the first David Mitchell you read, you will certainly be able to tell. It's a bit clunky, a bit messy, a bit too much like a short story collection shoe-horned into a novel - this will come to be Mitchell's speciality but he learns how to do it so masterfully as the books go on. There are lovely little hints in this book of all the literary quirks that come to define his style and the story of course is imaginative, varied, engaging. If you ask me to rate this purely on literacy merit and enjoyability I would give it a 3. If you ask me, as a writer myself and someone who has come to read David Mitchell's work as the perfect example of the kind of writer I wish to be, I give this book 5 stars, purely because I can see so clearly through this book the potential for a writer to grow, to settle into their own voice, to flourish and that is so exciting.
Ghostwritten is David Mitchell's first ever novel. And if it's not the first David Mitchell you read, you will certainly be able to tell. It's a bit clunky, a bit messy, a bit too much like a short story collection shoe-horned into a novel - this will come to be Mitchell's speciality but he learns how to do it so masterfully as the books go on. There are lovely little hints in this book of all the literary quirks that come to define his style and the story of course is imaginative, varied, engaging. If you ask me to rate this purely on literacy merit and enjoyability I would give it a 3. If you ask me, as a writer myself and someone who has come to read David Mitchell's work as the perfect example of the kind of writer I wish to be, I give this book 5 stars, purely because I can see so clearly through this book the potential for a writer to grow, to settle into their own voice, to flourish and that is so exciting.
spenkevich's review against another edition
4.0
’The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed.’
David Mitchell’s ambitious debut, Ghostwritten, is a world of stories that migrates across the globe like a cloud across the sky, shifting and refiguring between various narrator voices and style. These voices send out ripples into the fabric of reality, which start off small but compound to forever reshape the course of humanity as the reader delves deeper into the novel, placing each puzzle piece together to form a clear, all-encompassing vision of coincidence and chance coming together to turn the cogs of the world as if it were a well oiled, finely tuned machine. Similar to the television show LOST, this novel delivers that same feel of everything having an importance and every life having a meaning in the grand scale of things. Mitchell preforms astounding feats of language manipulation as he takes us along a ride of interconnectivity and chance meetings, crossing many genres and barriers, to show us just how important we all are to one another and the course of history.
Mitchell sets the bar for a debut novel very high. This novel is stunningly inventive and adventurous both with its form and language. Broken up into short passages, each in a different location with a different narrator, Mitchell is able to convincingly alter his voice to create a wide variety of characters unique to the situation almost as if he were a literary ventriloquist. He possesses a keen eye for detail, and each segment is lush with situation-specific vocabulary and flair. However, it is Stories that run this novel. Each character has their own story and history to tell, and as the novel progresses, the reader will watch how each story brushes off onto the others. One characters actions are shown to affect others continents away, repositioning the course of their lives, which in turn affects the lives of those around them. Those familiar to the idea of the ‘butterfly effect’ will see this in action with the harmony of these various stories. Something as minor as a phone call picked up by a stranger can change everything. Some of these collisions will jump out at you and shock your senses, while others are very subtle. This novel benefits greatly from a careful attention to detail while reading.
There is a slight unevenness to some these ‘chapters’, and some felt to me like they trudged on a bit, but then again, not every instrument in a symphony is there to show off and it is the synthesis of all the sounds together that create the magic. For a first novel, much of this unevenness can be forgiven as it surpasses many of his contemporaries and it was interesting to see in his later novels how he grew as an author. There are a few bland moments, but there is so much poetry and blinding beauty in this novel that the stumbles are quickly overlooked.
’For a moment I had an odd sensation of being in a story that someone was writing,’ thinks Satoru in the Tokyo story, as small events seem to combine to place him at an exact time and place for a chance encounter. Mitchell examines the ideas of chance and fate often in this novel, which is seemingly propelled by these forces. ’Does chance of fate control our lives,’ wonders Marco, ’If you’re in you life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book your reading, it’s fate all the way.’ Mitchell provides various opinions for both, often leaving it up to the reader to decide whether fate or chance is the ghostwriter of our lives. He also proposes the idea of quantum cognition, which I would recommend looking into. If all thoughts are matter, then stemming from the quantum theories that all choices open up an every branching, endless array of universes each with their own path of choices, are we fated to follow one reality while infinite others exist beyond the barriers of our own? This novel will leave you with much to ponder. Various metaphors for this query inhabit the novel, from a noncorpum ghost which can inhabit the minds of hosts, an actual ghostwriter, and even the novel itself all show this movement of chance/fate across the map.
