Review: Slade House by David Mitchell

Title: The Slade House

Author: David Mitchell

Publisher: Random House

Date of Publication: 2015

Number of Pages: 238

Find it at: Book Depository

Summary

Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside? For those who find out, it’s already too late...

Review

Before anything else I have to declare that I'll try not to sound too much of a fangirl. I'll sincerely try.

Slade House is a collection of five stories all revolving around a mysterious house in Slade alley. Each story is nine years after the previous one and they are all related in some way or another. This is not a new pattern for David Mitchell, as we've seen him do something similar both in Ghostwritten and in Cloud Atlas. Nevertheless, the way everything adds up in the story of Slade House and at the same time in Mitchell's universe brings us closer to understand it better and reach out for its secrets.

The stories of the Slade House are intriguing. They are short, and quite easy to read, yet they suck you in a bizarre world which is not that much different from our own. The only difference? The existence of supernatural creatures. Deeply connected to the Bone Clocks, we encounter once again the Atemporals which suck human souls, in order to live forever. But Norah and Jonah Grayer work on their own, hidden from the Shaded Way. The twins, are indeed soul vampires. They have created a system which enables their souls to live on with the condition that their birth bodies remain intact and they provide energy for this system every nine years. The energy they need is of course the soul of an engifted person. So, every nine years they choose someone and lure him into the Slade House.

In that way, the five victims that we get to know are the ones from the last five decades of the Grayer twins. Each one has completely different circumstances, different age and gender and different ways of perceiving what they are going through. The one thing that I found in common is that they all faced serious problems. For example, on the one hand, Nathan Bishop is a socially awkward boy and on the other hand Inspector Edmonds has grave financial problems. Sally Timms is the next victim and she has self-esteem and anxiety problems and she is followed in the next decade by her sister Freya who tries to figure out what actually happened to her sister. The last one that enters the Slade House is none other than Marinus,  the same one from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Bone Clocks. You can guess my delight when I got to the last story and encountered Marinus for another time! He/she is one of my all-time favourite characters and it's never disappointing. Apart from Marinus, I liked all of the protagonists. I was able to understand their way of thinking and how they dealt with each situation. I got closer to Sally Timms because I felt that she was closer to my own character. And she got caught with the most hellish way!

While reading the stories I was able to find a certain pattern in the way the Grayer twins realised their plans. Each one of the victims has a very specific reason to find Slade House, or at least to be near the Slade Alley. They all encounter a jogger wearing black and glow-in-the-dark orange, which might be a coincidence, but by the end we know that Norah is using the mind of this jogger. Later, when they enter the house they are compelled for some reason to go up the stairs, they see the clock with no hands, they see the portraits of the previous victims on the walls and they also see a portrait of themselves. When they reach the end of the stairs they find a door with a shiny doorknob and when they enter they find themselves in a totally different environment, where everything is as they'd wanted it to be. But in their most blissfull moment they awake into a dark attick with ony the candlelight and this sums it up. I find it very appealing that there is this certain ritual, it indicated that the Grayer twins are very methodic in their ways. Maybe they are a little archaic, as Marinus points out, but they stick to them and up to a point they succeed.

But can the Slade House stand as a horror novel? There is neither much violence in it, nor much blood spilt. In fact, there is no blood shed. Norah and Jonah are interested only in the souls of the engifted ones. If there were other people with them, they were just casualties that they had to get rid of. But it's creepy and weird and can certainly give you goosebumps. I remember when I was reading the first story, The Right Sort, I was shocked by the way the twins manipulated Nathan and the same thing happened again and again in all the following stories. I can conclude that the atmosphere was right.

As I've already told you Slade House fits perfectly in the universe David Mitchell has created with his work. The biggest proof is Marinus, a character that appeared in other two novels and I hope will appear again in the future. We learn that the twins learnt the Shaded Way, from The Bone Clocks, as well as that Norah had contacted Enomoto Sensei, whose grandfather appeared in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. But there are also subtler nods to Mitchell's previous novels. Someone is reading Crispin Hersey's Desiccated Embryos (from The Bone Clocks), another is dreaming of Vyvyan Ayrs (from Cloud Atlas) and a third is working for the Spyglass magazine (The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas). This world just keeps getting more and more real with each new novel!

