Ghostwritten
1999
- publishers' bindings (bindings)
- connectionism
- interpersonal relations
- transcendence (philosophy)
- cognition and culture
- international relations
- fiction
- strangers
- causation
- life change events
The story
The tales of nine very different characters in nine different cities that "don't end, [but] scarily morph and transmute into each other as we travel through them in the company of a crazed cult member, a corrupt lawyer, a Tokyo jazz aficionado, an art thief, a New York late-night DJ."--Booklist.
What it’s like
Restless, globe-hopping and quietly eerie, with a voice that shifts from chapter to chapter as each narrator takes over the page. The prose is precise and playful, moving from a Tokyo record shop's hush and the thump of a New York radio booth to a Mongolian steppe wind and a damp, sodium-lit English village, with each setting rendered through close, concrete detail: the smell of old vinyl, the cold of a cell, the hum of a cramped train. Mood swings from wry to unsettling to tender, with a low current of uncanny connection running beneath every story. The rhythm is brisk, each section a self-contained sliver that hands its thread to the next, so it suits reading in short stretches on a long-haul flight, a train commute, or a late night when a puzzle-like book keeps you turning pages. Its characters are displaced, obsessive or morally compromised people whose lives brush against each other by chance or design, and the emotional register stays cool but humane. Violence appears in several sections, sometimes brief and sharp, with some cruelty and a hint of crime and menace, but no sustained gore. It is best for readers who enjoy interlinked stories, cosmopolitan settings, and a faint sense of the strange beneath the everyday.
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