There is a strong sense of humanitarianism running through Mitchell’s works. From perspectives such as the Tea Lady, the reader is forced to watch the atrocities of man upon his fellow man. Regimes change, reforms come and go, yet still man continues to oppress those who fall below him. ’Fuck ‘em, they’re all the same. Only the badges and medals change,’ the Tea Lady is told by her father. Margarita shares a similar sentiment in the Russia story saying ’You used to pay off your local Party thug, now you pay off your local mafia thug’. There is a bleak outlook on the state of man, made more and more frightening as time ticks on. Eventually science may attempt to let technology watch and regulate itself, yet, how can we expect technology to do what we humans have failed at? Our own children, the ones we are supposed to keep the most careful watch over, seem to be the ones who suffer the most from the actions of their caregivers in this novel. Fate/chance has the largest say in their lives, as it places them into the world under situations beyond their control. There is some form of a child helpless to the winds of chance in every story, be it the ghost in Neil’s apartment who had to die simply for being a girl born in China, the unborn children that may be aborted, the child taken away out of shame, and even a young girl who must die in a train attack simply because her life lead her to that time and place. The most innocent often must face the harshest realities, all because those who should protect them are often looking after themselves instead of their helpless charges.
People concern themselves only with what they know around them that directly affects them. Mitchell shows how this shortsightedness can lead to apocalyptical proportions of failure as many of the brushes between stories occur due to thinking only of ones immediate surroundings. Neil’s personal crisis lead down a path that touches nearly every character throughout the novel. Margarita was looking out only for herself and Rudi, not knowing how her actions would affect a couple in London. Mitchell begs people to look beyond their own personal borders (much like how this novel crosses many borders) and at the larger picture of a universal society. If one could be more conscious of how their actions affected strangers lives thousands of miles away, maybe, just maybe, the world could be a brighter place.
My favorite aspect of David Mitchell is his nods to other literature and it’s metafictional capabilities. In the Tokyo story, a story that seems lush with [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg] inspiration beyond just the setting, Mitchell quotes directly from [b:Madame Bovary|2175|Madame Bovary|Gustave Flaubert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606770119l/2175._SY75_.jpg|2766347], ’One should be wary of touching one’s idols, for the gilt comes off on one’s fingers.’ Mitchell, who has a strong college backing in literature, seems to enjoy letting this gilt on his fingers show. He makes a few blunt references to authors who influence this novel, such as [a:Vladimir Nabokov|5152|Vladimir Nabokov|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651442178p2/5152.jpg], of whom Tim Cavendish (fans of [b:Cloud Atlas|49628|Cloud Atlas|David Mitchell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563042852l/49628._SX50_.jpg|1871423] rejoice, that foul mouthed son of a bitch you loved has a nice cameo) warns ’anyone who’s trying to get a book finished – steer clear of Nabokov. Nabokov makes anyone feel like a clodhopper.’ It has been told to me that Mitchell based the jaw-dropping ending of this novel off of [a:Yukio Mishima|35258|Yukio Mishima|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1670513588p2/35258.jpg]’s Sea of Fertility series, whom he calls out as a great author in the Tokyo story. The Petersburg story seemed to give a nod to [b:The Master and Margarita|117833|The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327867963l/117833._SY75_.jpg|876183], with the character name, the cat and all the talk about the devil. Perhaps the most critical moment of displaying his inspiration comes in the Tokyo story when Satoru receives Murakami’s translation of [a:F. Scott Fitzgerald|3190|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1517864008p2/3190.jpg]’s short stories because he loved [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490528560l/4671._SY75_.jpg|245494] so much. Fitzgerald, especially in Gatsby has a fixation on the past and trying to rectify it. Interestingly enough, a vast majority of the narrators spend most of their sections looking backwards and the choices and chances that brought them to where they are at the present. Margarita has a hope for the future, yet a large part is to rectify her somber past. Only Quasar seems to look toward the future, which is mainly from a complete rejection of his past, yet he spends half his segment telling how he came to be as well. Music also plays a large roll in this novel, which in a way gives it a bit of a soundtrack. I must say that Bat Segundo has an excellent taste in music.
