As Eiji Miyake's twentieth birthday nears, he sets out for the seething metropolis of Tokyo to find the father he has never met. There, he begins a thrilling, whirlwind journey where dreams, memories and reality collide then diverge as Eiji is caught up in a feverish succession of encounters by turn bizarre, hilarious and shockingly dangerous. But until Eiji has fallen in love and exorcised his childhood demons, the belonging he craves will remain, tantalizingly, just beyond his grasp...
Number9Dream
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Amazon Review
David Mitchell's second novel, number9dream, uses a similar episodic format to his brilliant but fragmentary debut Ghostwritten to create a more coherent and assured narrative that is part detective, part coming-of-age, story. Eiji Miyake, 20, naïve and wholly loveable, encounters a frantic, exotic world when he comes to Tokyo from his small island home to find the father he has never met.
Pin-stripped drones, a lip-pierced hairdresser, midday drunks ... Not a single person is standing still ... a thousand faces per minute ... oven-hot ... ready to buckle under the weight of cloud at any moment.Eiji is a dreamer, a Billy Liar for the Cyberpunk generation. His fantasies structure this frenetic kaleidoscopic narrative, conducting the reader on an exhilarating, disorientating tour of metropolis and mind. One minute Eiji is contending with arcade-game cybourgs, the next caught up in a Blue Velvet-type nightmare with real-life (perhaps) gangsters: "dragged into a turf war between wolves with rabies". So what was crazed and charming becomes dangerous and gripping.
This exotica and cyber-unreality allow more traditional novelistic concerns--a boy's coming of age, the exploration of ethical responsibilities or the great human universals of love and duty--to creep up unobtrusively. Pretty soon the realisation dawns: this isn't just fun, this isn't just clever, this is a great, perhaps a very great, novel. A Joycean delight in language and parody combines with affectionate characterisation and an impressive narrative control to make number9dream an extraordinary and rewarding experience. --Robert Mighall --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Even more dazzling than GHOSTWRITTEN (Matt Thorne, Independent on Sunday )
If anything more amazing than his debut, GHOSTWRITTEN, this Booker-shortlisted fantasia confirms the Hiroshima-based Mitchell as the most prodigally gifted of young British novelists ... an extraordinary literary cabaret of dreams, visions and pastiches, from video-game rides and gangster rumbles to suicide submariners. Endlessly ingenious and hugely enjoyable - but oddly moving as well. A rich showcase for 21st-century fiction. (Boyd Tonkin, Independent )
I haven't enjoyed a novel so much in ages; wild, bristling with strangeness (Independent Books of the Year )
A clever, contemporary reworking of classic videogame / quest themes ... This videogame is made not of zeros and ones, however, but of dream fragments and poetry ... the beautiful, snake-like narrative twists and tangles around leitmotifs borrowed from action films, manga, anime, SF, fantasy, old detective novels, mob stories, coming-of-age romances, cyberpunk, epic quests and war stories ... Mitchell rolls around in implausibility, takes some incredible literary liberties, and - yes - gets away with it. (Scarlett Thomas, Independent )
Exceptional . . . more than a surreal detective story or coming-of-age novel, more than a portrait of Tokyo or stream of adolescent consciousness, it is unique: clever, unusual, gripping and beautifully written (Literary Review )
It's a measure of the precocity of David Mitchell's talent that this novel, the author's second book, is nearly a rare example of a satisfying "anti-novel". This experimentation with narrative form is usually reserved for authors with comfortably established book sales and secure reputations. It is told dexterously ... The book progresses through quick changes of style and texture. This fixes one's attention on the delights of Mitchell's prose. Almost without realising it, you find that you have fallen for Eiji, and that his plight has registered at a deep level. (Paul Tebbs, Daily Telegraph )
Resounds to the same marvellous chatter of voices that marked out GHOSTWRITTEN, his outstanding first novel (Observer )
David Mitchell's second novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and it's not hard to see why. The narrative has a langorous, dream-like quality - the result of being structured around Eiji's fantasies. Mitchell writes well in a range of different moods and styles: funny, poignant, humdrum, violent. Most strikingly of all, he depicts Tokyo as a bewildering labyrinth, which provides the perfect backdrop to the desultory wanderings of Eiji's mind. (Observer )
