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    Number9Dream
    Number9Dream
    Number9Dream
    Audiobook16 hours

    Number9Dream

    Written by David Mitchell

    Narrated by William Rycroft

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the author of Cloud Atlas, now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 5, 2013
    ISBN9781470361075
    Number9Dream

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    Reviews for Number9Dream

    4/5

    882 ratings45 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I'm not sure I understand the ending to this book. I suppose if it is an homage to, or an exercise in Murikami, then you can invoke dream states and cut the thing off anywhere.
    • 3/5
      I want to like this book more, but it just tries too hard to do too many things at once. Underlying the frantic plotting is the story of Eiji Miyake’s quest to find his father and its tentative transformation into the remaking of his relationship with his mother. The novel is also a portrait of modern Japan viewed through multiple cultural filters. This aspect now comes across a bit buzzword bingo (geishas, Haruki Murakami, Studio Ghibli, pachinko…), but there is a generous hat tip to a range of Japanese authors in the Goatwriter section. Then there’s the relentless experimenting with forms of storytelling, including but not limited to yakuza thriller, cyberpunk futurism and anthropomorphic animal fable. Add in an ongoing insistence that this is both just a dream (daydream, nightmare) and just fiction (coincidence! fairytale outcome!) and you end up with a too clumsy to be successful early version of Cloud Atlas. Which just goes to show the delights possible when David Mitchell does gain elegant control of his material.
    • 4/5
      Plays around with the main character's development with interior dialogue getting mixed in together with the actual plot - like the character, the reader can sometimes wonder what is "real." Is this happening or is it only happening in the character's head? This is an illuminating device as employed by Mitchell, and jives with my own predilection for writing that makes us question the nature of reality.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable read. I had to look at the flap again a few times though. Just to make sure i wasn't reading a Murakami novel.
    • 4/5
      Man oh man. This book started a little slow -- it's about the dream world, to an extent, and begins there, which lends it an early hallucinatory tone. Not exactly ideal bedtime reading, especially as it's very slippery for someone to get ahold of as they're listening to you read it in a sort of fever-haze.But once it gets going I had to pinch myself, repeatedly (and metaphorically, don't worry, I'm not a scabby, mottled mess because of this book), and check that this wasn't a Murakami novel.It's a beautifully done, wild romp through Tokyo and its underbelly. It puts David Mitchell's "Slade House, which I enjoyed, in a different light, though. The writing in this book was far more elevated, the story more finely wrought than Mitchell's latest book, and it hits you just how damn *good* he is. He writes the young Eiji Miyake convincingly, and the supernatural-ish rears its head only a little bit later in the book, hitting some familiar Mitchell obsessions that we've all come to know and love.
    • 2/5
      I'm sure Mitchell is an excellent author. I've heard that his following book, Cloud Atlas, is amazing. This book, unfortunately, is nothing but a slavish imitation of Haruki Murakami. It's a competent imitation, to be fair, and it was an entertaining read, but everything from the setting (Tokyo, of course) to the writing style (dreamlike, sort of magical-realism) to the characters (unexceptional, sort of loserish guy who chases after and ends up dating a beautiful and exciting woman) right down to the Beatles/John Lennon references gave me a sense of deja vu. I know none of those things is really damning in its own right, but the overall effect is quite derivative. If you're considering reading it, I'd suggest just picking up an actual Murakami novel instead.
    • 2/5
      sci-fi/fantasy/surrealist mystery. Vivid prose ("A galaxy of cream unribbons in my coffee cup, and the background chatter pulls into focus") from an unreliable narrator who appears to be on some kind of psychoactive drug. I don't know what his deal is, and will likely never know, because his story--however beautifully told--keeps leaping out onto bizarre tangents that always turn out to be mere tangents. I liked Mitchell's Cloud Atlas alright but this was entirely too much work.
    • 3/5
      Flawed but has several flashes of brilliance, particularly near the beginning.
    • 3/5
      I have previously read Mitchell's first and latest books (Ghostwritten and Bone Clocks) and enjoyed them so much that I started going though his other works. Number9dream is his second book. While there are flashes of brilliance, it is not up to the level of the others - I wonder if this was due to pressure on a new writer to deliver a follow-up to Ghostwritten?The opening to this book reminds me of Ghostwritten - great verve and flair, but it is not sustained. While there are well crafted characters, and the beginnings of a theme, the plot is inconsistent, and you get the feeling that the book was started before the author knew where it would end.I'm glad I read it, and a not-so-good Mitchell book is still better than most of the dross out there, but I'm now looking forward to his later, and hopefully better crafted, books.