The Mongolia segment displays some wonderful use of metafiction. This segment has the narrator, a ‘ghost’ who inhabits the minds of others and reads their life stories, travel from person to person in search of stories, much like what the novel itself is doing. There are several wonderful, authentic Mongolian folk tales within this segment. The most striking of these involves a young boy who is fated to roam the world blind telling stories. Getting the picture? Mitchell is incredible with his playfulness of literature. Much of the negative remarks about him stem from this playfulness, criticizing him of just writing ‘masturbatory novels’ and showing off his literary muscle like one of those creepy guys at a beach. I, however, find that to be a great charm of his, although I like writers who write about writing.
Ghostwritten is a powerful novel, and a powerful display of writing. This would be a perfect introduction into the world of Mitchell, although I did not find it to be as strong as [b:Cloud Atlas|49628|Cloud Atlas|David Mitchell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563042852l/49628._SX50_.jpg|1871423]. The two are good companion novels however, as major narrators in Cloud Atlas make minor appearances here, and they are both composed of seemingly unrelated, yet harmonizing stories. This novel rewards a careful reading. Almost nothing in this poignant novel is superfluous and there are countless connections and parallels to be found. The world will never be the same after reading this, I found myself analyzing every action of mine wondering how it would echo across the globe, which makes you feel even more guilty when you accidentally cut someone off in morning traffic. The horrors of humanity are all on display here, yet somehow we are all connected and the world keeps turning. Is it because of fate or chance? Is it for power or want? Or, maybe, is it because of love?
4/5
David Mitchell’s ambitious debut, Ghostwritten, is a world of stories that migrates across the globe like a cloud across the sky, shifting and refiguring between various narrator voices and style. These voices send out ripples into the fabric of reality, which start off small but compound to forever reshape the course of humanity as the reader delves deeper into the novel, placing each puzzle piece together to form a clear, all-encompassing vision of coincidence and chance coming together to turn the cogs of the world as if it were a well oiled, finely tuned machine. Similar to the television show LOST, this novel delivers that same feel of everything having an importance and every life having a meaning in the grand scale of things. Mitchell preforms astounding feats of language manipulation as he takes us along a ride of interconnectivity and chance meetings, crossing many genres and barriers, to show us just how important we all are to one another and the course of history.
Mitchell sets the bar for a debut novel very high. This novel is stunningly inventive and adventurous both with its form and language. Broken up into short passages, each in a different location with a different narrator, Mitchell is able to convincingly alter his voice to create a wide variety of characters unique to the situation almost as if he were a literary ventriloquist. He possesses a keen eye for detail, and each segment is lush with situation-specific vocabulary and flair. However, it is Stories that run this novel. Each character has their own story and history to tell, and as the novel progresses, the reader will watch how each story brushes off onto the others. One characters actions are shown to affect others continents away, repositioning the course of their lives, which in turn affects the lives of those around them. Those familiar to the idea of the ‘butterfly effect’ will see this in action with the harmony of these various stories. Something as minor as a phone call picked up by a stranger can change everything. Some of these collisions will jump out at you and shock your senses, while others are very subtle. This novel benefits greatly from a careful attention to detail while reading.
There is a slight unevenness to some these ‘chapters’, and some felt to me like they trudged on a bit, but then again, not every instrument in a symphony is there to show off and it is the synthesis of all the sounds together that create the magic. For a first novel, much of this unevenness can be forgiven as it surpasses many of his contemporaries and it was interesting to see in his later novels how he grew as an author. There are a few bland moments, but there is so much poetry and blinding beauty in this novel that the stumbles are quickly overlooked.