All in all, Slade House was an excellent book for me. I waited for its publication for a long time and I wasn't disappointed at all. Once I got reading it, I couldn't put it down. Although it's not necessary to have read The Bone Clocks before this one, I would strongly recommend that you do so. You will get a better understanding what Norah and Jonah Grayer really is and so the story will become clearer. So, if you've read and enjoyed The Bone Clocks and you like David Mitchell's writing style. you will love it. But if you haven't read anything by this author before, I would advise you to begin with some of his other novels first. Lastly, I have to admit that the end of this novel made me ask for more and I could certainly see Norah Grayer returning to get her revenge.

So, my advice is...

Don't open the small black iron door!

Play(list) by the Book: The Slade House

Hello, everyone! I'm so so happy that I finally got the chance to create another literary playlist. And what's making it even better is that it's a playlist based on David Mitchell's new novel The Slade House. For such a short novel (only 238 pages long) the playlist is quite long, so sit back and enjoy!

As usual, in the playlist I've included all the songs and artists mentioned in the novel. When a specific song isn't mentioned I picked one that I liked. Special case in this Play(list) by the Book is the song Here Comes the Bride which is mentioned as  a parody with lyrics 

"Here comes the bride

a million miles wide"

Previous Play(list) by the Book here.

Review: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

Have you ever wondered what would be like to be immortal in a world, like ours, where mortals live? To be Atemporal in a world so temporal, to watch all those bone clocks age and die, while your body doesn't age and you see the centuries go by. But it's still not that simple. What if you were an atemporal that aged and died but your soul kept returning to other children bodies and you were caught up in a neverending life cycle? The Bone Clocks is a book about life and death, love, vanity and loneliness.

Holly Sykes is a teenage girl growing up in a small town in Britain. Since she was a little girl she heard voices, the Radio People as she calls them. When she runs away from home she meets a strange old lady that asks her for asylum. The circumstances come in a way that she has to accept. Years later and when she has almost forgot about it, this becomes the reason she gets involved in a war between natural atemporals and artificially made ones. This is also the point where she questions what is real and what is not, what does her psychic powers really mean and whether she can trust these people. Once she is convinced that the anchorites, the artificial atemporals, are the ones that kidnapped and killed her brother she is ready to take part and finally help the horologists.

But Holly doesn't have a metalife or any particular powers apart from getting glimpses of the very near future some periods of her life. As the years pass she grows old, she has a daughter and eventually becomes a grandmother. When life on earth becomes difficult again due to oil shortage she strives to make a comfortable enough life for her grandchild, although she is no longer young and suffers from several pains. In that stage of her life even her experiences with the horologists seem like a dream.

The Bone Clocks at first reminded me of Ghostwritten since each part is narrated by a different person and up to some point the parts are episodic. This at first made me worried especially when the first part ended and I didn't know what happened to Holly's brother and I really wanted to know more and all of a sudden we transfer to six years later, in a different place, through the eyes of a guy that didn't have anything to do with the story up to that point. But luckily all of the narrators meet and interact with Holly in some way or another so there are neither plot holes nor unaswered questions.

Not everyone in this book is a stranger to us though. To be precise, three chatacters from previous David Mitchell's novels appear in this one and two of them are quiet important for the story. First appears Hugo Lamb, the slightly older cousin of Jason's in Black Swan Green that was acting too cool. Well, his character hasn't changed at all and the role he has in The Bone Clocks suits him perfectly. From very early on the book we meet a certain Dr. Marinus, but only until he becomes the narrator we learn that he is Dr. Marinus from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I loved this character from the previous book and this didn't change for this one. He has grown to be one of my all time favourite characters. Lastly, scientist Mo Muntervary from Ghostwritten appears to be Holly's neighbour, both in advanced age trying to protect themselves from outlaws and other difficulties when the times get tough.

