David Mitchell, Ghostwritten
Ghostwritten is a complex non-linear novel made of nine interconnected stories (plus a coda) about nine different characters, located in nine different places in the world. The narration travels westward, starting in Okinawa and ending in New York.
The first narrator, Quasar, is a Japanese terrorist in hiding and prone to paranoia, who has gassed a subway in Tokyo, following the orders of a cult leader known as "his serendipity". The next story is set in Tokyo, it is about a young half-Japanese man working in a shop selling old jazz records and falling in love with a girl from Honk Hong. The third story presents us a day in the life of a Honk Hong financial lawyer who is in the middle of a personal and professional crisis, whereas the fourth, set on the Holy Mountain, covers many years in the existence of a Chinese woman who keeps a Tea Shack and suffers through times of big political changes. In "Mongolia", a spirit is in search of his own origins, and in "Petersburg", a woman who works in a museum organizes art theft with her boyfriend. The narrator from "London" is a ghost writer and a womanizer, who has recently been thinking a lot about chance and fate. In "Clear Island", a scientist escapes her past and the implication of her discoveries, while in "Night Train", a DJ from New York has an annual meeting with a strange caller calling "himself" The Zookeeper…
While apparently unconnected, these nine stories are linked together by many threads that become visible as the story progresses. As we near the end, the whole picture becomes clearer and characters come together (although most of them, main characters of their stories, are only peripheral to the bigger story).
Ghostwritten is about how the flap of a butterfly’s wing can cause an earthquake halfway across the world. We see how events, apparently anodyne in one character’s experience can be life-altering for another. Mitchell raises the question of fate and chance in the "London" story, which is a nice tribute to Paul Auster’s fiction (The narrator’s music band is named after a Auster’s novel), and the whole book is indeed about how we all are a small piece in a bigger puzzle. The last two stories, "Clear Island" and "Night Train" reveal the bigger puzzle, "Night Train" owing a lot to Isaac Asimov’s robot theories. Beside the multiple ways the characters of the different stories are put together by chance (or fate, and I probably missed some of them), some small events are repeated in different stories (the same description of two different streets in two different towns, the same way of mishandling a coffee machine, etc.), adding a bizarre impression of déjà-vu. The characters are all at a turning-point in their lives when the stories begin, in a period of doubt, on shaky foundations (even the Chinese woman whose only possession, a wooden tea shack, is destroyed and rebuilt many times during her lifetime…) Paradoxically, these characters are no more "stable" than the spirit from the "Mongolia" story…
I really enjoyed Ghostwritten, it is a very clever and original novel that reminded me a little of French writer Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual in the sense that both books are written with constraints (Although I would like to know if Mitchell followed any particular rules) but I have four complaints: I liked all the stories which brought a sense of outlandishness but also of familiarity, except the "Petersburg" story, which presented a very two dimensional and unbelievable female character. The story itself read like a bad Hollywood scenario, lacking the originality of the others. Secondly, as I have said in previous reviews, I like clever, intricate books, but I hate the feeling that I would have to reread to get it all. Although I think that I got the big picture, I am sure that I missed some links at some point, and I have some slight problems with the timeline. Also, since we start a new chapter in the consciousness of a new character, we don’t know anything (gender, occupation, etc.) about him or her (or it), and it sometimes takes a couple of pages to get into the stories. I know this is part of the game but starting over nine times with a new character can become a bit tedious. And last (but not least), I wasn’t overly impressed by the quality of the writing itself, but this is subjective…
Still, Ghostwritten deserves a special mention for originality and literary ambition…
Rating: 4/5
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