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Review: ghostwritten, by David Mitchell
Sep. 3rd, 2015 12:14 amPhew. Let it never be said that David Mitchell is unambitious.
This novel bears some similarities to Cloud Atlas, a later work of Mitchell's and one of my favorite books. Nine interlinked short stories are each related by a particular narrator, whose speech patterns, history, and current circumstances (expertly illuminated over the course of their narrative) all subtly construct their mental outlook on life, which thus defines their part in the book.
What is the book about, you ask?
I've just spent a good five minutes thinking it over, because initially, I had thought it was about a lot of things. But then I looked at the list and realized that they all come down, basically, to one subject: why things happen the way they do. Is it coincidence? Chance? Fate? The cyclical nature of the universe? Do we make our own choices? Can we truly, having been shaped by our DNA and the world around us, even claim to make our own choices? Are chance and fate ultimately the same thing, merely seen from different perspectives?
If Cloud Atlas is a symphony in book form, all elegant multipartite symmetrical construction and carefully-cultivated recurring motifs, ghostwritten is more of an improvisational jazz number. There's a bass line, and numerous themes and riffs that each player interprets individually, but the eventual goal of the piece is far less defined, and indeed seems to be as much about how it gets there as it is the actual destination. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, by any means - after all, it's only fair that a book fundamentally about chaos theory would be somewhat chaotic - but it makes me wonder if some of the subtler nuances get drowned out in the cymbal crashes, as it were.
Still, this is an impressive story, and all the more so for being Mitchell's first book. If you find people and their overlapping mental constructions fascinating, if you love quantum theory even if you're not a hundred percent certain you can explain it, if the questions of cause and effect and relativity and creativity are interesting to you - in short, if you're an observant and curious human being - pick this book up. It won't explain these things, but it at least illuminates them, a little, in that beautifully intuitive way Art can do while it waits for Science to catch up. A-
This novel bears some similarities to Cloud Atlas, a later work of Mitchell's and one of my favorite books. Nine interlinked short stories are each related by a particular narrator, whose speech patterns, history, and current circumstances (expertly illuminated over the course of their narrative) all subtly construct their mental outlook on life, which thus defines their part in the book.
What is the book about, you ask?
I've just spent a good five minutes thinking it over, because initially, I had thought it was about a lot of things. But then I looked at the list and realized that they all come down, basically, to one subject: why things happen the way they do. Is it coincidence? Chance? Fate? The cyclical nature of the universe? Do we make our own choices? Can we truly, having been shaped by our DNA and the world around us, even claim to make our own choices? Are chance and fate ultimately the same thing, merely seen from different perspectives?
If Cloud Atlas is a symphony in book form, all elegant multipartite symmetrical construction and carefully-cultivated recurring motifs, ghostwritten is more of an improvisational jazz number. There's a bass line, and numerous themes and riffs that each player interprets individually, but the eventual goal of the piece is far less defined, and indeed seems to be as much about how it gets there as it is the actual destination. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, by any means - after all, it's only fair that a book fundamentally about chaos theory would be somewhat chaotic - but it makes me wonder if some of the subtler nuances get drowned out in the cymbal crashes, as it were.
Still, this is an impressive story, and all the more so for being Mitchell's first book. If you find people and their overlapping mental constructions fascinating, if you love quantum theory even if you're not a hundred percent certain you can explain it, if the questions of cause and effect and relativity and creativity are interesting to you - in short, if you're an observant and curious human being - pick this book up. It won't explain these things, but it at least illuminates them, a little, in that beautifully intuitive way Art can do while it waits for Science to catch up. A-