The Bone Clocks is a thrilling novel and at some points I just couldn't stop reading it because I was so worried about the characters. Holly is a lovable character and there are plenty of chances to grow strong bonds with her and being concerned about her well-being. As in real life unpleasant things happen to Holly and the people around her. These times the book gets heavy, but feels surprisingly real. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interesting in a realistic novel with strong fantasy elements. So, my advice is...

Get lost in this amazing story!    

    

Play(list) by the Book: The Bone Clocks

In The Bone Clocks there are so many songs mentioned that I couldn't resist the temptation to create a playlist to share with you! But I had to (at least) try to limit it to a sensible number of tracks. That's why I only included one song per artist, I didn't include any classical music pieces and in case an album was mentioned I picked the song I liked the most. So, plug in your headsets and enjoy!

But this post wouldn't really be complete without a list of the albums mentioned throught the book or the classical music pieces.

 Albums mentioned:

• Talking Heads - Fear of Music
• Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding
• Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
• Nirvana - Nevermind
• George Michael - Listen Without Prejudice
• Joni Mitchell - Song to a Seagull
• Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage
• Miles Davis - In a Silent Way

Pieces of Classical Music:

• John Dowland - Weep You No More Sad Fountains
• Benjamin Britten - Hymn to the Virgin
• Peter Grimes - Interludes
• Bruckner - Sumphony no. 9 
• W. A. Mozart - Don Giovanni, Act 2
• Bach - Partitas
• Stradivarius played by Yehudi Menuhin
• John Cage - In a Landscape
• Keith Jarrett - My Wild Irish Rose
• Maria Callas - Casta Diva
• Toru Takemitsu - From Me Flows What You Call Time
• Jean Sibelius - The Swan of Tuenola
• Shostakovich - Preludes and Fugues
• William Byrd - Hughe Ashton's Ground
• Jan Johansson - Jazz pa svenska
• Scarlatti - Sonata in D minor

Info on The Bone Clocks

The sixth novel of David Mitchell was published in 2014.

Summary: 

One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for "asylum". Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking...

The Bone Clocks follows the twists and turns of Holly's life, from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast as Europe's oil supply dries up - a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes - daughter, sister, mother, guardian - is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

The author discusses the book

David Mitchell reads an extract from The Bone Clocks:

Review: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

The fifth novel by David Mitchell is a historical one. The hero is a Dutch clerk working in Japan at the beginning of the 19th century, a country also called the Land of the Thousand Autumns. So, these are, in a sense, the unwritten memoirs of clerk de Zoet of all those years he spent in the Orient. And what story do these memoirs tell!

Japan at the end of 18th century, when our hero arrives, is a very closed country. In fact, the Dutch are the only Europeans "allowed" in Nagasaki. The truth is that they are strictly prohibited from entering Nagasaki or have any kind of relation to any local, apart from the interpreters. Moreover, upon their arrival they have to give to the authorities any kind of religious symbol, any Bible, cross or rosary they might possess. Under such circumstances Jacob meets Orito Aibagawa, a japanese midwife who is one of the apprentices of dutch medicine. 

If a romance should develop between those characters, it should be pretty impossible too. A dutch could not marry a local, he could only have a concubine. Miss Aibagawa was a scholar, from a family well-established in the japanese status, so such thoughts were unacceptable. Despite all those obstacles Jacob proposes to her, with the help of an interpreter, and then the least possible thing happens: she disappears! 

This is the point where the novel gets complicated. It's more like a crossroad between two different timelines. The first, which unravels in the second part of the book, is related to what happened to Orito Aibagawa and the second storyline, which returns with the third part of the book, follows Jacob's actions and a conflict with a british frigate. This is also the part when I was most disappointed with this book. Although both of the storylines where interesting and thrilling and I genuinely wanted to know what happens next I was torn in half. Jacob didn't appear in the story of Orito, although I was waiting for it and eventually he was the one that gave her her life back. For me the catharsis didn't actually happen. The resolution was determined through the course of events and chance (once again in a David Mitchell novel), not from the initiative of the hero.

