Number 9 Dream: David Mitchell

[poliphilo]

Cloud Atlas is six books in one; Number Nine Dream is nine.  The more styles you write in and the more genres you encompass, the more chance you have of capturing reality- or so the thinking seems to go.  In Cloud Atlas Mitchell hits upon a formal structure strong enough to contain and discipline his creative antsyness, his yearning after omniscience, his need to do the police in different voices.  Here- one book earlier- he doesn't. Not quite. 

Comments

[trixibelle-net.livejournal.com]

Completely agree! I really didn't get on with Number 9 Dream. Although my fiancé loved it - he is a Japanophile the same as Mitchell and thinks that Numer 9 Dream is Mitchell's homage to Haruki Murakami (whom both fiance and Mitchell love. Have you read anything by him? He is too surreal for me and indeed N9D is very similar to his style).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like Murakami. Yes, the influence is clear, but Murakami is slow and strange where Mitchell is feverish.