Spellbinding (Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year )
A delirious mix of thriller, tragedy, fantasy, video games and a portrait of uneasy modern Japan . . . A deserving Booker nominee. (Guardian )
Wildly inventive (Sunday Times )
Captures aspects of modern Japan with a compelling authenticity and beauty (Daily Telegraph )
If anything more amazing than his debut, GHOSTWRITTEN, this Booker-shortlisted fantasia confirms the Hiroshima-based Mitchell as the most prodigally gifted of young British novelists ... an extraordinary literary cabaret of dreams, visions and pastiches, from video-game rides and gangster rumbles to suicide submariners. Endlessly ingenious and hugely enjoyable - but oddly moving as well. A rich showcase for 21st-century fiction. (Boyd Tonkin, Independent )
I haven't enjoyed a novel so much in ages; wild, bristling with strangeness (Independent Books of the Year )
A clever, contemporary reworking of classic videogame / quest themes ... This videogame is made not of zeros and ones, however, but of dream fragments and poetry ... the beautiful, snake-like narrative twists and tangles around leitmotifs borrowed from action films, manga, anime, SF, fantasy, old detective novels, mob stories, coming-of-age romances, cyberpunk, epic quests and war stories ... Mitchell rolls around in implausibility, takes some incredible literary liberties, and - yes - gets away with it. (Scarlett Thomas, Independent )
Exceptional . . . more than a surreal detective story or coming-of-age novel, more than a portrait of Tokyo or stream of adolescent consciousness, it is unique: clever, unusual, gripping and beautifully written (Literary Review )
It's a measure of the precocity of David Mitchell's talent that this novel, the author's second book, is nearly a rare example of a satisfying "anti-novel". This experimentation with narrative form is usually reserved for authors with comfortably established book sales and secure reputations. It is told dexterously ... The book progresses through quick changes of style and texture. This fixes one's attention on the delights of Mitchell's prose. Almost without realising it, you find that you have fallen for Eiji, and that his plight has registered at a deep level. (Paul Tebbs, Daily Telegraph )
Resounds to the same marvellous chatter of voices that marked out GHOSTWRITTEN, his outstanding first novel (Observer )
David Mitchell's second novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and it's not hard to see why. The narrative has a langorous, dream-like quality - the result of being structured around Eiji's fantasies. Mitchell writes well in a range of different moods and styles: funny, poignant, humdrum, violent. Most strikingly of all, he depicts Tokyo as a bewildering labyrinth, which provides the perfect backdrop to the desultory wanderings of Eiji's mind. (Observer )
Spellbinding (Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year )
A delirious mix of thriller, tragedy, fantasy, video games and a portrait of uneasy modern Japan . . . A deserving Booker nominee. (Guardian )
Wildly inventive (Sunday Times )
Captures aspects of modern Japan with a compelling authenticity and beauty (Daily Telegraph )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the last of David Mitchell's current output I have read. After being utterly enamoured by 'Cloud Atlas', 'Ghostwritten' and 'Black Swan Green' I was really looking forward to this. I'd have to say though that this is the hardest read of Mitchell's four books. The other three really WERE "unputdownable" but this one I had to give up on half way through and come back to it after a few weeks.
The central figure of the book is Eiji Miyake, a kid from the sticks, and his adventures in the Tokyo metropolis. He arrives in Tokyo on a mission to find his biological father, having lost his twin sister in an accident and been abandoned by his mother. The book tells the story of his seven weeks in Tokyo. The narrative employs Mitchell's trademark magical realism to illustrate Eiji's travails.
Like all of Mitchell's other works, 'Number9dream' is best seen as a collection of tales rather than an uninterrupted story. It flits between reality and Eiji's imagination with ease. I found this fine for the first part of the book but I got lost in the chapter "Study of Tales". For the first time reading Mitchell I didn't get the point! I still don't know what the stories Eiji was reading here were about. Perhaps I'm just not perceptive enough, but this felt like a little bit of Emperor's New Clothes. Hate to be too critical but there you are!