When eventually everything ends the story goes a decade later. Jacob is still in Japan, he had a son with a local and became chief of the dutch establishment in Nagasaki. The mother of his son though isn't Orito, in fact he hasn't met her up to this day. And when they do meet, it's just for a few minutes and a brief explanation from Jacob's part as to what had happened. 

Then we go another five years later and we find Jacob on a ship leaving Japan. It's quite an emotional chapter, it devastated me to be honest. He will never return to Japan or meet his son again. Back in the Netherlands he will make another family and spend his days wishing he could find some time to write his memoirs. And when he finally dies the last image will be that of a japanese woman with a half burnt face.

The world is a vale of tears.

I would consider this novel the most difficult one comparing it to the others of David Mitchell. The author's language reminded me of that in various japanese novels I have read from time to time. The descriptions of Japan and of this particular era were amazing. Furthermore there were some of my favourite characters in this book. I adored Dr. Marinus with his scientific ways and his groundbreaking ideas for the japanese minds and Lord Abbot Enomoto is one of the most interesting villains I have encountered in literature. 

All in all, this is a novel strongly recommended for those who love both demanding and devastating reads. But if you haven't read anything by David Mitchell before I would advise to turn to his other novels first. 

So, my advice is...

A historical thriller to exercise the brain!

      

Info on The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

In 1799, Jacob de Zoet disembarks on the tiny island of Dejima, the Dutch East India Company’s remotest trading post in a Japan otherwise closed to the outside world. A junior clerk, his task is to uncover evidence of the previous Chief Resident’s corruption.

Cold-shouldered by his compatriots, Jacob earns the trust of a local interpreter and, more dangerously, becomes intrigued by a rare woman—a midwife permitted to study on Dejima under the company physician. He cannot foresee how disastrously each will be betrayed by someone they trust, nor how intertwined and far-reaching the consequences.

Duplicity and integrity, love and lust, guilt and faith, cold murder and strange immortality stalk the stage in this enthralling novel, which brings to vivid life the ordinary—and extraordinary—people caught up in a tectonic shift between East and West.

David Mitchell on Bookworm 2010

Review: Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Do you remember how it's like to be thirteen? You are neither a child nor a grown-up and you constantly try to persuade everyone that you have indeed grown. This is the age when you experience your first love, your first kiss, your first cigarette. You feel that the world is against you and you struggle to be accepted by those around you, especially if you are a boy. But if you happen to be different in some way, or possess a unique trait, you are sure to be bullied.  

This is exactly what our hero, Jason Taylor, has to face during his adventures in a year that proved to be critical for his growing up. And what a year it was! After trying so hard to be accepted by the cool and tough guys at school he ends up being bullied, turning his life at school a living hell. But he breaks through, making his friendship with the not-so-cool kid even stronger and handling the whole situation in a surprisingly mature way. Even when things get really tough, when his parents get a divorce and he has to leave the house of his childhood, his friends, his school, he tries to remain calm and finally realises that this is the road to growing up. 

The structure of this novel is simpler compared to the rest of David Mitchell's other works. It's a book containing 13 chapters and each one is a short story. In one of them we meet a somewhat familiar character, Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, a character first appeared in Cloud Atlas that introduces Jason to french literature and the Cloud Atlas Sextet by Robert Frobisher. 

My favourite parts of this novel were the most emotionally charged ones. The chapter in which Jason feels guilty about the injury of his worst bully is one of them and it's so hard not to feel bad for him, because it is obviously not his fault. How can a thirteen year-old boy react to the consequences of consequences? But the scene that made me cry was the one in which he was sitting in his empty bedroom. The memories he shared with his sister, their games of hide and seek and him thinking of another kid sitting in that very same room in the future makes it really hard not to shed a tear.

So, my advice is...

A coming-of-age journey worth taking! 

Info on Black Swan Green

Black Swan Green is the fourth novel by David Mitchell and it was published in 2006. 

Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirtheen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys' games on a frozen lake; of "nightcreeping" through summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falkland War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian immigrant who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason's search to replace his dead grandfather's irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher's recession; of Gypsies comping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.

