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David Mitchell

number9dream: David Mitchell Paperback – 4 April 2002

by David Mitchell (Author)

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Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2001

The second novel from the critically-acclaimed author of GHOSTWRITTEN and CLOUD ATLAS.

As Eiji Miyake's twentieth birthday nears, he arrives in Tokyo with a mission - to locate the father he has never met. So begins a search that takes him into the seething city's underworld, its lost property offices and video arcades, and on a journey that zigzags from reality to the realm of dreams. But until Eiji has fallen in love and exorcised his childhood demons, the belonging he craves will remain, tantalizingly, just beyond his grasp.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Sceptre
Publication date

4 April 2002
Dimensions

13.7 x 2.8 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

0340747978
ISBN-13

978-0340747971
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Product description

Review

Even more dazzling than GHOSTWRITTEN. -- Matt Thorne ― Independent on Sunday

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

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. -- Boyd Tonkin ― Independent

Exceptional. ― Literary Review

Book Description

Shortlisted for the Booker and the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes

From the Inside Flap

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

From the Back Cover

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

About the Author

David Mitchell is the author of the novels Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Bone Clocks, Slade House and Utopia Avenue. He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, won the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes among others, and been named a Granta Best Young British Novelist. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work.

In addition, David Mitchell together with KA Yoshida has translated from Japanese two books by Naoki Higashida - The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism and Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism.

He lives with in Ireland with his family.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sceptre; 2nd edition (4 April 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0340747978
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340747971
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.7 x 2.8 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 42,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 162 in Fatherhood (Books)
- 6,485 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 10,156 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
402 ratings

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3 star		13%
2 star		5%
1 star		2%

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sashaknits

The biggest was not to waste your life chasing an imagined idea but to see ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2017

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This book held some quite profound life lessons, delivered in Mitchell's usual intricate style. The biggest was not to waste your life chasing an imagined idea but to see what's really there in front of you.

I definitely enjoyed the Japanese setting, although the seemingly Anglicised colloquialisms and accents were a little jarring.

As some other reviewers have noted, the interlude in the middle with Goatwriter was a little strange and didn't really seem to add anything of substance to the plot or the overall ambience, but it didn't particularly detract either.

As usual, Mitchell manages to take disparate threads that don't seem connected but which are all compelling and at the end flip them into a beautiful pattern that you couldn't see during the story because you were concentrating on the details, not seeing the big picture. Like a magic-eye image, suddenly it pops into focus and you can see what you didn't realise you were looking for.

4 people found this helpful

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Joy Ormes

A real struggle

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 February 2019

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I was excited to read this because I usually love David Mitchells books but I found myself really struggling to get in to this one and it was an effort to finish it. Unhelpfully I can't really give a good reason why - the writing was good and the characters well drawn. It just didn't hold my interest. It was good in parts but other sections I found myself fighting through. I think I just didn't really care what the outcome was

One person found this helpful

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LPC

Definitely not David Mitchell's usual usual brilliance

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 August 2014

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First off, David Mitchell is one of my most favorite authors. In the writing world in general, he is a master of his craft and a superior talent amongst the many others out there. Number9Dream however seems to be something he experimented on while high. I began reading it expecting more of the usual brilliance I have experienced in his previous works. The story began and not much was happening, didn't care, its David Mitchell and all will be fine. The story began to hint at the potential ahead, was delighted, David Mitchell is about to do his thing. Then the story dumped a vast surreal daydream on my lap and not much sense before finally returning to the protagonist and the story. Ok, I thought, not my cup of tea but I get it. Protagonist has an overactive imagination...lets continue. A couple more pages and I'm back in Surreal land for another weird day dream sequence. Now I'm getting annoyed. Finally back to the story, and oh wait, we're off again into LaLa land. At this point I flicked through the book and saw snippets of other far flung ideas and assumed these were more sequences. I stopped reading it at that point. I'm sure if I stuck with it, Mr. Mitchell would have dynamically swept something back that would have made it all make complete sense and pimp slapped me with a profound message, but to wade through all these surreal and out there scenarios to get there? No, sorry, just could not be arsed:(

2 people found this helpful

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Bob

Format problems, no narrative, boring

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 November 2015

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I persevered with this novel but had to give up about halfway through because it was too pointless and annoying. The protagonist, a young adult in Tokyo, starts by raiding the secured offices of a lawyer to discover who his father was. That was fine. Then the story repeats but he is in a flood. Then it repeats again but differently. Ditto and ditto. But there seem to be no point to the repeats. Then we get his earlier childhood which is boringly set in an orange grove. There really is no narrative in this book. I skipped to the end in the hope of some resoultion but there did not seem to be one.

Further to this, the first chapter and some other pages seem to be really poorly formatted. the result being that you get pages and pages of closely typed text with no spacing.

2 people found this helpful

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Red

An unusual book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 April 2012

Verified Purchase

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. It does not begin well. The style is peculiar, difficult to follow and not enjoyable. I continued hoping it would improve. It did but not to the height as per my expectation.
The plot is well constructed but the reader is left to pick up important details which have very little detail to explain them.
The fantasy parts in the book, particularly the computer game stuff and the book dialogue did nothing to enhance the book and while it may be a different style of writing I do not believe it added to the book. In fact I think these parts in the book drag it down as does the layout of the book. No doubt the layout is meant to be ultra modern and different but I prefer classic regular chapters.
The gruesome part of the book I really struggled with but I can't say it wasn't well written.
A different book by a very versatile author. You will either like it or hate it, I believe.

One person found this helpful

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RPG

Brilliant, but Kindle conversion grates

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 September 2012

Verified Purchase

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 appraisal of the novel at that: one of the best books I've ever read.

Unfortunately, it is also the worst Kindle conversion I've ever read. Truly awful. Line endings, spaces, and other spurious characters have been stripped out willy-nilly; and not just here and there, there are handfuls missing. Yuk! It hurts when reading such a good book.

I spent 30 years converting texts, SGML, XML, XSL, XSLT, there are dozens of algorithms and regexes, so there can be no excuse for this kind of shoddy workmanship.

My recommendation would be to buy the hard copy.

The W.D.P.S - Book One
The U.D.P.S.

3 people found this helpful

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