Number9Dream

By: David Mitchell

Narrated by: William Rycroft

Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Number9Dream is the international literary sensation from a writer with astonishing range and imaginative energy - an intoxicating ride through Tokyo's dark underworlds and the even more mysterious landscapes of our collective dreams. David Mitchell follows his eerily precocious, globe-striding first novel, Ghostwritten, with a work that is in its way even more ambitious.

In outward form, 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 world of his experiences and the world 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.

©2001 David Mitchell (P)2012 W.F. Howes

Good story. Wrong setting.

I've enjoyed two books by David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. As this novel is highly critically acclaimed, I figured it would also be just as good.

The main plot of the story is about Eiji Miyake, a young 19 year old Japanese man who is searching for the father he never knew or met. Eiji also has a wild imagination and he tends to come up with incredible and outlandish scenarios (James Bond type action scenes, battles with crime bosses, etc.) that are occurring (or going to occur) during his search for his father. Of course, the line between reality and the imagined reality is blurred and we are left to wonder what is actually happening.

The word that comes to mind in describing this book is jarring. I use that word because of the setting that David Mitchell chose for the story. It's set in Japan and the main protagonist is a 19-year old Japanese man. Yet the tone of the book is very, very English. The cultural references, the manner of speaking, the societal perspective are all so very English. And obviously David Mitchell is an Englishman. So that's why I simply had a hard time rectifying what I was listening to and trying to mesh that with the setting of the story. Additionally, the narrator uses a variety of English, Irish, and Scottish accents for various characters in the story. Again, this is in JAPAN!!! It just doesn't sound right.

If this story was set in London, it would be fantastic. Here's the thing: David Mitchell is a very good writer. His descriptive prose is beautiful and the stories he tells branch out into so many areas of literature.The fact that David Mitchell chose to try and write a story about a Japanese man and the Japanese culture, yet ended up with something so very English just doesn't work.

I cannot recommend this book.

Not Mitchell's best.

Not Mitchell's best. Could be half as long to make a coherent and compelling story. Narrator is good with voices.

existential masterwork

Another great existential masterpiece from David Mitchell! Its performed amazingly. Bravo to the narrator. Lennon references are great too.

I just love David Mitchell....

Even though this isn't his best book, I still enjoyed every minute. The narrator's English accent--for Japanese characters--just seemed to fit. David Mitchell gets the words right: he brings his characters to life, paints the scenes where they live, and makes me feel their pain. I have been spacing out his books so that I had the anticipation of the next experience, but I think I'm going to order the last one I haven't read, Slade House, because I want to stay immersed in his world.

great performance for an excellent book

the voice actor did a fantastic job of characterization; I was dreaming about this book for days.

Would have been five stars... but the ending...

I'm not sure it's fair to give this book a four star on the story, if Mitchell had ended the book in some other way then I would have given it five stars easily, but the ending... The good is David Mitchell's writing style, the man can write, I mean good lord can he write. He doesn't waste words, but he spends ideas more freely than any other author I've read. There are several unfinished books hiding in these pages. I believe that is what I admire the most, the details in the background. There are characters in this book that I would like to read an entire novel about. There are worlds hiding in the margins that are passed through, but never fully focused on. The bad... hey I'm a Westerner, I'm gonna want a story tied off at the end. I realize that does not reflect life but stories are made for catharsis, and this one doesn't have that, not with the ending at least, the ending is anti-catharsis.

Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé

Number 9
Number Nine
# 9
# Nine

Another Mitchell book I'm going to have to chew on for a bit to really bend my mental tongue around. At first, I was a little disappointed in it. This is my last Mitchell book left to read (I am now a Mitchell completist) and I was hoping for just a little more PoMo juice to squeeze out of his second novel. Three dreams into it and I was afraid Mitchell was aping Murakami (Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Chase) and Joyce (Finnegans Wake) a bit too much in his persuit of a dreamy father-quest novel.

By the end, however, Mitchell salvaged the novel. It still seemed a little too packaged, too sterile, too neat and measured. Don't get me wrong, I liked it and obviously (I've now read ALL of Mitchell) I like how Mitchell writes, but I'm not sure #9Dream is even close to being top shelf for me of Mitchell's novels.

Great first half, good overall.

Mitchell is a master of the written word. Tremendous talent. The first half of this book is moving, exciting, and creative. The second half slowed down a bit and became challenging, and does not live up to the sentence by sentence creativity bar set by the first half. Of course, all is relative. Mitchell's worst sentence is better than the best of the average writer. He remains one of my all-time favorite authors and I wish I could give five stars. How about 4.5?

Excellent narrator / genius novelist

The narrator here captures the full range of this incandescent novel. Readers of Cloud Atlas and Bone Clocks will find much to love in the author's earlier work. But here the reader makes it come to life even with a long work and a complex plot.

A Lucid Fairytale of Concrete Splinters

Realism taking its toll through visions of imaginative expectations, unseen obligations and the remnants of memories that soak the mind in nostalgic lethargy.