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    Ghostwritten
    Ghostwritten
    Ghostwritten
    Audiobook15 hours

    Ghostwritten

    Written by David Mitchell

    Narrated by William Rycroft

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    David Mitchell's electrifying debut novel takes readers on a mesmerizing trek across a world of human experience through a series of ingeniously linked narratives. Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters-a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland, and a radio deejay in New York-hurtle toward a shared destiny of astonishing impact. Like the book's one non-human narrator, Mitchell latches onto his host characters and invades their lives with parasitic precision, making Ghostwritten a sprawling and brilliant literary relief map of the modern world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 26, 2013
    ISBN9781470361105
    Ghostwritten

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    Reviews for Ghostwritten

    4/5

    1,203 ratings61 reviews

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    • 5/5
      4.5 stars is probably closer, but I'll bump it up to five for its nonstop narrative inventiveness.
      How could this book have been around for 10 years without me having heard about it? Unbelievably imaginative and original first novel. The central Mongolia section is a tour de force, and all the other sections have compelling moments and serve their purpose in weaving the many threads of the story together. The Clear Island section, with its somewhat cartoonish spectre of US military espionage hijinks, verges the closest on genre stereotypes, but the novel finishes strong, and I look forward to rereading it in a few years after I've caught up with Mitchell's more recent works.
    • 4/5
      Sometimes a debut novel, especially when it is as astonishing and experimental as this, is the best work an author ever produces. In my opinion this might yet be true of David Mitchell. I prefer Ghostwritten to Cloud Atlas and I've shied away from numberninedream. I love the disparate voices and styles of these loosely tied together chapters, especially Night Train and the episode in Mongolia. It's a pleasure to be led and I do think that these pieces hang together to form a coherent and satisfying novel. Does this book grant us permission to call Dubliners, Joyce's jewelled collection of short stories, a novel?
    • 4/5
      My favorite of Mitchell's books because I felt as though I could actually relate to some of his characters (though they are bizarre at times). I also like the fact that all the characters/events are related to each other in some way. This is Mitchell's first book, and his other ones (especially _Number 9 Dream_ and _Cloud Atlas_) employ similar plot devices, and share similar themes.
    • 3/5
      This is David Mitchell’s 1st book, but I read it after 5 later ones. Ghostwritten has all the sparkle, talent and complexity of his later masterpieces, but I found it frustratingly hard to tie the many strands together. Especially, in the second half and the denouement. His writing doesn’t take the reader for granted, but demands our careful attention. Perhaps it’s just a characteristic of his craft not yet fully formed. Or maybe this is one book I need to read more than once.
    • 3/5
      Loved the first 2/3rds of this book (read in almost one day) --- then it develoed into this weird dystopian thing and I wasn't sure what was what.The individual stories of people from different parts of the world were interesting and fascinating how the author managed to somehow link them together. The writing is clear, readable, and interesting.However, I just got lost in the final chapters. Mitchell is no doubt a good writer, but some of it is just not my cup of tea.
    • 3/5
      Obviously a very enjoyable read but did it add up to more than a series of impersonations? And what was the penultimate chapter about? A very annoying and repetitive transcript of an unconvincing radio show.
    • 4/5
      Not sure how I had missed David Mitchell's debut novel, but here we are. I'm glad I finally have read it now, for sure. Catching the allusions to his later works was great fun (though I'm sure I missed a bunch).
    • 4/5
      A little on the confusing side but still a great read. It's amazing to me that David Mitchell was so assured in his style even in his first novel. My favorite part was probably the sections narrated by an "entity" -- I thought that was creative and clever. I took off a star because I personally found the end confusing, but now that I think of it maybe it was a kind of Y2K reference that I'm a little too young to get. Definitely recommended though!
