Your opinions on.... Ghostwritten!

but yes, it's a better book than "Cloud Atlas" mainly because the links between the sections seem less forced and more "accidental": like a little bonus in each that gradually makes you realise you are reading a novel and not "just" (sorry) a book of short stories. think of that recurring comet birthmark thing in CA, it seems both laboured and inconsequential. when it crops up you feel like it it's been shoehorned in and yet it doesn't seem to actually mean anything in terms of the book as a whole. added to that Mitchell actually seems to forget about it in the second half (as far as i can remember). Cloud Atlas just doesn't keep the plates spinning in the second half of the book and yet he seems to have gone to so much trouble to get them going in the first place.

also in Ghostwritten each story more or less seems to carry an equal weight in terms of the book's trajectory. CA frustrated me because (for example) one story is supposedly a movie and the story before (then after in the second half) is a fictional crime story whose whole point seems to have been as a minor player within that movie: a fictional "novel" within a fictional "film" within a larger fiction, it's a clever conceit but it just makes you feel like you have wasted your time reading it!

that all sounds pretty negative but actually i still feel that Cloud Atlas is a fairly good book.

He's trying to tell us he got someone else to write the damn thing.

I liked the book without loving it (some parts were terrific, others grated). I've heard mixed things on Cloud Atlas but I liked Ghostwritten enough to give it a shot.

On a completely different note, I have to mention that the (US) cover looks like the cover of "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine, which is the reason I picked the book up in the first place. In a way, it reminded me of that album: lots of layers and lyrics that you can't always work out, but come together to make a beautiful and haunting symphony, leaving you with this serene otherworldly feeling. Anyone else get that?

I kind of agree with n/a on the book order, but I still love David Mitchell and all he does. I know I ruin my opinions on his writing every time I say this, but I have the biggest crush on that man...

I'll get back it soon, though (and then post on this thread).

Glad you liked it too, the bellefox!

Oh, that's a shame! Those comments got me interested in the book.

I'm glad someone got something out of what I said!

That seems to be a popular opinion around here. I wonder if it's mostly because that's the order in which most people read them? I read them in reverse order, and for me: No. 9 Dream >> Cloud Atlas >> Ghostwritten. Although, I admit I liked Cloud Atlas mainly for the Sloosha bit in the middle.

No, sorry to destroy your theory, but I read them in the opposite order from this. CA first, then N9D, then GW.

I was a little thrown by the last little story that recasted a scene from the first story. Was he trying to say that the events of the book actually didn't happen/wouldn't have happened if the terrorist dude had done something different? Or was it just tacked on to provide some circularity and closure?

I am reminded now of the end of Donnie Darko, and indeed of the end (? - perhaps I mean, the beginning) of Time Bandits, working in a like way.

Skipping the above 'casue I'm not finished yet. I was super-skeptical at first and I thought nah this is kind of adolescent but now I am hooked. It is great! Hard not to just put aside all my responsibilities and keep reading