The rest of the book is thoroughly enjoyable and I'm glad I read it. I particularly liked the Yakuza sequences. Very violent, very Manga. The chapter describing the war diaries of Eiji's great uncle was also very well written.
A good book but not as good as the rest of David Mitchell's work. If you're coming to him fresh read 'Cloud Atlas' or 'Ghostwritten' first.
The central figure of the book is Eiji Miyake, a kid from the sticks, and his adventures in the Tokyo metropolis. He arrives in Tokyo on a mission to find his biological father, having lost his twin sister in an accident and been abandoned by his mother. The book tells the story of his seven weeks in Tokyo. The narrative employs Mitchell's trademark magical realism to illustrate Eiji's travails.
Like all of Mitchell's other works, 'Number9dream' is best seen as a collection of tales rather than an uninterrupted story. It flits between reality and Eiji's imagination with ease. I found this fine for the first part of the book but I got lost in the chapter "Study of Tales". For the first time reading Mitchell I didn't get the point! I still don't know what the stories Eiji was reading here were about. Perhaps I'm just not perceptive enough, but this felt like a little bit of Emperor's New Clothes. Hate to be too critical but there you are!
The rest of the book is thoroughly enjoyable and I'm glad I read it. I particularly liked the Yakuza sequences. Very violent, very Manga. The chapter describing the war diaries of Eiji's great uncle was also very well written.
A good book but not as good as the rest of David Mitchell's work. If you're coming to him fresh read 'Cloud Atlas' or 'Ghostwritten' first.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By Sir Furboy
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Number 9 Dream is a captivating and intelligent novel, well written - as one would expect from David Mitchell, and with some deep themes. The book is about a Japanese young man who is in search of the father who abandoned his family when he and his twin sister were born. He is also haunted by another significant event of his past.
Through the book, the search for his father gradually bears fruit, but ultimately it becomes clear that this knowledge was never important, as the protagonist - Eiji - comes of age through a series of enlightening experiences.
But this is no ordinary coming of age novel as much of the action takes place in Eiji's head. His dreams are as important to the narrative as the real events - and sometimes its a little tricky to separate what is real from what is imagined.
In the end, we see that the number 9 dream is that which starts after every ending. That is, when the other issues are resolved and Eiji comes out of the dream world and seems to wake up into this world, the 9th dream begins - the beginning of Eiji's real life. (Shades of the much shorter "Dandelion Wine" here!)
Parts of this novel were gripping, and the whole narrative sweeps you along. However it is not my favourite book for various reasons - most notably that this seems to be a rather self conscious attempt to write a Murakami novel by David Mitchell. The very title hints at this. #9 Dream is a song by John Lennon. Murakami, of course, achieved fame through his "Norwegian Wood". Indeed, the dialogue in this book compares #9 Dream with the song Norwegian wood.
Eiji is also found to be reading "Wind Up Bird Chronicle" as he contemplates his death - wondering what will become to the man stuck down the dry well.
And there are many other subtle references to Murakami. The structure of the book has trademark Murakami surrealism. We have love hotels and prostitutes and bad sex. We have the multiple threads and war time reminiscences. At times I thought I actually was reading Murakami.
Anyone who has seen my reviews will know I am not actually a big Murakami fan, because of his tendency to drop all the threads without resolution. Mitchell does not do that - except for the very deliberate new thread that is dropped at the end of chapter 8. But all the same, I think I would prefer to read David Mitchell for David Mitchell. I love his humour, his power of description, his ability to write in different voices, and his understanding of how to write a good story.
This book contained all of the above, but I hope his future works are less self consciously derivative.
Through the book, the search for his father gradually bears fruit, but ultimately it becomes clear that this knowledge was never important, as the protagonist - Eiji - comes of age through a series of enlightening experiences.
But this is no ordinary coming of age novel as much of the action takes place in Eiji's head. His dreams are as important to the narrative as the real events - and sometimes its a little tricky to separate what is real from what is imagined.