    • 4/5
      Love David Mitchell. This is no exception: what a truly magnificent storyteller he is. Such craft and finesse, beautiful characters and evocative settings. I saw a lot of similarities between 'Ghostwritten' and his later works, including some recurring characters whom Mitchell weaves in and out of his narratives from book to book. I loved 'Ghostwritten' and as a debut novel, I'm struggling to recall a more profound and satisfying first impression. So, three and a half stars? I was racing through the book, loving the way each story was threaded to the others. Alas, I found the 'Night Train' story a bit anticlimactic and way too dystopian for my sensitive palate. Unfortunately (for me) I see so much truth and possibility in the stark future Mitchell describes. I'd emphasize that this is merely one man's opinion, and it hardly detracted from a terrific read. Mitchell is by some distance the most creative force in global contemporary fiction, and I'd recommend any of his works to new readers. My life is enriched by these books....thank you, David.
    • 4/5
      The novel is true to its sub-title. The first eight parts are all narrated in the first person from the respective viewpoints of a brain-washed cult member, perpetrator of a gas attack in a Japanese subway (in thrall to His Serendipity); a young half-Korean worker in a Tokyo shop selling jazz records; a compromised English banker in Hong Kong; a woman whose misfortune it was to live in China through most of the Twentieth Century; a mind-dwelling entity who can transmigrate from person to person by touch; a gallery attendant in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, who is an agent of an art-stealing syndicate; a London-dwelling, womanising ghostwriter; a female Irish physicist with the key to making atomic weapons worthless; and to round off we have transcripts from the broadcasts of Night Train FM, 97.8 ‘til late. The last two are awfully familiar but I can’t put my finger on from where (beyond the section set in Ireland in the same author’s The Bone Clocks.) At first the connections between the parts seem tenuous, that between one and two is a misplaced phone call, between two and three seems to be a reference to the couple embarking on a love affair in part two, but gradually, the more sections come into play, the more resonances between them build up. Still, the Queen Anne chair mentioned in Hong Kong and a biography of His Serendipity seem lobbed into the London section when they arrive, gratuitous intrusions; the Music of Chance is the name of the ghostwriter’s band but also occurs as a phrase in a later section. Each part, though, is wonderfully written, suspending disbelief is never difficult - except in the case of the transmigrating mind entity, an interpolation of the fantastic which seems at odds with the realistic tone of the other parts. But then we find the fulcrum on which the novel comes to turn is a process called quantum cognition. This is not merely smuggling quantum physics into the literary landscape but making it the book’s focus - a piece of bravery (or potential folly) in a first novel which almost makes the previous mind-hopping seem mundane. “Evolution and history are the bagatelle of particle waves,” is not the sort of comparison common in literary texts. Asides like, “For a moment I had an odd sensation of being in a story that someone was writing,” or “I added ‘writers’ to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up,” is perhaps over-egging the pudding, however. “Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous,” is a pessimistic view of humanity. The last bit is always worth repeating, though. The pessimism is carried on by phrases like, “‘Loving somebody’ means ‘wanting something’. Love makes people do selfish, moronic, cruel and inhumane things,” but “‘womanisers are victims – unable to communicate with women any other way. They either never knew their mother or never had a good relationship with her,’” is more compassionate. The killer line follows as the womaniser is told, ‘I don’t quite know what you want from us. But it’s something to do with approval.’”At one point one of the narrators says, “Italians give their cities sexes.... London’s middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.” I suspect all cities are secretly gay. “The USA is even crazier than the rest of humanity,” is either a prescient thesis or one now in the process of hard testing.Ghosts, of memories and of sentience, begin to permeate the book. “Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present,” while, “The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting..... We all think we’re in control of our own lives, but really they’re pre-ghostwritten by forces around us,” which leads to, “The real drag about being a ghostwriter is you never get to write anything beautiful.” Pessimism again.But, “Technology is repeatable miracles.” That is the age in which we live.I read in a recent(ish) review (of Slade House?) the opinion that Ghostwritten is still the best Mitchell has done. Not for me, of the ones I have read that would be The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet but in Ghostwritten I found the intrusion of the fantastical elements took away from the whole. Perhaps if they had been fully present from the start - part one is in the viewpoint of a delusion sufferer, true, but it is only the later parts which suggest it may not be a delusion - I would have felt differently, but I suppose in that case Mitchell might not have found a publisher. It’s brilliantly written and the characterisation is superb, but paradoxically, I thought Ghostwritten came to something less than the sum of its parts.
