false 6819 14 "What is real and what is not?" David Mitchell's <I>Ghostwritten: A Novel in Nine Parts</I> plays with precisely this question throughout its elaborately compartmentalized narrative. (That there are 10 chapters in this 9-part invention is just one more aspect of the author's mysterious schema.) With its multitude of voices and globe-girdling locations--Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Petersburg, London--this first novel offers readers a vertiginous, sometimes seductive, display of persona and place.<p> At the heart of Mitchell's book is the global extension of the postmodern city, and the networks (cultural, technological, phantasmagoric) to which it gives rise. A metropolis like Tokyo is quite literally beyond our comprehension: <blockquote> Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It's so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It's long since filled up the plain, and now it's creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it's already become out of date. It's a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one. </blockquote> At this level, urban sprawl becomes an epistemological condition. On one hand it leads to a Japanese death cult, purging the "unclean" from the city's subway with nerve gas. And on the other, it produces a certain splintering of the human personality. "I'm this person, I'm this person, I'm that person, I'm that person too," chants Neal, the narrator of the book's second part. "No wonder it's all such a ... mess." He's talking about his life as a Hong Kong trader, a "man of departments, compartments, apartments." But he might also be describing the experience of reading <I>Ghostwritten</I>. At once loquacious and knowing, leisurely and frantic, Mitchell offers a huge, but fragmentary, portmanteau. And while he's labored diligently to solder together the many parts--the aching bodies, the reality police, the impossibly complex machinery of contemporary life--his novel, too, may suffer from an excess of split personality. <I>--Vicky Lebeau</I> 1094555 1999 Ghostwritten total:1794|5:565|4:827|3:307|2:77|1:18| 1794 7226 2456 239 4 7 false true Wed Jan 30 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 05 18:25:10 -0800 2008 Sun Jul 13 06:27:45 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 4 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Fri Sep 28 04:34:19 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 28 04:34:41 -0700 2007
Ghostwritten is at once an entire novel and a series of stories. The book is divided into nine parts told by nine different narrators: a member of a cult based in Japan that is trying to “cleanse” the earth; a young saxophone player who works in a record stor...more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Apr 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 14 11:48:59 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 13 06:45:24 -0700 2009
I love how Mitchell weaves in these small science fiction elements without making it SF. I believe I read that he lists Le Gu...more...]]> 4 4 false false Wed Dec 17 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Jun 20 17:20:10 -0700 2008 Wed Dec 17 14:34:31 -0800 2008
Although I haven't brought up the subject here in awhile, the fact is that as a book criti...more...]]> 3 5 false false Fri Sep 14 11:16:43 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 14 11:18:29 -0700 2007
If you liked Cloud Atlas, pick up ghostwritten. And give it until page 38.

Shades of Murakami and Borges (both of whom briefly grace the pages) and Hornby (who doesn’t), a warm up for the pyrotechnic doppleganger genre switching of CA. But mostly ...more...]]> 5 3 false false Tue Apr 24 15:20:13 -0700 2007 Tue Apr 24 15:33:58 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 2 false false Sat Aug 02 09:53:10 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 02 09:54:19 -0700 2008
As I've intimated in my earlier Mitchell posts, ghostwritten has been my least favorite of the bunch - which still makes it one of the best...more...]]> 3 2 false false Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Dec 01 16:55:44 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 01 16:57:24 -0800 2007 more...]]> 1 2 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Tue Jan 22 07:04:30 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 22 07:04:30 -0800 2008
Ghostwritten was one of the first books to hit my Amazon wish list back when I first set it up four years ago. I have no idea what inspired me to put it there, but having now finally read the thing, the question has gone from "why did I...more...]]> 4 2 false false Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Sep 16 13:25:23 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 16 15:17:58 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Jan 10 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Dec 30 07:29:56 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 11 10:13:44 -0800 2009 2 more...]]> 3 2 false false Fri Nov 23 19:44:50 -0800 2007 Tue Nov 18 11:21:24 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu Jun 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 01 01:18:16 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 20 02:33:40 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Aug 04 07:18:32 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 04 07:26:13 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 0 false false Mon Jun 22 10:50:22 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 10:50:22 -0700 2009 STOP SMILING interview with author David Mitchell.

Q&A: David Mitchell
by Steve Finbow

David Mitchell’s most recent novel, Black Swan Green, was shortlisted for the 2006 Costa Novel Award, Quill Book Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region Best...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jun 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 10 05:40:07 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 10 06:11:12 -0700 2009
I loved Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and Ghostwritten is similar in that each chapter is a self-con...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 27 13:00:18 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 17:56:12 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Apr 24 10:51:52 -0700 2007 Thu May 17 08:48:19 -0700 2007 ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 19:52:55 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 01 14:18:11 -0700 2009
Readers of Cloud Atlas will find a few surprising features as well as cameo characters. This book is also written as a ...more...]]> 5 0 false true Fri Dec 26 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 19 05:18:09 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 27 11:41:20 -0800 2008 2 Sometimes language can't even read the music of meaning."

Tim chuckled up to the ceiling, "We're all ghostwriters, my boy. And it's not just about our memories. Our actions, too. We all think we're in control of our own lives, but really they're pre-ghostwritten by forces around...more...]]>