’For a moment I had an odd sensation of being in a story that someone was writing,’ thinks Satoru in the Tokyo story, as small events seem to combine to place him at an exact time and place for a chance encounter. Mitchell examines the ideas of chance and fate often in this novel, which is seemingly propelled by these forces. ’Does chance of fate control our lives,’ wonders Marco, ’If you’re in you life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book your reading, it’s fate all the way.’ Mitchell provides various opinions for both, often leaving it up to the reader to decide whether fate or chance is the ghostwriter of our lives. He also proposes the idea of quantum cognition, which I would recommend looking into. If all thoughts are matter, then stemming from the quantum theories that all choices open up an every branching, endless array of universes each with their own path of choices, are we fated to follow one reality while infinite others exist beyond the barriers of our own? This novel will leave you with much to ponder. Various metaphors for this query inhabit the novel, from a noncorpum ghost which can inhabit the minds of hosts, an actual ghostwriter, and even the novel itself all show this movement of chance/fate across the map.
There is a strong sense of humanitarianism running through Mitchell’s works. From perspectives such as the Tea Lady, the reader is forced to watch the atrocities of man upon his fellow man. Regimes change, reforms come and go, yet still man continues to oppress those who fall below him. ’Fuck ‘em, they’re all the same. Only the badges and medals change,’ the Tea Lady is told by her father. Margarita shares a similar sentiment in the Russia story saying ’You used to pay off your local Party thug, now you pay off your local mafia thug’. There is a bleak outlook on the state of man, made more and more frightening as time ticks on. Eventually science may attempt to let technology watch and regulate itself, yet, how can we expect technology to do what we humans have failed at? Our own children, the ones we are supposed to keep the most careful watch over, seem to be the ones who suffer the most from the actions of their caregivers in this novel. Fate/chance has the largest say in their lives, as it places them into the world under situations beyond their control. There is some form of a child helpless to the winds of chance in every story, be it the ghost in Neil’s apartment who had to die simply for being a girl born in China, the unborn children that may be aborted, the child taken away out of shame, and even a young girl who must die in a train attack simply because her life lead her to that time and place. The most innocent often must face the harshest realities, all because those who should protect them are often looking after themselves instead of their helpless charges.
People concern themselves only with what they know around them that directly affects them. Mitchell shows how this shortsightedness can lead to apocalyptical proportions of failure as many of the brushes between stories occur due to thinking only of ones immediate surroundings. Neil’s personal crisis lead down a path that touches nearly every character throughout the novel. Margarita was looking out only for herself and Rudi, not knowing how her actions would affect a couple in London. Mitchell begs people to look beyond their own personal borders (much like how this novel crosses many borders) and at the larger picture of a universal society. If one could be more conscious of how their actions affected strangers lives thousands of miles away, maybe, just maybe, the world could be a brighter place.
My favorite aspect of David Mitchell is his nods to other literature and it’s metafictional capabilities. In the Tokyo story, a story that seems lush with [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg] inspiration beyond just the setting, Mitchell quotes directly from [b:Madame Bovary|2175|Madame Bovary|Gustave Flaubert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606770119l/2175._SY75_.jpg|2766347], ’One should be wary of touching one’s idols, for the gilt comes off on one’s fingers.’ Mitchell, who has a strong college backing in literature, seems to enjoy letting this gilt on his fingers show. He makes a few blunt references to authors who influence this novel, such as [a:Vladimir Nabokov|5152|Vladimir Nabokov|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651442178p2/5152.jpg], of whom Tim Cavendish (fans of [b:Cloud Atlas|49628|Cloud Atlas|David Mitchell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563042852l/49628._SX50_.jpg|1871423] rejoice, that foul mouthed son of a bitch you loved has a nice cameo) warns ’anyone who’s trying to get a book finished – steer clear of Nabokov. Nabokov makes anyone feel like a clodhopper.’ It has been told to me that Mitchell based the jaw-dropping ending of this novel off of [a:Yukio Mishima|35258|Yukio Mishima|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1670513588p2/35258.jpg]’s Sea of Fertility series, whom he calls out as a great author in the Tokyo story. The Petersburg story seemed to give a nod to [b:The Master and Margarita|117833|The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327867963l/117833._SY75_.jpg|876183], with the character name, the cat and all the talk about the devil. Perhaps the most critical moment of displaying his inspiration comes in the Tokyo story when Satoru receives Murakami’s translation of [a:F. Scott Fitzgerald|3190|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1517864008p2/3190.jpg]’s short stories because he loved [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490528560l/4671._SY75_.jpg|245494] so much. Fitzgerald, especially in Gatsby has a fixation on the past and trying to rectify it. Interestingly enough, a vast majority of the narrators spend most of their sections looking backwards and the choices and chances that brought them to where they are at the present. Margarita has a hope for the future, yet a large part is to rectify her somber past. Only Quasar seems to look toward the future, which is mainly from a complete rejection of his past, yet he spends half his segment telling how he came to be as well. Music also plays a large roll in this novel, which in a way gives it a bit of a soundtrack. I must say that Bat Segundo has an excellent taste in music.