    • 4/5
      Ehhhh ... this is a complicated novel, not an easy read, nine different stories you have to get in to, which takes quite an effort. And it is not a fast read, making that you lose track of the connections between the stories, so a reread is necessary. Not the perfect novel then, but very well written and intriguing. Poetic, moving at times, hilarious, exciting, a symphony of styles.
    • 5/5
      Ein mehr als nur gutes Buch. Mein erster Mitchell, aber es werden sicher mehr werden. Jedes Kapitel ist eine eigene Geschichte, die über Kleinigkeiten mit anderen Kapiteln verbunden ist. Ich hätte mir öfter gewünscht, dass ich das Buch schneller gelesen und dadurch frischere Erinnerungen an die vorhergehenden Kapitel gehabt hätte – ich bin mir sicher, dass ich viele kleine, subtile Verbindungen der Geschichten übersehen habe, die mir zusätzlich Freude bereitet hätten, wenn ich sie gefunden hätte. Pulp Fiction, nur viel tiefgehender und abgefahrener. Beeindruckend sind die Stilwechsel. Jedes Kapitel hat seine ganz eigene Stimmung, mal wie im Kino, ideal verfilmbar, mal mit viel innerem Monolog und philosophischer Betrachtung, unmöglich sinnvoll auf die Leinwand zu bringen. Alle Ich-Erzähler sind in ihrer Psychologie sehr überzeugend, ähnlich gut wie bei Andrea de Carlo, dem Meister dieses Fachs unter den Autoren, die ich bisher gelesen habe. Die spirituellen, philosophischen und technischen Themen im Buch werden faszinierend und fehlerfrei beleuchtet. Besonders beeindruckend ist, wie der Autor schon vor der Jahrtausendwende die technischen Inhalte der vorletzten beiden Kapitel so darstellen konnte, dass das Buch wirkt, als sei es erst vor wenigen Jahren geschrieben worden. Nur winzige Details haben sich ein wenig anders entwickelt. Hut ab! In manchen Kapiteln sind kleine Längen zu verzeichnen, aber nie so störend, dass man das Buch weglegen möchte. Deshalb ein halber Punkt Abzug für ein ansonsten grandioses Buch.
    • 3/5
      I had very high expectations for this book. The advertised concept of having stories told in different voices culminating in a common ending sounded really intriguing.
      Essentially the book is told in turn by 9 protagonists whose stories are linked together very subtly - sometimes so subtly that one might even miss the links if reading quickly. The voices differ to some extend but not as much as I expected. I kept waiting for the common conclusion to these stories, but except for the global events mentioned in the last story there was really nothing of the sort.
      The reader is left with these nine stories that raise some interesting philosophical points - some I really liked, some I did not really care for - and a confusing concluding chapter that really does nothing for the story arch. All in all a nice enough read, but I did feel rather disappointed due to the too high expectations.
    • 3/5
      Wow! Dazzling storytelling in a wonderfully creative first novel.Read April 2005
    • 5/5
      Having read this before the deservedly praised Cloud Atlas was published, this outstanding debut is still possibly my favourite David Mitchell novel. It shares the loosely linked story structure, and in some cases the linkage is very loose, but all of the sections are fascinatingly different. Having said which, it is now quite a long time since I read it so I don't know how well some of the more topical sections have dated.
