Just finished reading Ghostwritten by David Mitchell (1999, Random House) on the #10 bus on my way to work. I wasn’t too fond of the book until the last 80 pages (the last few sections); the ones set on Clear Island and Night Train. Holy Mountain and Okinawa were also good. On the whole, as I was reading, I wanted to get deeper into the story, into the surroundings. At times the stories were too shallow and lacked depth or skimmed across large ideas without clinging onto any clear evidence. It was as though the book was originally some 800 pages long but an editor cleared away the hedges with a pair of red shears. I think, without some of the superfluous stories and expanded upon, it would’ve been stronger.
The concept I really enjoined; interlocking lives, some relations stronger than others, traveling from Japan and further West to New York City and back to Japan. It secured well and believably the concept of Six Degrees of Separation and the Butterfly Effect. All the elements were there for a superb and knuckle biting novel but, as said before, it was too thin, almost brittle, reading like cliff notes, like the plans for a fantastic novel.
I’m sure many details were lost on me as I took a good while to read this book. I had lost interest about halfway through. The latter pages were exciting and I was looking forward to the end. It was intriguing to read this along with Atonement by Ian McEwan which is rich in detail, slow, deliberate, crafted, carved like wood, and terrifying.
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