    • 2/5
      If a writer is too technical, or wishes to show off, it draws attention to the writing instead of the story. That's how number9dream starts. Then, as if to address my concerns it goes to a more conventional narrative. The problem is that neither style is really working for him. I greatly admire him as an author as you can see from my ratings, but this is not for me.
    • 3/5
      I've quite liked some, even most, of Mitchell's other books, but this one I just had a terrible time getting into and it didn't end up working very well for me. I'll have to try it again another time. 
    • 5/5
      Wow. Ein geniales Werk, neben Ghostwritten vielleicht Mitchells bestes. Sehr viel zugänglicher als Ghostwritten, trotz des enormen Umfangs leicht und schnell gelesen.Die Quintessenz: Geschichten. Neben dem eigentlichen Plot, in dem sich Eiji Miyake auf der Suche nach seinem Vater in Tokyo durchschlägt, schweift Mitchell immer wieder ab. Dabei wird es brutal, Thriller-artig, absurd, lustig, philosophisch, traurig, romantisch, von atemlos-furios bis langsam betrachtend. Niemals verliert Mitchell dabei seine eigentliche Geschichte aus den Augen; von seinen Werken, die mehr als eine Geschichte erzählen, ist dieses vielleicht das rundeste.Die Episoden über Goatwriter sind vergnüglich, wirken in ihrer sprachlichen Überzogenheit aber ein wenig deplaziert – der einzige Kritikpunkt.Ansonsten klar eines der besten Bücher, die ich in letzter Zeit gelesen habe. Leider habe ich somit alle bis dato erschienenen Mitchells durch – hoffentlich erscheint bald ein neues Buch aus seiner Feder.Ich habe das Buch auf Englisch gelesen und kann das auch nur jedem empfehlen, der dieser Sprache mächtig ist – bei vielen der ständigen Sprachspielereien kann ich mir nicht vorstellen, dass sie sinnvoll ins Deutsche übertragbar sind.
    • 4/5
      As it says on the cover, David Mitchell's Number9dream was a Man Booker finalist, so you know the quality is there. It is a bizarre tale he tells; I felt like I fell down a Murakami hole into Tokyo Dreamland. Our narrator Eiji Miyake is a 20-year-old Japanese student, newly arrived in Tokyo in search of his never-met father. His persistence in his quest is heroic, as no one, including his father, wants Eiji to find him. We find ourselves in some kind of cyberpunk detective story strewn with Yakuza, while a charming romance slowly and unexpectedly develops. Armchair travelers will love the sensation of being right there in Tokyo's streets with Eiji.Be prepared to feel unmoored, though; sometimes what is happening is only in Eiji's imagination, and connections between scenes can be dreamlike. This is an early Mitchell book (his second, I think), and some sections feel amateurish. The main one for me was the "Goatwriter" material in the latter part of the book, fables that didn't aid the plot and seemed self-indulgent.But Mitchell is so talented, this is still a fun read. Eiji gets to meet John Lennon, who wrote the song "#9dream", and there's even a hint that he has read Murakami. Those who enjoy Mitchell will get a kick out of this forerunner of such great books as Cloud Atlas, Bone Clocks and Slade House.
    • 5/5
      I love you, David Mitchell. To me you're like Haruki Murakami, only better. I definitely saw similarities with this and "Kafka on the Shore", though this one is a lot less mystical. I loved most of the characters, and the stories-within-stories (Mitchell's specialty). The only thing I couldn't grasp was the over-the-top Yakuza violence. I suppose he is trying to jar you, but it's not really clear to me why it's there.
    • 3/5
      Oh man, where do I start with this one? I'm not even sure. Which I think is why it has taken me over a week to write this review. Although not my favorite, this is another great one by Mitchell. Beautiful prose. The overall story is sad, intense, funny. I want to learn more about the significance of the number "9" symbolism throughout the book. It's hard to find discussions on. I think there may have been more symbolism in the book than I even picked up on. But great character development for both the main and side characters. You love or hate them, they make you laugh, smile or root for them.
    • 3/5
      This was my first of Mitchell's book and was somewhat disappointed. Now don't get me wrong, he is a very talented writer- the characters were well formed and complex, the prose is witty and original. What I didn't like about this book was the flitting between odd subplots which seemed irrelevant to the plot.
    • 4/5
      David Mitchell knows how to write. It was a wonderful, refreshing move, giving up on Mieville's overwrought, adjective-heavy language and finding Mitchell's crisp lines.
