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An apocalyptic cult member carries out a gas attack on a rush-hour metro, but what connects him to a jazz buff in Tokyo? A woman on a holy mountain talks to a tree - and the tree talks back - unaware of the effect the financial irregularities of a burnt-out lawyer will have on her life. Add to this - a Mongolian gangster, a redundant English spy in Petersburg with a knack for forging masterpieces, a despondent 'zookeeper', a nuclear scientist, a ghostwriter, a ghost, and a late night New York DJ whose hard-boiled scepticism has been his undoing. All of them have tales to tell, and all must play their part as they are caught up in the inescapable forces of cause and effect.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0340739754
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sceptre; 2nd edition (January 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780340739754
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340739754
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 1.26 x 7.72 inches
Reviewer: Robert Hamberger
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Brilliant, challenging
Review: David Mitchell’s first novel is a tour de force of storytelling, a reimagining of the themes from The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a complex puzzle, and a necessary precursor to his other books, including but not exclusively the great Cloud Atlas. It requires more than one reading to really understand, and it requires a reading of all of Mitchell’s books to truly appreciate (his works, which span centuries, genres and continents, contain repeated characters, themes and images which amplify and explain each other). If you have the time and patience to work your way through all of it, the rewards are great. But even if you don’t, the chapters in this book still work as absorbing, original short stories. The subject is chance vs fate, moral choices, and the ways in which tiny actions have enormous repercussions, in a way that the characters themselves never see but that we are treated to from a higher perch. A worthy heir to Calvino and Vonnegut, Mitchell will leave you with many questions and some answers. As one character cries sadly as her story ends: “this didn’t happen. None of this really happened.” Whether you think she is speaking literally in our universe or in abject denial in hers will help you understand a reader’s relationship to fictional characters. Love it or hate it, there isn’t really a more ambitious writer alive today.

Reviewer: C. E. Stevens
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: An intelligent, innovative, but somewhat uneven journey
Review: I've read all of Mitchell's novels except for number9dream, so it is a little strange to review this author's debut novel from the perspective of one who has already read his later (and unarguably better) works. As a debut novel, this is an incredible work and one that foreshadows many of the motifs, locales, and stylistic quirks that make Mitchell one of my favorite living authors. At the same time, Mitchell's immaturity comes through both in terms of style and substance throughout the book. The way Mitchell links the stories is more awkward and often less thematically-related than the way he is able to do in works such as Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks, his style is more derivative at times (the first two stories and the last felt like Mitchell was "ghostwriting" for Murakami Haruki, right down to the young man with the twin obsessions of jazz and enigmatic women, and the concern with the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway), the characters are less well developed (and occasionally veer into the annoying--I'd rather face the end of the world in silence than listen to another word from Bat Segundo, quite frankly), and the story is much more reliant on dialogue to move the plot forward compared to his later, richer prose style.That said, there are many things to like as well. Some stories were particularly gripping--in general, I found the stories through "Mongolia" to be especially engaging and diverse--as Mitchell touches on a number of themes he'll explore in greater depth in his later works: the predilection of man for self-destruction, issues of free will vs. fate, the excesses of capitalism, the transmutability (for lack of a better word) of the soul, etc., and, of course there are cameos from characters who appear in his other works.So, in the end, for someone who is new to Mitchell this book likely will be an exciting revelation. If you've read some of his other works, you might end up slightly disappointed compared to works such as Cloud Atlas, which I'd consider to be his masterpiece. I'll have to get around to number9dream, and then I'll just have to wait for whenever Mitchell comes out with a new story. But, overall, this is a good book and I'm glad I had the chance to read where it all begins for this talented author.

Reviewer: Nik
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A must for any David Mitchell fan
Review: I pulled a copy of Ghostwritten off a shelf one rainy day in 1999 while I was wandering around a Barnes and Noble, waiting for a friend. I was engrossed in the story from the very first line. Now it seems like fate, which is thematically appropriate for a novel like Ghostwritten.If you're not familiar with David Mitchell, or if you're only familiar with his more well-known books like Cloud Atlas, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Ghostwritten. Not only does it feature some of Mitchell's most beautiful writing, but it's criminally underrated in the Mitchell oeuvre. Maybe that's because it's his first novel, maybe it's because he was an unknown in 1999, but whatever the reason, this book should not be slept on. For me, it was the start of becoming a lifelong fan, and two decades later some of the novel's phrases and descriptive language still rattle around my head. (Although I've re-read it several times over these past 17 years.)Like most Mitchell novels, Ghostwritten isn't easy to summarize. Like Cloud Atlas, there's a theme of connectedness, but that's just one among many themes underpinning the narrative. What I can say is that it's a lot of fun and it's a joy to read.Mitchell fans will also recognize many names here, including Neal Brose, Jason Taylor's opportunistic classmate from Black Swan Green; Subhataar, the ruthless Mongolian KGB/Yakuza enforcer who makes an appearance in number9dream; Luisa Rey, the Spyglass Magazine journalist who plays a pivotal role in Cloud Atlas; Dwight Silverwind, who pops up in the Ed Brubeck chapter of The Bone Clocks; and even a sort of proto-atemporal, a "noncorpum" who reincarnates in a way similar to Marinus, hero of The Bone Clocks and Slade House. There are others, but I don't want to spoil anything, and besides -- half the fun is spotting them for yourself!

