| Number9dream | 
 enlarge | Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Sceptre
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £1.15
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New (29) from £1.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 12135
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0340747978
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780340747971
ASIN: 0340747978
Publication Date: April 4, 2002
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 38 | | ... 8 NEXT » |
 Anime in Fiction June 11, 2008
This book hit me with a refreshing karate chop to my senses. Just when I thought new fiction was getting a bit stale, here comes Mitchell. The plot line to this story is pretty one-dimensional and straight foreward; a young man in search for his father, But The truly delectable bits are Mitchell's description of Tokyo; it's streets, characters and plethara of small details are offered to the reader in multitude. Like an action anime cartoon or a martial arts film, Mitchell manages to string along so many interesting tangents into his seemingly simple story. However, it's not about reading it to find out what happens next and here I must warn you: if you are expecting a clear beginning, middle and end-type book, then look elsewhere as the sequence of events are not wholly linear. It could get frustrating at times as the tangents are long, and beautiful. Nevertheless, it manages to keep the reader in suspense and wondering what happens next. Overall, a great experience and I thank Mitchell of painstakingly taking me with him to Tokyo. A truly magnanimous success.
Draws you in and keeps you there March 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
We all thought Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" was excellent, and were keen to read more by him. This book has elements in common with that one: the interweaving narratives, the cross-connections, the allusions and the clever use of dialogue. But the subject is widely removed from there and, at first glance, looks like an advanced exercise from a creative writing class: "Imagine you're a young man looking for his father. In Tokyo. And you've come from a remote part of Japan. Describe your feelings, adventures, fantasies, impressions..."
According to the blurb, Mitchell lived in Japan for some time, but you still get the idea that he's chosen a challenging topic. It's to his credit, then, that he succeeds so well: the picture he paints of the urban compression of Tokyo is - as far as I can recall from my visits there - exact, and he subtly highlights the contempt that city dwellers have for people from the country (just like, you realise, in every other country in the world). He also makes clever use of speech patterns to distinguish between characters from different backgrounds (to give the most extreme example, he grafts cockney accents onto Yakuza thugs, which seems to be precisely appropriate). The multiple stories seen in "Cloud Atlas" appear here as well - there's a sequence describing the training of Japanese suicide submariners in WWII that's particularly effective - and they all combine together to make this a richly-faceted novel, and a deeply satisfying reading experience.
 Heroes and innocents October 17, 2007
He's a clever lad this Mitchell, always playing tricks on the reader but doing so with innocence and charm so it never feels smug or contrived: Number 9 Dream starts out as a happy little first-person trundle around Tokyo in the company of a nice young lad who likes to daydream himself into heroic situations. Then the daydreams cross into reality and the hero's life becomes very dark indeed. Very dark. Indeed. Stomach-churning at times but always controlled and relevant as the story moves through to a cracking existential climax.
a fantasy that kept me laughing August 7, 2007
how does mitchell do it, where does he get his ideas from, i couldn't put this down. i kept laughing , smiling, rereading bits. my partner thinks i've gone mad as i had to keep sharing bits with him. Brilliant. AGAIN!
hard to get into........but worth it in the end March 21, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
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.
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