      The comparisons to Murakami are not without basis. The writing is similar, similarly direct. But Mitchell's voice is almost manic in the frequency with which it changes. We have strange daydreams, actual dreams (equally strange, or more), letters, diary, short fantasy stories. Each chapter offers a different mode in and out of which we find ourselves moving.
      There's not a lot of resolution, but this drives home the novel's main conceit: meaning through search, through doing, meaning as an incompletable series whose progress serves as its own justification.
    • 4/5
      I've given this 3.5 stars, because it started off and finished well, but had a massive slump in the middle. I liked the main character a lot, and was immersed in the whole story apart from the interlude in the middle. At times, I felt like I was in the story with Miyake, the writing was so good. It's a straightforward tale of a boy searching for his unknown father, his experiences in Tokyo after a childhood on an island south of Kyushu, including some grim run ins with the Yakuza, and the friends he makes while he tries to discover who he is, and who his father's family are. Nothing gets properly resolved, but Miyake does move on. The ambiguous ending leaves room for hope. Shame about the weird story within a story in the middle that served no other purpose than amusing the author.
    • 3/5
      I am such a fan of Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten that I had to read the novel he wrote “between.” Sigh! Number 9 Dream just doesn’t measure up to its predecessor nor its successor. Unlike the nested narrative structure of the other two novels, Number 9 Dream unfolds in a fairly linear fashion, albeit with much digression and many parallel fantasies. The core tale is that of a quest (a search for a father only to find a mother) and the coming-of-age of Eiji Miyake, a 20 year old from the sticks who arrives in Tokyo only to fall in love, both fail and succeed in his quest, and along the way become entangled in some nightmarish encounters with the Yakuza (Japanese criminal gangs). At the beginning of the novel, Mitchell segues back and forth between Miyake’s plotting of his meet up with his father and dreamscapes in which he acts out alternate versions of this meet up. I only wish Mitchell had continued in this vein. Instead, for part of the novel, he goes back and forth between Miyake in Tokyo and the tale of Goatwriter (pun on the Ghostwriter from the author’s earlier novel), his housekeeper Mrs. Combs (a hen) and their companion Pithecanthropus (a proto-human). This may be inventive but, in my opinion, it just doesn’t add up. Another large section of the novel involves Miyake’s misadventures while caught in the crosshairs of a gang war among Yakuza crime lords. Mitchell’s inventiveness here veers to the grotesque and brutal, so much so that one has the sense of being trapped in a graphic novel (murder by bowling ball anyone?). Organized crime in Toyko has apparently skipped right past the drug trade to make its profits selling body parts (extracted from very unwilling donors). And so on. Of course, Mitchell is a great writer. My advice: skip this one and go straight to Cloud Atlas.
    • 4/5
      I recently implied that David Mitchell could do no wrong. Without a doubt, he is a tremendously talented author. Then I began reading number9dream and was immediately worried I'd have to eat my words. number9dream starts unlike any other Mitchell book; sure Mitchell has an eclectic style, but there's a certain feel to his books—the idea that regardless of subject or genre, all the stories are somehow tied together. number9dream didn't feel like a part of the Mitchell universe—it felt more like a poor attempt at Murakami minus the cats.What's surprising is that my feeling didn't change as I read: number9dream bears more semblance to a Murakami-hack than to anything Mitchell could've written. It's easily my least favorite of Mitchell's works and likely will always remain such (it brings to mind the term 'sophomore slump'). It doesn't tie into Mitchell's other works the way I love—or at least in no way I saw—and that was disappointing. All that being said, it is still David Mitchell. The writing is superb. In fact, relying less on tricks, number9dream relies more on great writing. The sentences and scenes Mitchell turns out are gorgeous. Sure, all of it feels like a horrible acid trip, but it's a riveting and beautiful acid trip.number9dream lacks the continuity, relevance, and drive that one usually finds in David Mitchell, but hey, it's David Mitchell, and that was enough for me.
