'Maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it.'Like the song by John Lennon which inspired the title of this novel, David Mitchell plays with the fusion of dreams and reality as he sends the reader spiraling through the chimerical passages of Number9dream. This second novel is a departure from the multi-storied structure of Ghostwritten, instead closely following one character. However, it is anything but a simple linear plot and Mitchell shows once again that he can dazzle and dance throug...

I want to say, "It was me, it wasn't you," to this novel. She and I just didn't click. She's obviously got a lot going for her besides her perfect neck, including a horribly pretentious style and a vividly dramatic penchant for detail, but while I had a very good time with some of his other novels all lined up in a row like some Voltron Robot of literature, this one just seemed to go on and on with rambling and disjointed plot-lines that EVENTUALLY, like, at the END wrapped up into the Matrix-St...

How Will I Know?Whitney Houston sings, “How will I know if he really loves me?”Pop Music asks some of the most probing questions we can imagine.Many of them are secular versions of Spirituals, Gospel Music or Hymns.How will I know if He really loves me?How will I know if He really exists?How will I know if He’s really there?What would I say if he insists?(Sorry, that last one slipped in from my review of "Glee: How to Plot an Episode in 70 Words".) To which the tabloid press add:How could I tell...

2.5*Found myself somewhere in the middle of rating scales. There were parts that I enjoyed and then there were dreams that didn't make any sense or perhaps my pea sized brain was unable to dissect and deduct any conclusion of what I had read. Will write more once I gather my thoughts on this or whatever I will be left with of this book in my memories.

A story about a 20 year old boy-man looking for the dad he's never met. In theory. Yawn. It's like someone said to David Mitchell "Take this cliched plot, drop some acid and see what happens." And what happens is a lot.The first chapter had me scratching my head. Wait no, I'll be honest, it wasn't that civilized. It had me kicking my feet and sighing and slamming down my coffee cup and internally screeching what the eff is going on here?! Not much later I realized, oh, ohhhh, this is what's goin...

Eiji Miyake is looking for his father but he finds many different things…Squeeze, squelch, squirt. Crocodiles scream, even underwater. The jaws unscissor and the monster thrashes off in spirals. Lao Tzu mimes applause, but I have already gone three minutes without air and the surface is impossibly distant. I kick feebly upwards. Nitrogen fizzes in my brain. Sluggishly I fly, and the ocean sings. Face submerged, searching for me from the stone whale, is my waitress, loyal to the last, hair stream...

You know those compound German constructions, like schadenfreude, comprised of dissimilar single words? Well, I’ve got a new one that ought to exist if it doesn’t already. It’s schadenselbstungeduld, which translates roughly to “the sadness of your own impatience.” Maybe you can guess why I’m bringing this up. I’ve had a bad case of it since last month when I joined the ranks of several Goodreads friends who have read all five of the David Mitchell books. We’re now waiting long days, weeks, or,

A Study of Tales or “Like watching a musician play his scales very, very well”SourceThe tension between style and substance dominates a significant portion of the David Mitchell conversation. Fairly consistently Mitchell’s writing falls into the style side of this writing dichotomy. As with anything, it's an issue of taste for anyone who has dipped their hand into the creative writing pot. It splits writers of all different stripes, in genre, literature or otherwise with geniuses on both sides.

Do you ever set books aside for a special occasion? I like to keep certain novels on hold for holidays, so that when I reminisce about a particular vacation, I will also think about what I was reading at the time. I have very fond memories of devouring The Goldfinch on a visit to London a couple of years ago, and being so immersed in the story that I almost missed my plane. David Mitchell is one of my favourite writers and I had been saving number9dream for a while now. I took it with me on a tr...

Number9Dream, what is a relatively administered star-rating system compared to the joy I experience while reading you? Faults and all. I don't completely understand everything you revealed with my mind awake, but your echo resonates lucidly through my dreamtime. You say: "Time may be what stops everything happening at once, but rules are different asleep." How I know this to be true, yet could never prove. Fantasies and dreams. Cause and effect. Repeated conclusions reveal nothing where conclusi...

