This is a collection of interconnected novellas. Apparently each one tells a different story, with different characters, but there are connections between them, maybe a character from a previous one making an appearance, or some event from a previous one having an effect on a later story. The story of a terrorist from a Japanese sect, a seller of vinyl records in Tokio, a trader of financial products in Hong Kong, a humble old woman who has a food stand near a Chinese holy mountain, and so on. At some point, we get a fantasy element, with a disembodied entity who hops from body to body, and a science-fictional element with a cutting-edge AI. It's mainstream literature with unapologetic genre influences.

I'm not quite sure what the point of telling the story this way is, instead of a more straightforward narrative. Perhaps the intention is reflecting on how things and people are interconnected in a seemingly random manner. But what is clear is that David Mitchell is a high-quality writer and also an excellent storyteller. It's not so common to have both those things in the same writer. ( )

Hay relatos que me han gustado más (Tokyo y Clear Island en mi corazón) y otros que se me han atascado. Pero no deja de sorprendre como un libro de 1999 este tan de actualidad hoy en dia, excepto por la baja presencia de moviles, podria perfectamente estar ambientado hoy en dia.

Sumado a como escribe mitchell y la capa de misticismo cientifico que tiene todo de fondo, este libro es muy mi mierda. ( )

"The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting. ... And it's not just our memories. Our actions too. We all think we're in control of our own lives, but really they're pre-ghostwritten by forces around us." (286-7)

David Mitchell's 1999 debut Ghostwritten is one of those rare fictions that has a useful reason to subtitle itself "A Novel." It seems at first to be a string of nine tangentially connected novellas, each with its own speaker, and separated by great leaps of geography. But the short tenth chapter--almost an epilogue, though set chronologically before the first--should clarify the identities of the two superhuman ghostwriters whose machinations have propelled the rich array of characters and settings throughout the book.

There is a lot of unreliable narration and dramatic irony in this book that starts with a narrator who is a terrorist adherent of a lightly-fictionalized version of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult. Many central and incidental characters re-appear in Mitchell's subsequent novels, usually at chronological points prior to their stories in Ghostwritten.

As Mitchell would later do even more assertively in books like Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, he gives an account that moves from the past through its time of inscription into a projected future. Of course, the "present" of Ghostwritten is now a full generation old, and its relatively tight diachronic window shows its age a little bit, but that is amply compensated by the vivid characters and mordant prose, leavened with recurring motifs that intimate the larger shapes behind each scene.

"I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up." (145)

Ghostwirtten is a collection of nine interconnected stories that introduce themes Mitchell expands on in his later books: chance, crossed paths, untethered souls, and the nature of time. Each of the nine stories are complete enough to stand on their own although many of the characters in them touch on and sometimes change the lives in the others. Imagine the tracks of a recording and how overlaying them creates a song - these stories work together the same way. Only someone with Mitchell’s skill as a writer could have pulled this off. ( )

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.
Very highly recommended. 5/5 ( )