Ghostwritten

By: David Mitchell

Narrated by: William Rycroft

Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters - a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland, and a radio deejay in New York - hurtle toward a shared destiny of astonishing impact. Like the book's one non-human narrator, Mitchell latches onto his host characters and invades their lives with parasitic precision, making Ghostwritten a sprawling and brilliant literary relief map of the modern world.

©1999 David Mitchell (P)2013 WF Howes

A message book without a message.

I had difficulty reading Cloud Atlas - tried three times and gave up, so thought I would try the embryonic effort. The writing is excellent, the characters, with some exception, are not developed enough to care about, and some are so shallow, one does not want to care about them - I thought I would try to give this book a fair read. As with many male authors, the female characters are victims or pathetic or unlikeable or unfathomable - while the story has some historical accuracy, in some instances, the knee jerk pace of the story telling makes it a struggle to even remained interested. The Irish/US vignette is ridiculous. The one character with a conscience is a spirit, the rest seem to wander around as monsters of their Id, with few exceptions.

Mitchell's first, good but not his best

This was David Mitchell's first novel, but his techniques and storytelling style was already in place. If you have read his later books, particularly Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks, you will see a lot that is familiar here, including names.

That and the fact that it has some meandering sections typical of a first novel makes it a 3.5 star book - good, but not great. David Mitchell is, I think, one of the best modern writers so this book is hardly a fumbling, flawed "first novel" - just not as refined as his later ones. But since he does the same thing to better effect in his later books, I think Ghostwritten will suffer by comparison if you've read them first.

As is usual, Mitchell takes a wide and diverse cast of characters, from an art thief in Russia to an old woman surviving the Communist revolution in China to an English ghostwriter to a non-corporeal body-hopping entity. Most of Mitchell's books have at least a little bit of the supernatural element in them, mixed with small doses of sci-fi, and Ghostwritten is no exception. The "noncorpum" entity later encounters another sort of non-corporeal being, a self-aware AI who becomes involved in the final chapters with a countdown to Armageddon.

With all these interesting stories, and a climax that sort of ties all the threads together, Ghostwritten often seemed more like a collage of individual stories than a single novel where everything was connected. The much more deliberate story-within-a-story effect used in Cloud Atlas now looks like how Mitchell decided to improve upon his earlier effort.

This was a good book and anyone who has enjoyed Mitchell's other books will enjoy this one, but I would not say it's required reading unless you really want to read everything by him.

what are relevant stories?

the historical background and tied in storeylines are good and surprising.. loved the ethics parts.

Magical, Realistic, Entertaining

This is one I read with my "guy" bookclub, which counts among its members serious fans of magical realism and demanding authors such as The Russians and David Foster Wallace. David Mitchell is not as difficult to access as DFW, but his magical realism challenges one to follow his storylines and keep track of his characters because the complicated lines of plot and personalities will eventually intersect, intertwine and resolve. OR WILL THEY?!

This book is a collection of what seems to be short stories, each worthy on their own. But one or two characters from other stories crop up in whatever story one is reading, calling upon the reader to either have a really good memory or have taken notes on the main (and minor) characters of the previous stories. Since I usually listen to audiobooks, this type of setup is difficult for me to follow audibly so I often purchase the hardcopy book and do a fair amount of cross-checking and re-reading in the physical book to help my ailing memory.

The book opens with a seriously fantastic story about THE SERENDIPITY, but other stories are much more mundane, set in rural Asia on a mountaintop, or in modern day London. What makes this book worth reading is the investigative quality of the reading experience. You must follow the trail of crumbs to figure out what is going on.... In my case, I didn't actually truly figure out everything but that's part of Mitchell's charm, I think. His imagination is so vast and his writing skill so honed that instead of developing characters within his storyline, he actually develops his story as a character. His story grows, bifurcates and develops characteristics that normally one sees in a character. I can't wait to get through Cloud Atlas.

Do I recommend? YES, but with caveats. There are so many books and so little time that if you are not a fan of magical realism, you might want to pass on this one.

Great stories. Great writing.

Ghostwritten will put you in the shoes of characters that find themselves in extraordinary situations. You will feel what the characters feel through David Mitchell's storytelling ability and superb command of English.

Best book I've read in a decade

Any additional comments?

First, I like his writing. it's so meticulous but gentle. in any case, this, i think is far better than bone clocks (with its whole back story of good v. evil). the plot is intricately interwoven but not easily disentangled. This, to me, is the prefect combination of conceptual bravery and brilliant craftsmanship. the single narrator can make things confusing at times in transitions but if you know that going in, it won't be a problem.

A David Mitchell novel that actually makes sense!

Great story, complex and mysterious per usual from Mitchell. Vivid descriptions of the interior and subterranean selves. production could have benefited from longer pauses or short musical segue between shifts in narration.

Well written

While I liked this, I didn’t like it as much as Cloud Atlas. Some of the characters’ stories didn’t grab me, although I really like the tea shop owner and the cult member.

Mind Blowing!

I bought this on a whim really but so happy I did. How the Author ties everything together....WOW!

superb

Narrator is fabulous. Which is apt because the prose is so delicious. And it's really crucial , especially when one is writing mystic realismand speculative fiction, to get the right voice to vocalize this work. Bravo William.