5 Stars - Phenomenal book!This is the fourth David Mitchell book I’ve read, and none have disappointed. Every time I start a new book by this author I’m hesitant because I figure, by the law of averages, that one has to be a dud. I have not found that “one” yet, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I never found it.This book is so beautifully written. It's strange and heart wrenching, funny and relatable. I have never known another author to compact so many emotions into one book and make the book a g...

“Reality is the page. Life is the word.” ― David Mitchell, number9dream Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé Another book I'm going to have to chew on for a bit to really bend my mental tongue around. At first, I was a little disappointed in it. This is my last Mitchell book left to read (I am now a Mitchell completist) and I was hoping for just a little more PoMo juice to squeeze out of his second novel. Three dreams into it and I was afraid Mitchell was aping Murakami (Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Cha...

Mild SevenParliamentCabinPeaceKentHopePhilip MorrisMarlborough LightThat's the number of different cigarette brands cited and smoked in this novel. Frankly, it's a good job that this book only covers 8 weeks in the life of narrator and protagonist, Eeji Miyake, because he's unlikely to live for too much longer. Follow Miyake as he smokes, gurns, fantasises and bull-shits his way around Tokyo trying to find his long-lost Pops and enjoy the literary games and jousting word-smithery that accompanie...

“A semi-orphan comes to Tokyo in search of the father he has never met”, says a man to Eiji Miyake, speaking not of himself, but of Eiji. In a simple sentence, it is the truth. This is Eiji's quest. Through his long, twisting and sometimes fantastically dangerous journey, I learned that the quest can get in the way of the real purpose. Eiji's real truth will be revealed through the people he meets along the way, and the past that follows him, found only within a huge city among millions where he...

Set in Japan in the present or perhaps the near future, with several versions of early bits of the plot. Is it real or is it a computer game - certainly he plays computer games? Some wonderful metaphors and some ludicrously contrived and awkward ones. Too much organised crime and mindless violence for my taste, with little of the beauty of his other books to provide balance or contrast. (Number 9 Dream is a Beatles song that plays at a disco in Black Swan Green, which I reviewed HERE.)See also M...

The devil has all the best tunes, and the fiendish Mr Mitchell is in cahoots with Old Nick for the best stories too. What worries me is what the deal involves? Selling your soul to Mephistopheles is a risky manoeuvre for sure. This, Mitchell's second novel and the last one that I had not read, is the story of one who is punished by the God of Thunder, by being given exactly what he asked for. Beware of what you wish for, as it may be granted. Having lost his twin sister in that deal, bereft of a...

Revisionism: 27 August 2015It’s a fine winter’s day in Sydney.Earlier and somewhat dyspeptically, I threw my hands up about number9dream because I was confused. I found the story hard to follow and did not know what was real and what was fantasy.With time it has occurred to me that I should give more mature consideration to the essence of the story: the fluttering distractions have fallen to the ground and the broader landscape has become clearer. The story is a boy’s search; ostensibly for his

I apologise in advance if this seems more incoherent and rushed than anything I've written previously. I'm just so in awe of the bizarreness of number9dream that my thoughts are not settled on the book.Okay what I want to know is what David Mitchell was taking when he wrote this...so I can join in with the elixir! Seriously this is a whacked out, crazy kind of book that's strangely compulsive reading but doesn't make a lot of sense in places. I must admit that the whole time I was reading it wen...

REASONS I LOVED THIS BOOK:-It is by David Mitchell-It made me want to go have sushi & sake bombs-It was surprisingly funny-Not only did it remind me of Murakami, it referenced The Wind-up Bird Chronicle-It had the word "knickerbockers"I was rating this in my head as I went along (something I can't help but do since joining goodreads), and for the first part, I was liking it and thinking 3 stars. Once I hit the halfway point, the Mitchell I know and love emerged, bumping it up to a four. By the e...

“Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk amid the still-are”number9dream is the second novel by British author, David Mitchell. Nineteen-year-old Eiji Miyake arrives in Tokyo looking for his father, a man he has never met, a man whose name he does not even know. He has a letter from a lawyer warning him not to try to find his father, so his first move is to stake out the lawyer’s office from a ca...