    • 4/5
      A book where “Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé” meets “All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream” meets “Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9…”The basic premise is straightforward: a twenty-year-old man comes to Tokyo to find his father, who had an affair with his mother and abandoned her. He doesn’t know his father’s name and has little to go on. He’s also still trying to come to terms with his mother, an alcoholic and loose woman who gave him up to be raised by relatives, and his twin sister, who drowned when they were 11 and he was away at a soccer match. As in the other books I’ve read by Mitchell, the novel has great breadth. I love his humor, word play, ability to write in multiple styles, and to weave stories together. There is philosophy, budding love, action, and sentimentality all in the right dosages. I was unaware of ‘Kaiten’, the manned suicide torpedoes the Japanese used towards the end of WWII, and loved the perspective of the soldiers he offered in one of the chapters. There are daydreams and fantasy as well, and this contributes to the overall dreamy feel of the book. He may go a little overboard with the “9” references and the book is ambitious, but he’s successful, and I enjoyed it all the way through. Loved the ending too.Last point, and a footnote I suppose, for myself: I detected only a couple of references to his other books: “The cloud atlas turns its pages over” (of course a forward reference), and the government top-secret project in Texas from Ghostwritten hiring a hacker here. Quotes:On cruel words:“I think the most powerful poison is the malicious word. Its effects may last a lifetime and there is no serum. Forgiveness may soothe the inflammation later, sure, but there is no actual serum.”On dreams:“Dreams are the shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still-are.”On love, loved the wording, know the feeling:“How drop-dead cool can a girl be and not burn a hole in this dimension?”And this one:“Ai looks at me in a strange way. I see her face as a very old woman, and also as a very little girl. Slow seconds come and go. I have never looked at anyone this long, this close up, in silence, since my who-blinks-last-wins games with Anju. If this were a movie and not McDonald’s we would kiss. I think. Maybe this is more intimate than kissing. Loyalty, grief, good news, bad days.”On the meaning of life:“’Well, I was always curious about the meaning of life.’‘Easy. Eating macadamia ice cream and listening to Debussy.’‘Be serious.’‘Well,’ Ai shifts, ‘your question is wrong.’I imagine her lying here. ‘What should my question be, then?’‘It should be ‘What is my meaning of life.’”On men who have affairs:“Like all weak men, he thought that if he acted confused enough, everyone would forgive him.”On nightmares:“In my homeland, it is said nightmares are our wilder ancestors returning to reclaim land. Land tamed and grazed by our softer, fatter, modern, waking selves … Nightmares are messengers, sent by who, or what, we really are, underneath. ‘Don’t forget where you come from,’ the nightmare tells us, ‘Don’t forget your true self.’”On war:“’What food? We are under siege, if you hadn’t noticed!’‘A siege?’‘They call them ‘sanctions’ these days.’”On writers:“’You know, we are all of us writers, busy writing our own fictions about how the world is, and how it came to be this way. We concoct plots and ascribe motives that may, or may not, coincide with the truth.’ I scowl at the envelope, wondering. ‘Take your mother. You write her part for her. Have you ever wondered how she writes her part?’”Not possible to categorize this one, but loved the description of looking at a couple in a photograph:“He is about to break into laughter at whatever she has just said. She is reading my reaction to see if I genuinely enjoyed her story, or if I am just being polite. Weird. Her face is familiar. Familiar, and impossible to lie to. ‘True,’ she seems to say to me, ‘but see if you can piece the puzzle together yourself.’ We watch each other for a while, then I go back to her garden where the dragonflies live out their whole lives.”
    • 4/5
      This novel has many interesting parts, a simple plot (too simple, as many other reviewers have noted), interesting characters and a great setting (Tokyo). I had heard that some reviewers compared this novel to a Murakami novel, but there really is no comparison. Number9Dream is over-written, if anything, and the magical parts are all attributed to dreams, whereas Murakami's writing is very simple and uses magical realism. If you've never read David Mitchell, I wouldn't start with this novel, but I enjoyed reading it and like it as part of his collection of works. I also heard that Mitchell admitted in an interview that he was showing off with this novel, and I could see that. Mitchell showing off is pretty impressive.
    • 3/5
      A whizzing stylistic joyride. Not quite up to snuff with Mitchell's other stuff, but a fun bright piece of brain candy all the same.
    • 5/5
      If I had not seen David Mitchell’s name on the book jacket, I would have thought that Number 9 Dream was a work by Haruki Murakami. Number 9 Dream has the same surrealistic qualities that mark many of Murakami’s works. Number 9 Dream also foreshadows the style used in Cloud Atlas. In the opening chapter, the main character, Eiji Miyake, goes through three iterations of how he is going to get into an office building to meet someone. While it is not time being played with here, as was the case for Cloud Atlas, it may be jarring to have the scene repeated if you cannot understand the author is playing with different outcomes to the same problem. If you’ve read the two books, you can feel the connection between these works. Towards the end of this book, there is even the phrase “The cloud atlas turns its pages over”, but in this case, cloud atlas is a mundane reference to cigarette smoke and the shapes the smoke makes.If you tackle Number 9 Dream, be prepared for some very graphic scenes and a most imaginative version of the Yakuza. It is not an easy story to get through, but very satisfying, once you are finished. Not as groundbreaking as Cloud Atlas, it is still gripping enough to rate four and a half stars. A must read for lovers of surreal fiction and psychological explorations.
