Books: The Brilliance of David Mitchell

David Mitchell is my favorite living author. Okay, maybe he's tied with Haruki Murakami, but he's up there. That's really saying something as I read a lot and have a lot of favorites. Mitchell has written four novels, each one drastically different in tone from the last, and each one not only enjoyable, but absolutely miraculous.

Ghostwritten is an unlikely debut. On the surface, it can be read as a series of short novellas about the changing world, globalism and the times in which we live. But, there's a whole lot more going on. Each story ties in, either directly or tangentially to the next, and on a deeper level, every story is tied in to every other. The stories form an intricate web with links to every character. In this way, the book can be read again and again to pick up some of those missed references. The end of the book, which I won't give away, wraps things up in a way you won't expect. Fans of Calvino, as I wrote about in my last 'Books' post, will love it.

Number9Dream is a book that I asked Mitchell about directly when I was able to see him speak in Seattle a few years ago. It's directly influenced by my other favorite, Murakami, and Mitchell seemed somewhat embarrassed by that fact upon my question. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that it's somewhat like having a crush on a girl and then years later going back and seeing how everything you wrote was somehow influenced by that crush. Regardless, I wasn't the only one who loved the book, as it was his first book shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It shares many of the same themes with Ghostwritten, but also shares themes with Murakami's novels, such as identity crises, seemingly impossible searches with many roadblocks, and a love story based mostly on pure chance and destiny.

Cloud Atlas is probably my favorite. No, it's definitely my favorite. Mitchell takes the ideas of tangential stories from his first novel, and then brings them to an entirely new level with Cloud Atlas. Mitchell described the book, his second to be shortlisted for the Booker, as a having the narrative act as a bullet going through Russian nesting dolls. Rather than telling complete stories all the way through, as in Ghostwritten, Mitchell tells six stories, but interrupts five halfway through, to continue them later. So, the stories are structured like thus: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Story 1 takes place in 1850 on a ship in the Pacific, story 2 in 1931 in Belgium, story 3 in 1975 in California, story 4 in the early 21st century in the UK, story 5 in the near future in Korea, and story 6, the central and only uninterrupted story, in a post-apocalyptic future in Hawaii. Each story, as in his first novel, connects with the last, and all relate to one another through intricate themes. How this book didn't win the Booker is beyond me.

His most recent book is Black Swan Green, a novel that one critic called England's answer to Catcher in the Rye. Yeah, it's that good. The novel is semi-autobiographical and recalls the life of a 13-year old boy growing up in Worcestershire in the early 80's. As such, there are a lot of colloquialisms and references from that period. Our protagonist is wonderfully flawed, and one of the best sculpted 'bildungsroman' characters of our generation.

I can't wait for 2009 when Mitchell releases his next book, reportedly about Dejima (a man made island off Nagasaki), the Dutch East India company and Shogunate Japan. It is also reportedly so complex and dense, that Mitchell can't decide what to edit and remove.

The best books, in my opinion, are the ones you can read again and again and get the same or more pleasure from in the process. David Mitchell certainly fits that bill.