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams Writing a book and telling a story are obviously two very different projects especially for an author like Mr.Mitchell. And so, in what is probably the most straightforward plot of a boy in search of his father, the author packs a whole lot of freudian pyrotechnics that blur lines between plots, between genres and between reality.Eiji Miyake reaches 'Tokyo' in search of his father. The Tokyo of Mitchell is a surreal place wit

Disorienting, Hazy and a waste of time.As if marking the book as Abandoned wasn't enough tourture for my pitiful brain, I decided to rejoin where I had left since the mystery of Eiji's father haunted me for two nights!!Since it's David Mitchell there's definitely aristocratic writing involved, a feeling that no single person can write chapters so distinct but that's DM.Some parts from the book are splendid. The Kaiten episode, Queen of Spades game and the Pizza delivery magic tricks however sadl...

I probably shouldn't be giving this any stars because I didn't even finish it. This was a book club read and none of us got through it, not even the most die-hard David Mitchell fans. I guess this is proof positive that a knack for writing will not save your book if you have nothing particular to say. As one person in our group described it, reading this book is like watching a musician play his scales very, very well---but after a while, you just want to hear him play an actual song for a susta...

And then I put the book down, and it was all a dream!No, 9 dreams, only the last dream was like "choose your own adventure" -- a few blank pages like the caboose rumbling merrily at the end. And reaching the end is always a merrily thing.Little did I know that the opening of nine sections was really the novel in miniature. 20-year-old boy wants to meet long-lost father. Must get into tightly-secured office environment and dad's lawyer from hell. Attempt #1 seems real, but it was all a dream! Att...

This novel has an open ending, but there are clues regarding the possible developments of the story all over the last chapter. Although it has eight chapters and each has a name, the author ends the book with the ninth chapter which is simply called "Nine" and left empty. "The ninth dream begins after every ending", says David Mitchell, continuing the subtle insinuation that the story is to be continued in our imagination, but taking into account several clues from the last chapter: "Time may be...

I gave number9dream five stars way back when I first started rating books around here, but it was far enough removed from reading the book that I didn't feel I could write a review, so there is no chronicle of why I gave it five stars. Since then I have read most of David Mitchell's stuff, but number9dream was my first, so it retains pride of place. I was turned onto it the winter I went home to Canada for Christmas because for some reason that year I decided I was going to read everything short...

Well, I suppose all of Mitchell's novels can't be absolute home runs! Reminiscent in many ways of a Haruki Murakami novel, "number9dream"'s propensity to shift between the real and the imagined burdens the novel with a frustrating format despite the compelling story that lies at the novel's core. Set in Japan, where Mitchell spent eight years of his life, "number9dream" follows Eiji Miyake as he goes on a quest to find his estranged biological father he has never met. The novel is divided into 9...

I didn't love this one. For a lot of the book it was a 2-star read but the last 2 chapters were particularly good. Still, this is not a book for the casual Mitchell reader. Though it is chronological and only follows 1 character, unlike a lot of his work, each chapter has it's own sort of narrative style that makes it a bit jarring to read at times. I liked our main character, even when I felt like I (as he) did not know where his story was going. It has lots to unpack but it's presented in a wa...

Brilliant! Every book that I read by David Mitchell makes me a bigger fan of his writing. He is probably one of the most gifted authors who can weave incredible narratives while masterfully juggling a variety of styles; he makes his way through them seamlessly and beautifully, his stories take you on a journey across time and place, and the versatility of his style makes it seem unreal that the same author has written the various chapters. Much like Barnes, Mitchell seems to welcome the reader t...

Don Quixote was a dreamer, looking for his life's meaning in the romances of his youth. Eiji Miyake is searching for meaning to his life by finding the father he has never seen. This novel melds a quixotic quest into cyber-fueled dreams which morph into a nightmarish reality. Meaning eludes all of Mitchell's characters. Sugu is a talented hacker obsessed with backdooring the U.S. Defense Department's computer. He confesses his disillusionment. “I ran a mylo-P search as a matter of course and ch...