    • 3/5
      I had been looking forward to reading Booker Prize-contender David Mitchell after hearing so many good things and enjoying interviews with him. But I was disappointed in this book, which I found unnecessarily complicated and fragmented. I appreciated most the story of the young hero in his search for his father, but found the forays into his adventures with the Yakuza, his dreams, his grandfather's diary and above all the fables of a woman writer whose apartment he inhabits both distracting and often boring. I'll take a break for a while before I try him again. What was interesting was the portrayal of Tokyo and the difficulties of living there. I would like to learn more about that and would be interested in other fiction set there.What's really strange is that I have read several books by English authors recently set in Asia - I wonder why?
    • 4/5
      This is the tale of Eiji Miyake who wants to find his father. He travels to Tokyo from his village to do so.Its not a straight out quest though. He encounters the Yakuza along the way. Dream sequences and Video games abound. There are death sequences so horrific that the line between the surreal and real begins to blur. David Mitchell is a pure storyteller. He creates suspense and keeps you reading. This is especially true when he goes into flashback mode. His ramblings are even better and he probably knows Japan as well as anyone with its unpredictable earthquakes and confined spaces along with the food.There were a ton of John Lennon references that I didn't care for but that is a small gripe in an otherwise outstanding novel. Cloud Atlas is probably the probably the first book you should pick by David Mitchell though.
    • 4/5
      Actually I'm kind of speechless right now. I don't know where to begin. Errr...This is a story of a young man, Eiji Miyake, who comes to Tokyo to find his father. That's the 'meaning of his life'. Being an orphan since early childhood, he wants more than anything to meet the father he has never met, and nothing to do with the mother who abandoned him and his twin sister. And so there he is in Tokyo, encountering a lot of exciting/frightening situations I never could imagine. This is my first David Mitchell book, and it's definitely not last. I like his style of writing. It kind of steers you exactly in the direction of feelings it wants you to feel. I like Miyake's crazy dreams. I like the characters. I like how Miyake nicknames people he meets by their appearance (it's funny). And I also like how he's just a normal guy but somehow is magnetic to troubles. It's like troubles never leave him and his quest alone. He always gets pulled in this direction and that. However, I think the book is longer than it needs to be. I don't understand the purpose of putting the Goatwriter story in it, and also the journal entries of his great uncle. I don't think it has anything to do with the plot. And the meeting with his father is a little disappointing to me. But I'm glad he gets to meet him, his grandfather and mother too. I'm not sure if I liked the ending. And there are still some questions that are left unanswered. After I read about 40 pages, I felt like I was reading Murakami. Mitchell's writing style and storyline reminded me of Murakami for some reasons. As I read on till the last chapter I got to know where the name "number9dream" comes from, it's John Lennon's. Then I thought about how Murakami named his novel after a Beatles song, Norwegian Wood. I don't know why I put that in the review, but never mind. This book is awesome.
    • 4/5
      As others have mentioned, this book is my least favorite of his 5 novels. I feel his last 2 are his strongest. That being said, there is no doubting his talent and for that alone this book is worth it. It is not for everyone, but there is no denying Mitchell's creativity. I felt that his should have stuck more closely to the core story and skipped his digressions into dream sequences. I appreciate the creativity but they did not help the book. I hope his future efforts are more in line with his last 2 books. I am glad that I have now read his entire output. He is truly an outstanding author.
    • 4/5
      Readable as ever, though less compelling than Mitchell's other works and littered with ambiguity and lacking resolution. I found the interplay between dream sequences and real-world narrative irritating at first, and though the differences become more obvious as the tale unfolds, the line between fantasy and reality is decidedly blurry. That said, it's an unashamed tribute to Murakami (there's even a reference to the relationship between the songs Norwegian Wood and #9dream), allusive magical realism being one of his trademarks. Mitchell has nailed Murakami's style. I just wish he'd included more of his own.
    • 2/5
      I was surprised to find that I struggled with this book, because I had devoured rapaciously everything else that I have come across by David Mitchell.The idea seemed very clever but perhaps just overworked and, rather than becoming increasing absorbed in the story, I found my interest waning with every new page