    • 5/5
      The story begins in Okinawa with Quasar, a member of a doomsday cult, who has released a nerve agent in a subway in Tokyo and is now attempting to keep from being captured. He’s following orders from His Serendipity, a man who professes the abilities of teleportation amongst others. The doomsday in question is a comet that will be colliding with Earth in a few months. It will be up to Quasar and the other enlightened ones to rebuild society.From there we move to Tokyo and a young jazz enthusiast experiencing his first love, then to Hong Kong where a financial lawyer’s illegal activities are catching up with him, then to Holy Mountain in China, Mongolia, St Petersburg, London, Cape Clear Island (Ireland), Night Train (a radio show based in NYC) and finally the Underground.Each section appears to be unrelated to the others, but characters from sections before makes an appearance in the current section until we get a clear view of the plot and the fate of characters from other parts. His characters often make terrible choices, but those choices make sense in their minds and to us, being there with them.Ghostwritten is David Mitchell’s debut novel and it’s impressive in its beauty and complexity but also simplicity. Each section/character is completely believable, even when that character isn’t an actual person. The characters are the stars, to my mind, the plot is interesting and I did want to know what was going to happen, but what person Mitchell was going to introduce next and how utterly real they were going to be was what I was most intrigued by. How was he going to blow my mind next?I’ve read his Black Swan Green and 1,000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, both of which are completely different from this one and one another. The only thing all three have in common are a deftness with the English language readers don’t see every day, unpredictable plots and fully-formed characters. If I’d read the three books without knowing the author I wouldn’t have guessed they were written by the same person, which isn’t something you can say about many authors–that depth of imagination and versatility is rare.
    • 4/5
      I started this book a couple of years ago, read 30 pages, and stopped. I couldn't get into it. I restarted it last night and couldn't put it down. I don't know what has changed or how I've changed in the last few years but I am loving this book.
    • 5/5
      This is a better book than ‘Cloud Atlas’ for me. The quite complex stories interweave into each other and it takes you from the mundane through Eastern religion and morality to Science Fiction, bordering on the bigger questions humanity has to face in the very near future. This is a brilliant intriguing and massively entertaining read. If you have never read a Mitchell before, bypass ‘Cloud Atlas’ and go straight to this, if you pass enlightenment, do collect £200.An absolute gem of a book, get it read now. The Writing IMP.
    • 4/5
      I’ve become quite a fan of Mitchell’s. I loved Cloud Atlas and now much appreciate Ghostwritten, his first novel. Both novels employ the device of linked narratives very effectively. While CA progresses and then regresses through large swaths of time, the various narratives that make up Ghostwritten are roughly contemporaneous beginning at the time of the gas attacks in the Tokyo subways in 1995 and tracking into an apocalyptic proximate future. As for location in space, the action moves from Okinawa to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Holy Mountain (a ferry ride away from Hong Kong) to Mongolia to Petersburg to London to Clear Island (off the coast of Cork, Ireland) to Night Train (late night radio music oldies & talk show in New York City) back to the Underground (Tokyo? London? New York?). Mitchell must get around, because each location feels “right” and all characters read “true.” Intriguingly, at least two minor characters in Ghostwritten reappear to inhabit their own narratives in Cloud Atlas: Timothy Cavendish and Luisa Rey. Even more intriguingly, they appear in Ghostwritten before having been written in, so to speak. I mean that Ghostwritten places them in a time after the events in which they are involved in Cloud Atlas have happened. In this case, after precedes before, a notion that would be quite at home in any David Mitchell novel.
    • 5/5
      What a crazy, crazy book. Mitchell is absurdly inventive in weaving together so many disparate stories into one (generally) fluid novel. The storyboard for this thing must've looked like something Russell Crowe put together in A Beautiful Mind. This book is not easy to read because 1) it's very complexly written, 2) it has a non-linear plot, 3) the same characters keep popping up over and over but sometimes you'll just meet them in passing so it's a bit hard to keep everything straight, and 4) it's fairly heavy/depressing. That being said, I would absolutely recommend it. And I imagine it'll make an excellent re-read later on.
    • 5/5
      This is a better book than ‘Cloud Atlas’ for me. The quite complex stories interweave into each other and it takes you from the mundane through Eastern religion and morality to Science Fiction, bordering on the bigger questions humanity has to face in the very near future. This is a brilliant intriguing and massively entertaining read. If you have never read a Mitchell before, bypass ‘Cloud Atlas’ and go straight to this, if you pass enlightenment, do collect £200.An absolute gem of a book, get it read now. The Writing IMP.
