Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
David Mitchell's second novel, number9dream, is one of those books you dream of being able to write. He seems to have read every major novelist of the last 100 years and absorbed them all completely into his own aesthetic; while you can see traces of the influence of Borges or Joyce or Murakami, he never seems to be aping them but is instead writing in his own style. He playfully switches between genres -- borrowing from sci-fi, true crime, children's lit, fantasy, and more -- but never comes off as playing literary games, as everything fits together perfectly and of necessity. The story is as exciting as a potboiler without pandering, and Mitchell can write profundities without seeming pretentious. While my personal favorite is his 3rd novel, Cloud Atlas, this one is, really, just as good.

The story is of Eiji Miyake, a young man from rural Japan come to Tokyo to find his father; Eiji's mother had been his mistress, and was discarded after she gave birth to Eiji and his twin sister Anju. Eiji's straightforward quest becomes infinitely complicated by the strange machinations of Tokyo itself, a confusing and sometimes malevolent character with its own inaccessible logic. Eiji finds himself stymied at every attempt to contact his father, discovers the hidden stories of the seemingly inane and boring people around him, and, most fantastically, gets caught up in a violent conflict between the rival Yakuza leaders who pull the strings of Japanese society. The story itself constantly flirts with the unbelievable, seeming to run by a sort of dream-logic where minor coincidences carry great significance and transform the world around Eiji. Eiji is the perfect avatar for the reader; he's a smart but simple human being, haunted by guilt over his sister's death, feeling helpless in the face of the things going on around him but still trying to complete his quest. Like him, we constantly wonder, "Can this really be happening? Is this even possible?" But just as Eiji is inexorably drawn into the strange world behind the scenes of Tokyo, we too are drawn into the fantastic plot and carried along.

As with Mitchell's other books, number9dream is marked by its stylistic and structural innovations. Each chapter follows Eiji's journey, but his story is interwoven with other texts, including his fantasies and dreams, memories, a series of children's tales, video games, a WWII-era journal, etc. Mitchell's virtuoso writing abilities come out but never overpower the narrative itself, as each generic excursion both advances and comments on Eiji's story. And, also like Mitchell's other books, number9dream bears re-reading. Besides the sheer pleasure of Mitchell's storytelling, small details that you skim over become important later; as Eiji himself finds out at some point, a book isn't the same book after you've read it.

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