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A review by thesinginglights
number9dream by David Mitchell
5.0
One of my favourites. Review to come.
EDIT: Review of 2018 read
This is an almost companion piece to one of my favourite all time novels, [b:Norwegian Wood|11297|Norwegian Wood|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924361s/11297.jpg|2956680]Norwegian Wood. The comparisons are not made emptily: Eiji is a 19-year-old adrift, just like Murakami's Toru. Both of them turn 20 throughout their coming-of-age tales, and both books are named after Beatles songs. But to say that number9dream is a copy of Norwegian Wood would be a disservice to the skill and originality of Mitchell's second book. Eiji, for example, is a much more active protagonist, although Tokyo and its inhabitants are larger than life and drag him along quite a bit.
I would say that this book can be summarised as a meditation on life and stories. Eiji, an imaginative youth, is in Tokyo in search of his father and gets mixed up in all sorts of madness, partly his imagination, most of it true. The book weaves through 9 different parts with as many flavours, from Blade Runner-esque cyberpunk to metafiction (which is the weakest part of the book. I understand the Message but it's still the worst part for me).
Over the course of the book, he becomes more grounded and finds a purpose beyond the grand narratives of stories and fancies of imagination: he reckons with his past and his reality. He must write his own narrative by living his life, an important lesson: you can't do it all in your head. It's a whirlwind of imagination and of brilliant sentences: "The sun steam-irons the street through its rain-washed lens", "A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one." Conveying being broke in a big city is hilariously on point as well. Longing for betterment and your goals and constantly falling short is well-realised. I am glutton for these kinds of stories.
Like John Lennon, Eiji is haunted by the number 9 that recurrs in various ways: the numbers of the time adding up to nine, for example, the place he is from has nine letters, the area is from is called Kyushu (Nine Provinces), etc. On my inital read-through I thought there was a significance to the nines but it's more a motif that pays homage to Lennon and I suppose I did get feverish trying to spot all the different instances across the book.
A wonderful, touching, transformative novel.
EDIT: Review of 2018 read
This is an almost companion piece to one of my favourite all time novels, [b:Norwegian Wood|11297|Norwegian Wood|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924361s/11297.jpg|2956680]Norwegian Wood. The comparisons are not made emptily: Eiji is a 19-year-old adrift, just like Murakami's Toru. Both of them turn 20 throughout their coming-of-age tales, and both books are named after Beatles songs. But to say that number9dream is a copy of Norwegian Wood would be a disservice to the skill and originality of Mitchell's second book. Eiji, for example, is a much more active protagonist, although Tokyo and its inhabitants are larger than life and drag him along quite a bit.
I would say that this book can be summarised as a meditation on life and stories. Eiji, an imaginative youth, is in Tokyo in search of his father and gets mixed up in all sorts of madness, partly his imagination, most of it true. The book weaves through 9 different parts with as many flavours, from Blade Runner-esque cyberpunk to metafiction (which is the weakest part of the book. I understand the Message but it's still the worst part for me).
Over the course of the book, he becomes more grounded and finds a purpose beyond the grand narratives of stories and fancies of imagination: he reckons with his past and his reality. He must write his own narrative by living his life, an important lesson: you can't do it all in your head. It's a whirlwind of imagination and of brilliant sentences: "The sun steam-irons the street through its rain-washed lens", "A single night is stuffed with minutes, but they leak out, one by one." Conveying being broke in a big city is hilariously on point as well. Longing for betterment and your goals and constantly falling short is well-realised. I am glutton for these kinds of stories.
Like John Lennon, Eiji is haunted by the number 9 that recurrs in various ways: the numbers of the time adding up to nine, for example, the place he is from has nine letters, the area is from is called Kyushu (Nine Provinces), etc. On my inital read-through I thought there was a significance to the nines but it's more a motif that pays homage to Lennon and I suppose I did get feverish trying to spot all the different instances across the book.
A wonderful, touching, transformative novel.