    • 5/5
      It’s hard to know how to begin a review for a book of such scope; Mitchell kind of takes my breath away. His first novel works on many levels: as short stories with a breadth of voices and story lines, interesting in their own right, the recurring links between the stories, and the touches of the supernatural, philosophy, and science fiction that are present. It’s a clever, thought-provoking read. Part of the fun is to recognize not just the obvious connections, but also small phrases or actions that are repeated sometimes hundreds of pages later. It’s also fun to make a playlist of the jazz songs referred to in ‘Tokyo’, and the eclectic mix of songs referred to in ‘Night Train’.But I digress. If you like Cloud Atlas, you’ll probably like this one. The style and the fact that Timothy Cavendish, Luisa Rey, and comets appear here invite comparison to that masterpiece; if I had to relate them, I would say that Cloud Atlas is an ellipse of stories from past to present to future with a greater range of styles and with more dimensions; Ghostwritten is an intersecting ellipse, perpendicular to it, and beautiful in its own right.Quotes:On being captivated by someone at first sight; love this description:“She was so real, the others were cardboard cutouts beside her. Real things had happened to her to make her how she was, and I wanted to know them, and read them, like a book. It was the strangest feeling. I just kept thinking – well, I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’m not sure if I was thinking of anything.”On that fleeting moment of beauty:“The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, it turns ever more perfect. And when it’s perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the ground it gets all mushed up. So it’s only absolutely perfect when it’s falling through the air, this way and that, for the briefest time…I think that only we Japanese can really understand that, don’t you?”On intervening, the dilemma between letting evil take place and taking action:“The fourth rule says I have to preserve visitors’ lives. If I directly PinSat the convoy I will kill forty visitors plus two Doberman dogs. This will constitute a Class 1 violation. I will experience extreme pain and guilt. Furthermore, a PinSat crater may convince alert militia that the locals are concealing superior weaponry, justifying reprisals and bloodshed. If I do not PinSat the soldiers’ truck, they will massacre another village. My inaction will cause this action. A Class 2 violation.”On London:“Italians give their cities sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London’s middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.”On love, the debate between romantic and cynic:“’But love’s the opposite of self-interest. True, tender love is pure and selfless.’‘No. True, tender love is self-interest so sinewy that it only looks selfless.’‘I’ve known love – I know love – and it is giving and not taking. We’re not just animals.’‘We’re only animals…’ … ‘Why does he love you, and why do you love him back?’I shook my head. ‘We’re talking about love. There is no ‘why.’ That’s the point.’‘There is always a ‘why,’ because there is always something that the beloved wants. It might be that he protects you. It might be that he makes you feel special. It might be that he is a way out, a route to some shiny future away from the dreary now. … Love is a big knot of ‘why’s.’‘What’s wrong with that?’‘I’m not saying anything’s wrong with it. History is made of people’s desires. But that’s why I smile when people get sentimental about this mysterious force of pure ‘love’ which they think they are steering. ‘Loving somebody’ means ‘wanting something.’ Love makes people do selfish, moronic, cruel, and inhumane things.’”On terrorist organizations:“Graduates from the school of the Americas in the state of Georgia have trained death squads responsible for thousands of casualties in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, and Pan Africa, and the overthrow of elected governments in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, and Nicaragua. Your logic dictates that these nations may legally target that institute.”On truth:“Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.”
