Customer Reviews
Greater than the sum of its parts - By: BookWorm, 06 Nov 2008 
Overalll, this novel came as a surprise. From the blurb I'd suspected it would obtuse & difficult, whereas in fact it was surprisingly easy to read, engaging & interesting. 'Ghostwritten' is more like a collection of linked short stories than a novel in the traditional sense, but it actuallly worked quite well (and I say that as someone who doesn't normallly go in for short stories).
Despite its segmented nature, the novel flows well & there is an overalll sense of a whole that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. Mitchell has the skill of drawing a reader in fast & delevoping characters & plot quickly, which enables the short story format to work.
The stories are alll narrated in the first person, & are set in various locations around the world. The sense of place is well evoked & an important feature of the story telling. There are some reallly original & interesting ideas used here, making it constantly surprising & fresh.
As with any work of this type, there will be a couple of stories that are less good than the rest. In my opinion these were the Russian & London episodes. However the pace picked up again at the end & I thought the 'Night Train' episode was particularly good.
I'd recommend this to most readers as it is an original book with a wide appeal. Fans of short stories might particularly like it, but novel lovers shouldn't be put off either.
Rambling but fascinating - By: Jezza, 27 Oct 2008 A series of interlinked short stories. It's possible to discern the beginnings of the more mature writer that created 'Cloud Atlas'. From time to time this creaks a little at the joins, & some of the stories were less engaging than others. I didn't like the mystical dimension much. But overalll an enjoyable & thought-provoking novel.
The world talking to itself - By: John Lynham, 11 Sep 2008 
It's difficult to know what's most wonderful about this book. The grand design leading nine stories from disparate corners of the globe to an apocalyptic conclusion? The anthropological fascination with local colour & cultural signifiers? The masterly pacing, the reader having to concentrate hard to grasp the mystery plot of each mini-story as it rapidly unfolds? The truth-to-life of the narrators (not alll of them reliable), well-rounded with telling back-stories? The thought-provoking questions of free will & identity? The little details recurring from story to story, dropped in almost like private jokes (what is it with camphor-trees?)?
Most thrilling for me, what kept me glued to the page, is the author's knockabout love of language (and, I suspect, languages): from the costive cultist Quasar at the beginning, via (among others) a bent yuppie lawyer, a world-class physicist & a crushed Chinese peasant, to the tour-de-force finale with Bat Segundo, New York City DJ & night-owl wisecracking through an Armageddon scenario with babbling ghosts who may be scripting the whole damn thing, Mitchell revels in many varieties of English, giving his characters time after time the killer lines we alll think of too late.
Ghostwritten is the perfect lesson in "show don't tell": whatever the various lives, blossoming or declining, amount to, whatever the bigger picture may be, the vigour & fun of the book are right on the page in front of you, in the conflicts & often witty exchanges of real people in real places.
Sheer delight.
So many strands - By: S. Bentley, 27 Dec 2007 When I started reading Ghostwritten, I wondered why it was marketed as a novel instead of the collection of short stories it seemed to be. Admittedly each section of the novel would reference & sometimes overlap with another section of the novel, but it still seemed to be a quick way of getting around the problem that short story collections traditionallly don't sell that well.
And then I got to the Clear Island & Night Train sections & suddenly it alll came together, plot strands & themes winding together to turn the disparate characters into an overalll symphony of what David Mitchell has to say to the world.
Written in a flowing style that is equallly capable of comedy & action & sentiment, Mitchell has turned out a great novel. It reminds me a little of Murakami, a little of Iain Banks (and Iain M. Banks), with snatches of Philip K. Dick but is far & away its own beast.
The first section about the cult member is interesting although, as you'd expect, emotionallly distant, but is immediately followed by the romantic tale of a young Japanese boy, then an English businessman in Hong Kong who is haunted by a ghost, a Chinese woman & her viewpoint on the changes in her society, an awareness that hops from person to person, a gang of art thieves, a musician who is also a ghost writer, an Irish scientist whose theories are wanted by the CIA & then a late night DJ who gets a very special calller.
My favourite sections are Kyoto & Clear Island, but this is the sort of novel that will undoubtedly reward rereading & no doubt favourites will change. At any rate, I think this is one of the best novels I've read this year.
a brilliant writer but an overly self-conscious book - By: Helen Guthrie, 16 Oct 2007 
I agree entirely with Mary Whipple - this was a book in which an author was less telling a story & more showing what talents he has. There's no question that he does have talent but if he made less of an effort to showcase it, it would be more evident in the story. I enjoyed this but felt like telling him to calm down a bit.