David Mitchell on Bookworm, 2006

Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas is a unique case of a novel. It's definitely a novel by David Mitchell, but the writing is even more thrilling, exploring a great range of genres. Traces of both Ghostwritten and number9dream are evident, that I clearly felt a witness of some kind of an evolution in ideas and structure. Both of those previous novels are based upon certain ideas and so is this one. Indeed, the main idea in Cloud Atlas is reincarnation.

The story begins in the 19th century, progresses through many decades we have lived, explores a future when the man is very technologically developed and ends in a post-apocalyptic distant future. In its own way, it's like a history of this world that David Mitchell has created. Most of the narrations end in despair, but there are also those who let hope crawl inside. Sonmi-451 is imprisoned and dies, but later in a the post-apocalyptic society she is worshipped like a god. 

All the characters of those six stories that consist Cloud Atlas are reincarnations of the same soul through time. The reincarnations are easily recognisable from the comet-shaped mark that they all share. The interesting fact is that the narrator of the sixth story doesn't have the mark and nothing really indicates that he shares anything with the rest of the characters, but his companion most probably is. 

It is also really interesting to discover how all those different characters interacted with each other through time and how their actions translated into a common language in order to travel from the one period to the other (in some cases centuries have gone by before the soul was reincarnated). But, no matter what the current character finds the action that reaches him is from his previous reincarnation. For example, Robert Frobisher, the composer from the second story, finds and becomes obsessed with the diary that Adam Ewing wrote on the ship the previous century, or when Luisa Rey, the young reporter from the third story discovers the correspondence between Frobisher and his friend and becomes so enthralled by him that she orders the Cloud Atlas Sextet, the only published work of the composer and so on. Every action each protagonist makes leaves a ripple in time and reaches the next one and in the end we have the echoes of all those ripples combined. I wouldn't be surprised if the author had the chaos theory in mind. 

The structure of Cloud Atlas, as I have already said, is unique. It includes six stories and the five of them are divided into two parts. This way a pyramid-shaped structure is formed where each story starts and then it continues in reverse order. For example, the first story continues last and so forth. The only story that ends without an interruption is the sixth one. Furthermore, each story is written in a different genre. This way we have diary entries, correspondence, interview, noir novel style, memoirs and folktale.

To sum things up, Cloud Atlas is a novel considered as a new classic. Personally, it's one of my all-time favourite books and I would reread it any time. I would recommend it to everyone. The stories are all intriguing, the writing is diverse and I believe that it will be very enjoyable and thought-provoking to all of you.

So my advice is...

A jewel for your bookshelf!

  

Info on Cloud Atlas

The third novel of David Mitchell is Cloud Atlas, published in 2004.

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified "dinery server" on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where in may lead us.

David Mitchell in Bookworm (2005) discussing Cloud Atlas.

Review: number9dream by David Mitchell

So many stars. What are they for? 

What is a dream and what is reality? How many possibilities exist and how many of them unfold before us? How much does it cost to let go of your ghosts? number9dream explores all those questions and leaves the reader ready to experience life as a result of those endless possibilities. And the feeling is present from the very first chapter. 

Young Eiji Miyake moves to Tokyo in order to search for his father, which is a challenging quest since he doesn't even know his name. But all these weeks that the book follows his life we become witnesses to a vast change in his feelings, his thoughts, his memories, his being. At the end of the story Eiji is no longer a youth, but an adult who knows his origins, who tries to understand his mother and finally let go his idealised notion of his father and the tragic death of his twin sister. 

So long ago,

Was it in a dream?

Was it jast a dream?

I know, yes I know,

It seemed so very real,

Seemed real to me.

Took a walk down the street,

Through the heat whispered trees.

I thought I could hear.

Somebody call out my name

as it started to rain.

Two spirits dancing so strange...

I will not try to explain this book, do not be fooled, this is not one of those where everthing in the end is crystal clear. Each reader has to find its little twists and turns, to travel along Eiji and maybe learn something about himself. As Eiji at some point understands everybody has his dark secrets and we should learn to accept them in others and let the past rest within us. 