    • 5/5
      This is a hard book to rate because, let's be honest, it's David Mitchell: that's an automatic 5-star rating there. But knowing that it's David Mitchell, I find this book a little lacking. It's his first novel; it's not perfect. Despite its imperfections, however, it still destroys most of its competition. I certainly couldn't have written it. So it deserves all five stars.If you've read only one Mitchell novel, it's likely you've read his third, Cloud Atlas. Ghostwritten is Cloud Atlas, Junior. It is Cloud Atlas taking its first steps, burying its face in a birthday cake, making it through its first day of school, playing at the park, kissing the neighbor girl, surviving its first day in junior high, learning to drive, and attending prom with the girl with a comet-shaped birthmark. Cloud Atlas is everything Ghostwritten hoped to become. But it was Mitchell's first and, as such, he tried to cram a lot in here. Maybe that's just David Mitchell—he does try to fit much into all of his stories—but here it feels a bit forced at times. It’s all about interconnectedness, but sometime the connections are a little too flimsy. Sometimes the style Mitchell employs to tell his story is strained. Sometimes the narrative voice is a little too shaky. And once—dare I even say it—Mitchell switches verb tense for an entire section for no reason. It’s almost like he just… made a mistake.But putting all that behind us, Ghostwritten is a brilliant novel. It’s intelligent, thought-provoking, and fun. Though not as grand as Cloud Atlas, it utilizes the same variety in place, method, and voice. And best of all, it connects us to Mitchell’s other works—the Cavendishes, Luisa Rey, Neal Brose, and a certain birthmark all make an appearance. It’s an ambitious work from a very ambitious author. Ironically, I’d say my favorite episode from this novel is the least ambitious, that being “Tokyo”; it was interesting and full of heart without trying as hard as the other stories.I really like David Mitchell. I wouldn’t say he’s my favorite living author because I think there are other writers who can capture my heart and mind without gimmicks—which is exactly what Mitchell employs in his works, albeit with exceptional skill—but his works certainly keep me more riveted than any other writer does. I look forward to the next.
    • 5/5
      I’ve avoided this for years – despite enjoying the author’s later novel “Black Swan Green”, this one gave off worrying vibes of magical realism. I really should have read it earlier – what a top reading experience it was. Maybe it takes the sort of brain that thinks up surreal scenarios to really hit the literary highs.The book takes the form of a series of short stories which kind of glance off eachother to form a big picture – though I’m guessing most of them could be read and enjoyed on their own. Its reach is massive in geographical terms: the reader is taken on a dizzying journey from Japan, on across Asia to Ireland, the UK and the USA. My favourite chapter was probably the one set in a tea shack in China which remains in place halfway up a mountain while the political landscape changes all around. There is tremendous originality here –how many novels out there feature a disembodied soul transmigrating its way across Mongolia? And humour too – much of it concentrated in the London chapter which achieved the feat of having me snorting with laughter in a public place. Every chapter has its own unique style and the author handles them with enormous skill.It wasn’t the easiest of reads. The first chapter – narrated by the brainwashed member of a cult – was hard going, and the Clear Island chapter was anything but clear. I only understood about ten percent of it. And occasionally I was visited by the nagging sensation that characters – particularly the young ones – were way too worldly wise and philosophical to be believed. Those are really minor gripes, though. I’m frankly in awe of an author who’s the same age as me but who has amassed such extensive world knowledge, and astonishingly, had amassed it some fifteen years ago.
    • 5/5
      I am a big fan of interconnected stories all rolled into a novel, and this one did not disappoint. I found the story lines intriguing, which occasionally took one to the very edge of reality with ghosts and quantum physics niggling their way in. I liked this enough to take on Mitchell's later works.
    • 3/5
      I read this after I read Cloud Atlas, and enjoyed seeing the name Timothy Cavendish and Luisa Rey again. I liked the reference to the comet shaped birthmark, too. I enjoyed the book, and found the linear connection easier to keep a handle on than the arc in Cloud Atlas, but also found it a bit too bogged down in how clever Mitchell thought he was being at times. There were moments when I just wanted him to get on with it. I also found the final section a bit contrived and awkward to read. Good first novel, though, and worth reading.
    • 1/5
      Utterly confusing, full of tedious details and paralell stories. Somehow depressing. I dropped it after 50 pages or so - it felt like it wouldn't have added anything new to my mind.
    • 4/5
      I don't know what I was expecting, but Ghostwritten wasn't it. That said, it is a fascinating experiment in linked narratives not so much exploring cause and effect as chaos theory - can you blame a butterfly for flapping its wings? With a clutch of plot-driven narratives interspersed with slower, personal stories of love and ghosts, this is intriguing, well-written and at times showing its age.Not entirely satisfying - in either the individual narratives or as an overall package - but interesting and stylish.
    • 5/5
      The way the stories mesh together and flow is amazing.
    • 3/5
      Oooh, a sentient computer. Boy, that's never been done before. Why does everyone like this book so much?