2005 book 5

david mitchell's number9dream
well, wow. comparisons to murakami are pretty spot-on, so of course i loved this book (i was expecting nothing less, considering it was david mitchell). it was interesting to see the use of stories-within-stories and dreams-within-stories here after the interesting story-in-a-story structure of cloud atlas. anyway, this is about this twenty-year-old kid, eiji miyake, who moves to tokyo to try and find his absent father, whose name he doesn't even know. as the story unfolds, more of his past is revealed--abandoned by his alcoholic mother, he and his twin sister were raised by their grandmother until his sister's death at the age of 11--and he unwittingly gets involved in various yakuza shenanigans while trying to hunt down his father. very high-drama and fun and even a little romantic! seriously, i devoured this book--it even distracted me from the akc national dog show, and i love watching dog shows (periodically, outbursts of "aww, puppy!!!!" involuntarily emerge from my lips). uh, yeah, this one is highly recommended.