I like the idea that an author’s personal travels are reflected in their writing. You can know nothing about Hemingway’s life and still know, from reading his stories, that he travelled to continental Europe, East Africa, the Caribbean and the upper Midwest – and apparently nowhere else. Similarly, David Mitchell’s novels are largely focused on East Asia, as he spent nearly a decade working in Japan as an English teacher. On the other end of the spectrum is Stephen King, who sets virtually everything in his home state. I hope that my own works one day reveal a rich history of globetrotting.

Number9dream, Mitchell’s second novel, takes place entirely in Japan as 19-year old Eiji Miyake travels from his sleepy island home to seek out his long-lost father in Tokyo. This is one of those time-honoured stories about a young man hitting the road with nothing but a guitar case and ten bucks in his pocket, taking a series of crummy jobs and sleeping in a tiny rented room, gradually networking his way through the grand adventure that is life, making friends and falling in love. These stories are always overly romanticised, but I’m a young man myself and I’d be lying if I said they don’t appeal to me.

This novel is something more than that, fortunately, because it is written by David Mitchell, a god among men. Number9dream takes us on a beautifully evocative tour of the gigantic, incomprehensible sweep of Tokyo, the subways and teahouses and love hotels and construction sites, the hackers and gangsters and lawyers and pizza delivery boys. Not only that, but this is a book about dreams and fantasies, the power of the imagination, and Mitchell mixes this in to make a dazzling, fantastic narrative where what is real and what is not are not always distinct.

There are other stories mixed in as Eiji navigates his way through Tokyo. Memories of his childhood on an idyllic island, which reminded me strongly of both a Miyazaki film and Final Fantasy X (with a sports team taking a ferry to another island for a tournament, come on). Bizarre and poetic stories featuring a fairytale character called Goatwriter, perused by Eiji as he sits in an attic. The journal of his great-uncle, a kaiten pilot in World War II. It’s not as pronounced as in Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas, but Mitchell’s talent for voices emerges once again. There are also, as always, some nice links with his other works, in this case a character and a secret government facility from Ghostwritten.

The only problem I had with this book was the story thread in which Eiji falls in with the Yakuza, which I thought was unrealistic, even for a Mitchell novel. Mitchell likes to push all our buttons at once. He wants to write profound literary fiction dripping with beautiful prose, he wants to write about slice-of-life journeys of discovery, and he wants to write about Yakuza gunfights and satellite weapons and post-apocalyptic wastelands. In novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, consisting of distinct narratives where these conflicting urges can be safely filed away in separate drawers, this works a charm. In Number9dream, not so much. Eiji goes from spending an evening with a Yakuza grandmaster, watching men get gunned down and cars explode as though he’s a character in Grand Theft Auto, to sitting in his apartment on a hot summer night ruminating on the mysteries of life with his girlfriend. The Yakuza chapters are brilliant, they just don’t fit with the rest of the book at all. Similarly, I found the Goatwriter stories to be tedious, and the great-uncle’s WWII journal to be surprisingly mediocre for such a rich opportunity.

On the whole, Number9dream was better than Ghostwritten, but not quite as good as Cloud Atlas or Black Swan Green. It’s still an amazing, awesome trip through a fascinating world with a gifted author as a guide, always readable, always intriguing, every page covered with beautiful sentences and paragraphs. I discovered David Mitchell at the beginning of this year, reading Cloud Atlas in Japan; now, on the last day of the year, I’ve finished reading his collected works and he has become my favourite author. How appropriately cyclical. Happy New Year!

P.S. Reading a few other reviews I’ve come across the notion that Mitchell is “looting” from Haruki Murakami. While this book clearly owes a debt to the tone and themes of Murakami’s works, David Mitchell is one of the greatest writers of his generation, whereas Haruki Murakami is one of the worst. Point, match, Britain. ( )

(Well, I see Mitchell is a star 'LibraryThing' author. But these notes are for me, not for authors -- and does anyone read these reviews, anyway?)

This is a forgettable, cobbled-together fantasy of contemporary Japan. Not 'Joycean,' as reviewers have said; and it's good to remember that 'futuristic beauty' (as on one of the cover endorsements) is easy. ( )

Number 9 Dream is a captivating and intelligent novel, well written - as one would expect from David Mitchell, and with some deep themes. The book is about a Japanese young man who is in search of the father who abandoned his family when he and his twin sister were born. He is also haunted by another significant event of his past.

Through the book, the search for his father gradually bears fruit, but ultimately it becomes clear that this knowledge was never important, as the protagonist - Eiji - comes of age through a series of enlightening experiences.

But this is no ordinary coming of age novel as much of the action takes place in Eiji's head. His dreams are as important to the narrative as the real events - and sometimes its a little tricky to separate what is real from what is imagined.

In the end, we see that the number 9 dream is that which starts after every ending. That is, when the other issues are resolved and Eiji comes out of the dream world and seems to wake up into this world, the 9th dream begins - the beginning of Eiji's real life. (Shades of the much shorter "Dandelion Wine" here!)

Parts of this novel were gripping, and the whole narrative sweeps you along. However it is not my favourite book for various reasons - most notably that this seems to be a rather self conscious attempt to write a Murakami novel by David Mitchell. The very title hints at this. #9 Dream is a song by John Lennon. Murakami, of course, achieved fame through his "Norwegian Wood". Indeed, the dialogue in this book compares #9 Dream with the song Norwegian wood.

Eiji is also found to be reading "Wind Up Bird Chronicle" as he contemplates his death - wondering what will become to the man stuck down the dry well.

And there are many other subtle references to Murakami. The structure of the book has trademark Murakami surrealism. We have love hotels and prostitutes and bad sex. We have the multiple threads and war time reminiscences. At times I thought I actually was reading Murakami.

Anyone who has seen my reviews will know I am not actually a big Murakami fan, because of his tendency to drop all the threads without resolution. Mitchell does not do that - except for the very deliberate new thread that is dropped at the end of chapter 8. But all the same, I think I would prefer to read David Mitchell for David Mitchell. I love his humour, his power of description, his ability to write in different voices, and his understanding of how to write a good story.

This book contained all of the above, but I hope his future works are less self consciously derivative. ( )

Borrowed from my mum, who was sure I'd like it even more than I enjoyed Ghostwritten. It has a similarly episodic structure, though here the episodes are more strongly linked. You're left wondering just how much of it is a (day) dream and how much reality. A little gruesome in places, and I'm not sure of the ending, but overall I thought it was excellent. ( )

To fully appreciate this book, I suggest that you first read Haruki Murakami, specifically Norwegian Wood. This book is very much a tribute to him. ( )