Similarly to Ghostwritten the structure of number9dream is unique, although in this book we deal with only one narrator. Each chapter has a very distinct theme, which influences the writing style accordingly. Possibilities, memories, video games, tales, card games, and even kaiten appear one after another and let us have a glimpse in Eiji's past and present. 

So, my advice is...

A jewel for your library!

Info on number9dream

The second novel of David Mitchell is number9dream, published in 2001.

Summary of the book: In outwardform, number9dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses -through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck- a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer. Why is the line between the worls of his experiences and the worlds of his dreams so blurry? Why do so many horrible things keep happening to him? What is it about the number 9? To answer these questions, and ultimately to come to terms with his inheritance, Eiji must somehow acquire an insight into the workings of history and fate that would be rare in anyone, much less in a boy from out of town with a price on his head and less than the cost of a Beatles disc to his name.  

David Mitchell discusses number9dream on Bookworm

Review: Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

Title: Ghostwritten

Author: David Mitchell

Publisher: Sceptre

Date of Publication: 2000 (first published in 1999)

Number of Pages: 448

Find it at: Book Depository

Summary

A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?

A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut of a writer of astonishing gifts.

Review

Ghostwritten is one of those books that lingers in your mind long after you have finished reading it. It's made of nine stories, placed in different places in the world. The narrators are so different people, with so varying pasts and futures that on the surface there is no connection between them. But until the very last page you know that what brings them together is chance. Indeed, this is a novel based upon the idea of chance. 

The stories that reveal this fact are the ones taking place in London and in Clear Island. Or as Dr. Mo Muntervary says "However far away they are: between John and me, between Okinawa and Clear Island or between the Milky Way and Andromeda: if one of the particles is spinning down, then you know that the other is spinning up". The stories and the events that connect them are just like particles. The narrators do not know each other, most of the times their paths don't even cross, but the way they intervene is vital for the future of the other. The Secret Deposit Agency of the doomsday cult doesn's exit, Quasar calls a record store without him knowing and in the other end of the line Satoru delays just enough to meet the girl he is obsessed with.

Ghostwritten has a unique structure, although it's a bit risky. Each narrator has his own personality and David Mitchell managed to create nine different stories that do not feel unconnected, yet at the same time are random enough to feel that indeed it was chance that moved them. This structure will appear again in Cloud Atlas, although in that novel it feels different.

After reading Ghostwritten I feel richer and I feel like I will be thinking about it for a long time. It's one of the books that grow on you. My advice is...

Read it already!

Getting to know David Mitchell

January's reading challenge is only one day away and one important question needs to be answered: Who is David Mitchell?

First of all, he is an English novelist born in 1969 and he has lived in Italy, Japan and Ireland. So far he has written six novels (those we will be reading in January), two of which were shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize (number9dream and Cloud Atlas). The other three were longlisted for The Man Booker Prize (Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Bone Clocks), while Ghostwritten has won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best book by a writer under 35. In 2003 David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

Official Website: http://www.davidmitchellbooks.com/

David Mitchell's Profile in The Man Booker Prizes' Website: http://www.themanbookerprize.com/people/david-mitchell

An interesting video in which the author discusses the Writing Process

Last but not least, here is an interview of the novelist discussing his debut novel Ghostwritten: http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1100/mitchell/interview.html 

These are just the basic information on who David Mitchell is. I hope that during this month we will be able to learn more about his work and what he has to offer in contemporary literature. 

Challenge's details

The rules are simple: Read and enjoy the books. In case a book is already been read then reread and reconsider it. At the end of each book gather the impressions it left on you and write about them. 

Reading Challenge

The first challenge for this blog will be to read all of David Mitchell's novels in chronological order. New Year's, then, will find me reading Ghostwritten, which was first published in 1999. Six novels by the same author is a challenge in itself, but I'm rather intrigued by this one, although I have to confess that I have already read Cloud Atlas. There is only to check if the magic is still there.

So, to make a complete list of the books included in this challenge, I will read:

• Ghostwritten (1999)
• number9dream (2001)
• Cloud Atlas (2004)
• Black Swan Green (2006)
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
• The Bone Clocks (2014)

I hope you'll join me in this Reading Armchair.