Number 9 Dream
by David Mitchell
- Used
- Paperback
- Condition
- See description
- ISBN 10
- 0340747978
- ISBN 13
- 9780340747971
- Seller
-
Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Softcover .
🔴 Condition - Good🔴
Australian buyers can combine up to 5Kg of Books for the same postage charge.
🟢 This Book weighs 330 Grams.
🔴 Condition - Good🔴
Australian buyers can combine up to 5Kg of Books for the same postage charge.
🟢 This Book weighs 330 Grams.
Synopsis
number9dream is the second novel by English author David Mitchell. Set in Japan, it narrates the search of 19-year-old Eiji Miyake for his father, whom he never met. Told in the first person by Eiji, it is a coming of age/perception story that breaks convention by juxtaposing Eiji Miyakeâs actual journey toward identity and understanding with his imaginative journey.
Reviews
On Dec 6 2015, CloggieDownunder said:
âDreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk amid the still-areâ
number9dream is the second novel by British author, David Mitchell. Nineteen-year-old Eiji Miyake arrives in Tokyo looking for his father, a man he has never met, a man whose name he does not even know. He has a letter from a lawyer warning him not to try to find his father, so his first move is to stake out the lawyerâs office from a cafĂ© opposite, the Jupiter CafĂ©, where works a girl with the most beautiful neck in the world.
So begins another foray into the world of David Mitchell, one that takes the reader on an interesting (and occasionally, slightly bizarre) journey. As Eiji moves from the café to the Lost Property Office of Ueno station to a game parlour to an unfinished development on reclaimed land to a safe house to a video shop to a pizza shop to a mountain retreat, he also moves in and out of danger and encounters quite a cast of (often quirky) individuals. Claude Debussy and John Lennon play significant roles, as do the Yakuza organised crime syndicate, an overabundance of cigarettes, some seriously weird pizza recipes, a cat, an absent mother and a dead twin sister.
Mitchell manages to seamlessly include the journal of a WW2 Kaiten pilot, scenes from a surreal black and white movie, a fantastic tale starring a stuttering goatwriter, a hen and a Pithecanthropus, an account of sex slavery and organ theft, and, of course, quite a few dreams. The number nine and its elements, unsurprisingly, feature heavily but in quite a subtle way. As with all of Mitchellâs novels, there are characters who appear in earlier and later books.
Mitchellâs characters, for all their oddities, are appealing; their dialogue and Eijiâs inner monologue provide plenty of humour; and they manage to express some insightful observations: âWeird. All these people like my mother paying counsellors and clinics to reattach them to reality; all these people like me paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unrealityâ and âMaybe the truest difference between people is exactly this: how they see why they are hereâ also âMaybe the meaning of life lies in looking for itâ.
The (perhaps) abrupt ending that leaves things very much âup in the airâ may not be to every readerâs taste, but the characters, plot and prose more than compensate, especially the delightful feast of rhyme, alliteration and incredibly clever wordplay of the goatwriter piece. An excellent read.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Pearls Books n Music (AU)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 53767
- Title
- Number 9 Dream
- Author
- David Mitchell
- Format/Binding
- Softcover
- Book Condition
- Used
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0340747978
- ISBN 13
- 9780340747971
- Publisher
- Sceptre
- Place of Publication
- London
- This edition first published
- April 4, 2002
- Keywords
- fiction
Terms of Sale
Pearls Books n Music
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Pearls Books n Music
Biblio member since 2020
Cairns, Queensland
About Pearls Books n Music
Cairns Antiquarian & Secondhand Bookshop.Cds, Records and DVDs too.