The Mongolia segment displays some wonderful use of metafiction. This segment has the narrator, a ‘ghost’ who inhabits the minds of others and reads their life stories, travel from person to person in search of stories, much like what the novel itself is doing. There are several wonderful, authentic Mongolian folk tales within this segment. The most striking of these involves a young boy who is fated to roam the world blind telling stories. Getting the picture? Mitchell is incredible with his playfulness of literature. Much of the negative remarks about him stem from this playfulness, criticizing him of just writing ‘masturbatory novels’ and showing off his literary muscle like one of those creepy guys at a beach. I, however, find that to be a great charm of his, although I like writers who write about writing.
Ghostwritten is a powerful novel, and a powerful display of writing. This would be a perfect introduction into the world of Mitchell, although I did not find it to be as strong as [b:Cloud Atlas|49628|Cloud Atlas|David Mitchell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563042852l/49628._SX50_.jpg|1871423]. The two are good companion novels however, as major narrators in Cloud Atlas make minor appearances here, and they are both composed of seemingly unrelated, yet harmonizing stories. This novel rewards a careful reading. Almost nothing in this poignant novel is superfluous and there are countless connections and parallels to be found. The world will never be the same after reading this, I found myself analyzing every action of mine wondering how it would echo across the globe, which makes you feel even more guilty when you accidentally cut someone off in morning traffic. The horrors of humanity are all on display here, yet somehow we are all connected and the world keeps turning. Is it because of fate or chance? Is it for power or want? Or, maybe, is it because of love?
4/5
yasujirozu's review against another edition
3.0
This is my third Mitchell, and I can honestly say that he really does know how to carry the narrative(s). While his debut is much closer to Cloud Atlas (the first book I read) than my personal favourite The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, the undersong of tension that he’s able to weave to his stories is already there, strong and commanding.
Although I prefer his (at the moment) newest book also in terms of how concentrated the narrative is – despite the fact that it, too, carries the story through with the aid of multipled narrators – Ghostwritten is a thoroughly engrossing tale of transmigration, life, death and relationships in the middle of it. In other words, the little brother to Cloud Atlas.
The challenge is immense. The book is divided into chapters that all follow a different character, their destinies and lives somehow interlinked, in fact in a very particular way, which one will realize when all is said and done. How does one then carry the story so that it stays fervent and interesting? I think Mitchell does an admirable job, although there are some stories that didn’t do it for me at all, the Hong Kong chapters for example. The mysteries of consciousness is the one topic with which Mitchell makes the most out of not only the story but his skill as a writer, and I think the theme works better here than it does in Cloud Atlas, although it might be I’m mixing too much of the film with the book.
In retrospect, the intertextuality between this and Cloud Atlas manages to deepen both works.
6 February,
2014
Although I prefer his (at the moment) newest book also in terms of how concentrated the narrative is – despite the fact that it, too, carries the story through with the aid of multipled narrators – Ghostwritten is a thoroughly engrossing tale of transmigration, life, death and relationships in the middle of it. In other words, the little brother to Cloud Atlas.
The challenge is immense. The book is divided into chapters that all follow a different character, their destinies and lives somehow interlinked, in fact in a very particular way, which one will realize when all is said and done. How does one then carry the story so that it stays fervent and interesting? I think Mitchell does an admirable job, although there are some stories that didn’t do it for me at all, the Hong Kong chapters for example. The mysteries of consciousness is the one topic with which Mitchell makes the most out of not only the story but his skill as a writer, and I think the theme works better here than it does in Cloud Atlas, although it might be I’m mixing too much of the film with the book.
In retrospect, the intertextuality between this and Cloud Atlas manages to deepen both works.
6 February,
2014