Scooter Chronicles

On Monday afternoon I finished reading “Ghostwritten” by David Mitchell. This was his debut novel and was the 1999 recipient of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for British literature.

From the back of the book cover:

… engages us in a literary trek across the world of human experience through a mesmerizing series of linked narratives. At once as alike and distinct as any two pinpoints on the glob, nine characters - 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.

I have two of Mitchell’s other three novels sitting in one of my many piles to be read later. I decided to start with this one, even though the other two interested me more. It seemed obvious to start with his first.

I am not quite sure how the title works into the plot(s), and think it will be forever lost on me. It might have been the start of many things that were lost on me while reading this book. (Not surprising, this has happened often.) But there was still so much to enjoy about the book. Even though the ending of it was one of those things that went a bit over my head.

David Mitchell

Mitchell excelled in giving each character a different voice. There is no mistaking this. Each of the nine voices, and even their supporting casts, were all well defined, made real, and different. The range of characters this entails was impressive. His prose worked well fitting all the voices together, yet twisted each one a bit to make that different as well. Again, it was impressive.

The stories of each character are connected on some level to each other. Some of them are not direct. It’s because of a connection between two others that connects yet another one. Mitchell wove these threads together well. Sometimes we left a character with things unresolved. Sometimes we found out a little bit beyond their end of the book when they come across in another character’s story. Sometimes we don’t. All was well put together. And all seemed to be taken to the best point of break.

The hardest things was connecting these events and characters to the last two chapters. There were nine characters and their stories, and then a final section that was only five pages long. It got clouded there. I wasn’t sure how the events of these two fell in with the others. The connections in the first eight gave me a good timeline to when things were happening. Those last two chapters messed things up for me. And a confusing ending is not what I wanted. I was hoping to see some final connection to all of them, even if it wasn’t an absolution for any of them.

Even with the shortcomings, to me, of the finish, I can see why many praised this for being a debut novel. Mitchell’s talent is obvious. The strength of the stories and characters carried this a long way for me, even with some disappointment at the end. I look forward to reading his other work.