Reviewer: Steven James
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I wanted to like this book a lot, but I am really conflicted. This is the first David Mitchell book I have managed to my teeth into, so perhaps this author is just not for me. All I can say is that there are so many interesting ideas explored here, many of a philosophical nature - questioning the beauty and chaos of humanity. 70% of the novel was a breeze, but because this is more like a collection of short stories, than I linear narrative, I still found about 30% was a real slog. I did almost give up near the end, but am glad I ploughed through. I struggled to connect all the dots in the end, but felt satisfied enough. The authors knack for creating extremely textured and engrossing worlds and characters that also seem very familiar, is astonishing. At least two chapters would make great movies, I am sure. I am a little hesitant at what to read next by Mitchell, but, I think I can overlook those few moments where I really struggled to get through the pages.

Reviewer: Natimi Black-Heaven
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Amazing book from David Mitchell. With thirty pages left to read, I have ordered the second in the sequence, Number 9 Dream! I can't wait to read it.

Reviewer: Ricardo Janousek
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: ‘Ah, Jerry . All my ideas are the same old scam : the bigger the fib, the bigger they bite. The first shamans around the fire were in on it – they knew growing maize along the Euphrates was for mugs. Tell people that reality is exactly what it appears to be, they’ll nail you to a lump of wood. But tell ’em they can go spirit-walking while they commute, tell ’em their best friend is a lump of crystal, tell ’em the government has been negotiating with little green men for the last fifty years, then every Joe Six-Pack from Brooklyn to Peoria sits up and listens. Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a licence to print your own."Tão verdadeira a última sentença. E por muito pouco ela poderia ser uma descrição de Ghostwritten - um livro de história desconexa, débeis ligações entre os capítulos e uma "mensagem" qualquer perdida no meio da bagunça, da tentativa de criar uma realidade fantástica, porém bocó. Todavia, Ghostwritten foi escrito por Mitchell, e nele podemos confiar.Assim como fez anos depois em Atlas de nuvens, o autor fugiu à facilidade de simplesmente contar algumas histórias e tecer uma ligaçãozinha trôpega entre elas, só como uma brincadeira, só para que, ao final da leitura, seus contos ganhassem uma dimensão maior na mente do leitor por causa destas coincidências. Mitchell enveredou por um caminho que eu admiro: assumiu os riscos de criar uma trama central, nuclear, da qual todas as histórias e personagens - por mais estranhos e fechados em seu mundo que pareçam - fazem parte, ajudando a contá-la e explicitá-la. Daí a impressão final do leitor ter base para realmente ser espantosa.Mais do que isto, é preciso coragem para escrever algo do tipo da dimensão "etérea" da trama central - também presente em Cloud Atlas - e querer ser levado a sério. De qualquer maneira, aqui, no caso, é sucesso.Para quem leu Cloud Atlas antes de Ghostwritten, fica patente que o segundo é um treino para o primeiro. Um treino válido, mas, claro, bem mais pobre que o Magnum opus. Comparando-o com C.Atlas, Ghostwritten é um livro de personagens menos interessantes (com exceção à aparição de Tim Cavendish e Luisa Rey!), linguagem menos elaborada, conexões mais forçadas, estrutura menos bem pensada (a idéia "musical" da história poderia dar pano pra manga, mas é esquecida de maneira súbita, por exemplo). Tomado individualmente, Ghost é muito bom, divertido, diferente, interessante.É um livro que quebra preceitos da realidade para prender a atenção e focar no que importa, e faz isto com destreza. A "outra" realidade que cria é - parabéns ao autor - fantástica, porém com os pés no chão. "Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a licence to print your own" - de fato, e criar uma nova tão diferente, mas ainda crível, é para os fortes de caneta.

Reviewer: IAN ANDREW PORTER
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I have only just come to Mitchell’s first novel, and what an extraordinary tour de force: the gorgeous writing, the variety, the linkages and the frenetic last but one chapter before the tragic coda .... awesome

Reviewer: Marco
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: He leído ya varios libros de David Mitchell y ahora me ha tocado este. Varias historias que se relacionan entre sí, algunas mejores que otras. Recomendable para entender el punto de partida de este escritor.