In the end, we see that the number 9 dream is that which starts after every ending. That is, when the other issues are resolved and Eiji comes out of the dream world and seems to wake up into this world, the 9th dream begins - the beginning of Eiji's real life. (Shades of the much shorter "Dandelion Wine" here!)
Parts of this novel were gripping, and the whole narrative sweeps you along. However it is not my favourite book for various reasons - most notably that this seems to be a rather self conscious attempt to write a Murakami novel by David Mitchell. The very title hints at this. #9 Dream is a song by John Lennon. Murakami, of course, achieved fame through his "Norwegian Wood". Indeed, the dialogue in this book compares #9 Dream with the song Norwegian wood.
Eiji is also found to be reading "Wind Up Bird Chronicle" as he contemplates his death - wondering what will become to the man stuck down the dry well.
And there are many other subtle references to Murakami. The structure of the book has trademark Murakami surrealism. We have love hotels and prostitutes and bad sex. We have the multiple threads and war time reminiscences. At times I thought I actually was reading Murakami.
Anyone who has seen my reviews will know I am not actually a big Murakami fan, because of his tendency to drop all the threads without resolution. Mitchell does not do that - except for the very deliberate new thread that is dropped at the end of chapter 8. But all the same, I think I would prefer to read David Mitchell for David Mitchell. I love his humour, his power of description, his ability to write in different voices, and his understanding of how to write a good story.
This book contained all of the above, but I hope his future works are less self consciously derivative.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By T S Jones
Format:Paperback
I read a review of this book that wondered how the author managed to get this published. I can only assume that this person is a frustrated, unpublished writer, because this sounds suspiciously like sour grapes to me. I knew David very briefly (and very slightly) when we were teenagers and he was always writing like a dervish even then. It was always clear that he was immensly talented, and these books prove it. I loved this one, and adored 'Ghostwritten' which I've read over and over again. When you finish it you want to go straight back to the beginning and start again. Number9Dream is great, but buy both books, is my advice. I just hope he gives us another book soon, can't wait. And David if you read this, bloody well done, mate.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love this book
This is the fourth book I have read by David Mitchell, and just as with Black Swan Green, I find myself wondering and worrying about the main character long after I have finished... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Polly
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterpiece
Like in all M's novels, in this book there is a profound emotional thread laced just beneath the surface of the pages' fluent ebb. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Papa San
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, but Kindle conversion grates
One of the best books I've ever read. Truly, it's right up there with the best. I won't go into the plot, other reviewers have done a grand job of doing that, so I'll leave my... Read more
Published 8 months ago by R. P. Griffiths
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Clever
I read Number9dream, and unlike some people who have said it took them time to read, I found it quite gripping, and it only took a few days. Read more
Published 9 months ago by MaxRocks
2.0 out of 5 stars
interesting but not great
This feels a lot like a writing school exercise. Interesting digressions into different styles and a non-linear plot but ultimately there isnt much substance and it feels too much... Read more
Published 9 months ago by surfer009
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable, if a bit messy
This is David Mitchell's 2nd novel (the first of his I have read) and reads a bit like a young novelist trying out different styles; Tarantinoesque violence and philosophising... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Lendrick
3.0 out of 5 stars
An unusual book
I chose this book having read another of Mitchell's books and because it was short listed for the Man Booker Prize.
After the first few pages I almost gave up on it. Read more
After the first few pages I almost gave up on it. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Red
1.0 out of 5 stars
KINDLE EDITION - atrocious typesetting
number9dream is one of my favourite books. It is definitely a modern classic - a wonderful road movie of a novel, where the protagonist doesn't travel, yet goes everywhere his mind... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Richard Cosgrove
2.0 out of 5 stars
disappointed
having read and enjoyed Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, I looked forward to reading this. However, I gave up half way through: I think you have to understand and be a fan of Manga to... Read more
Published 16 months ago by chesters
2.0 out of 5 stars
A huge disappointment
I was expecting great things from this book. I love books about Japan. I love Japanese authors and I love David Mitchell. I took this on holiday with me as a treat. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
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