Ghostwritten

Hmm. . . I'm still thinking about this one. Liked the overarching theme, and the individual stories were mostly interesting. I would like to go back and figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together, but it's not good enough to read twice. Looking forward to my book club's discussion. The story is kind of impressive, but it's also kind of dated. It was probably more amazing at the time it was published.

Jerome can't bear the sight of his own reflection, he once confessed after drinking a bottle of cheap sherry, and he's never owned a mirror. I asked him why. He told me that whenever he looks into one he sees a man inside it, and thinks, “Who in God's name are you?”

The fact that this is a debut novel is wild. How the fuck is this a debut novel?! The ambition, breadth, and scope is bananas. I am a sucker for intersecting storylines, which is the crux of this novel, as it threads together individuals' experiences throughout history, from a doomsday cult member in Japan, to an Irish genius whose work in quantum physics threatens to engender nuclear war, to an all-night radio host in Manhattan, and so on.

I am certain I missed a great deal and will benefit from researching it a bit. Highly recommend.

This is my third Mitchell, and I can honestly say that he really does know how to carry the narrative(s). While his debut is much closer to Cloud Atlas (the first book I read) than my personal favourite The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, the undersong of tension that he's able to weave to his stories is already there, strong and commanding.

Although I prefer his (at the moment) newest book also in terms of how concentrated the narrative is – despite the fact that it, too, carries the story through with the aid of multipled narrators – Ghostwritten is a thoroughly engrossing tale of transmigration, life, death and relationships in the middle of it. In other words, the little brother to Cloud Atlas.

The challenge is immense. The book is divided into chapters that all follow a different character, their destinies and lives somehow interlinked, in fact in a very particular way, which one will realize when all is said and done. How does one then carry the story so that it stays fervent and interesting? I think Mitchell does an admirable job, although there are some stories that didn't do it for me at all, the Hong Kong chapters for example. The mysteries of consciousness is the one topic with which Mitchell makes the most out of not only the story but his skill as a writer, and I think the theme works better here than it does in Cloud Atlas, although it might be I'm mixing too much of the film with the book.

In retrospect, the intertextuality between this and Cloud Atlas manages to deepen both works.

6 February,
2014