Read it in: around two weeks
This was my second David Mitchell, the first being Cloud Atlas, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The main thing that drew me to this one was that it was partially set in Japan. I am leaving in just under two months for my six month trip to the country and thought I should get some background reading done. And I thought, because Cloud Atlas was so good, that this would be equally as good.
I must say, Ghostwritten reads almost as the prequel to Cloud Atlas. If I remember correctly, it was his first novel, so Cloud Atlas definitely came after it. But having read CA first, I could pick up little hints as to where some of the ideas came from. I love seeing how authors play with ideas in one book that then go on to completely shape another work later on.
Ghostwritten is also really similar to Cloud Atlas in structure, as if Mitchell was experimenting with that sort of thing for the first time here. It takes the form of nine different parts, all about completely different people on different corners of the earth, whose destinies go on to intertwine as the story develops. In Cloud Atlas, Mitchell does this starting out with halves of the story that go in order… Look, I’m going to have to draw a diagram because words fail me:
CW: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing –> Letters from Zedelghem –> Half Lives: the first Luisa Rey mystery –> The Ghastly Ordeal of Timoth Cavendish –>An Orison of Sonmi 451 –> Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After –> An Orison of Sonmi 451 –> The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish –> The First Luisa Rey Mystery –> Letters from Zedelghem –> The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing
GW: Okinawa –> Tokyo –> Hong Kong –> Holy Mountain –> Mongolia –> Petersburg –> London –> Clear Island –> Night Train
So as you can see, the format of CW starts off by introducing the characters and then going back to them again at the end. I sort of expected this as I read Ghostwritten, but as you can see, it doesn’t happen there. I was a little disappointed because I wanted so much to learn about the characters more! So things were left unanswered, but I don’t think that’s too much of a big issue when it comes to David Mitchell.
And it all ties together in the end, but in unexpected ways. Most of the time the protagonists of sections never actually meet each other, at least not in person. They hear of one another, they sometimes see one another from a distance and usually they suffer the full extent of the consequences of the actions of another person. Mitchell ties this story into one particular theme that isn’t really noticeable until the end. It becomes more and more relevant until finally we realise why things that seemed utterly strange in the first part of the book are actually conceivable in the second part.
If you’re asking what it’s about, it’s about lots of things. It’s about a frightened terrorist in Okinawa, a couple falling in love in Tokyo, a middle-aged and troubled man in Hong Kong, an old woman living an unchanging life on a changing mountain in China, a non-corporeal species living in the minds of different people in Mongolia, an art thief in Petersburg, a young man living in chaotic London, a leading physicist seeking refuge in a remote island off the British isles, a late night radio show in Brooklyn, NY. It encompasses just about every corner of the globe and every walk of life that there is. It’s about life, and non-life as well. Reading it is like taking a voyage. You step off and you think ‘where have I just been?’, or ‘where have I NOT just been?’.
It’s one of those books that you digest for a while after you read.
Read it if you: are interested in travel and different places and different people, if you’re interested in China or Japan, or Mongolia, or I suppose in Russia or America or England or Ireland, if you would have ever liked to see ‘The Host’ by Stephenie Meyer rewritten by someone who is actually competent, if you read Cloud Atlas.
While reading listen to: Low Roar The Painter, Bon Iver Calgary (this version in particular), The Irrepressibles In This Shirt
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