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A review by teresatumminello
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
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.