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Original Essays | May 3, 2013

Emily St. John Mandel: IMG The Festivals

2 comments By Emily St. John Mandel

When it happens, it feels like winning the lottery. An email arrives out of the blue, from one of my publishers or a festival director or a member... Continue »
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Ghostwritten (Vintage International)

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Ghostwritten (Vintage International) Cover

ISBN13: 9780375724503
ISBN10: 0375724508
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

Review:

"Ghostwritten is also elegantly composed, gracefully plotted and full of humor....[It] recall[s] Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in its emotional scope and its ambitions. Like the great Russians, Mitchell makes us feel that more is at stake than individual lives, although it?s by individual lives that pain and loss are measured." Los Angeles Times

Review:

"This is one of the best first novels I?ve read for a long time....I read a proof of this on a transatlantic flight. When I got off in Atlanta, I couldn't put it down. I pulled my luggage in one hand along corridors and escalators, and held David Mitchell's last chapter up to my nose with the other. I finished at the carousel. It seemed appropriate. And it's even better the second time." A. S. Byatt

Review:

"David Mitchell's first novel is a firework display....The assurance and panache are truly remarkable....This is a remarkable novel by a young writer of remarkable talent." The Observer (London)

Review:

"Mitchell...has a gift for fiction's natural pleasures – intricate surprises, insidiously woven narratives, ingenious voices... " The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Mitchell deftly sketches each character to such a compelling extent that you become totally immersed....His nine characters and their random but fateful interactions provide a playful, suspenseful foray into our ever-shrinking world." Entertainment Weekly

Review:

"[Mitchell's] detail boasts the quiet and proud precision which makes his Englishness no surprise." The Seattle Times
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About the Author

David Mitchell lives in Hiroshima, Japan.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
salliforth, January 7, 2013 (view all comments by salliforth)
I love Cloud Atlas, and recently had a chance to read Ghostwritten. Cloud Atlas is more daring, more challenging, but the seeds are planted in Ghostwritten. It is similar in style with oblique threads from one story to the next, but the leaps aren't as hard to make. Eminently satisfying, intriguing and once again breaking the mold for a novel, but unlike Cloud Atlas, a book you probably could movie out of.
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salliforth, August 16, 2012 (view all comments by salliforth)
What can I say? I love everything written by David Mitchell. Written before his "Cloud Atlas," this is a series of oddly interconnected stories (e.g. a call to a wrong number in one story changes the lives of people in another) and it keeps the reader working to see those connections. Unlike "Cloud Atlas," which gives a series of the first half of a story, a complete story, and then the endings of each story, the stories here are complete. I have to admit that I had a bit of trouble getting into the first story (based on the sarin gas incident in the Tokyo subway in the late '90s), but I soon found myself tethered to the book. MItchell is a masterful and intriguing writer who is able to break the structure of the novel and make it work.
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Lissa Summers, January 3, 2011 (view all comments by Lissa Summers)
This is really an amazing book. Because the story is told in a series of seemingly unrelated fragments across several generations, it read like a mystery in that I was always trying to figure out the connection between the fragments. The characters were very compelling and the history that is woven throughout is fascinating. David Mitchell is one of my favorites and I was not disappointed by this book.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375724503
Author:
Mitchell, David
Publisher:
Vintage Books USA
Location:
New York
Subject:
General
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Interpersonal Relations
Subject:
International Relations
Subject:
Connectionism
Subject:
Cognition and culture
Subject:
Transcendence
Subject:
Trancendence
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Copyright:
2001
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Series:
Vintage Contemporaries
Series Volume:
no. 00-4754
Publication Date:
20011031
Binding:
trade paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
448
Dimensions:
8 x 5.16 x 0.93 in 0.75 lb
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Related Subjects


Featured Titles » Literature
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z

Ghostwritten (Vintage International) Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$10.95 In Stock
Product details 448 pages Vintage Books USA - English 9780375724503 Reviews:
"Review" by , "Ghostwritten is also elegantly composed, gracefully plotted and full of humor....[It] recall[s] Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in its emotional scope and its ambitions. Like the great Russians, Mitchell makes us feel that more is at stake than individual lives, although it?s by individual lives that pain and loss are measured."
"Review" by , "This is one of the best first novels I?ve read for a long time....I read a proof of this on a transatlantic flight. When I got off in Atlanta, I couldn't put it down. I pulled my luggage in one hand along corridors and escalators, and held David Mitchell's last chapter up to my nose with the other. I finished at the carousel. It seemed appropriate. And it's even better the second time."
"Review" by , "David Mitchell's first novel is a firework display....The assurance and panache are truly remarkable....This is a remarkable novel by a young writer of remarkable talent."
"Review" by , "Mitchell...has a gift for fiction's natural pleasures – intricate surprises, insidiously woven narratives, ingenious voices... "
"Review" by , "Mitchell deftly sketches each character to such a compelling extent that you become totally immersed....His nine characters and their random but fateful interactions provide a playful, suspenseful foray into our ever-shrinking world."
"Review" by , "[Mitchell's] detail boasts the quiet and proud precision which makes his Englishness no surprise."
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