Number9Dream
By David Mitchell
Random House, $24.95
ISBN 0375507264

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Not all dreams are sweet

Is Eiji Miyaki really storming the Pan Opticon skyscraper and breaking into files that finally reveal his father's identity, or is he just daydreaming about it? That is always the question in Number9Dream, David Mitchell's fast-paced new novel which bobs and weaves between its main character's real-life search for identity and his rich fantasy life, between his initiation into a corrupt, money-driven megapolis and his quest for young love. Mitchell, who won considerable acclaim for his first novel Ghostwritten, is sure to garner more attention for this inventive, mysterious book.

By far the most interesting thing about the novel is its Tokyo setting -- rendered as a shimmering urban nightmare, alternately realistic and futuristic. Eiji, a green boy from a remote Japanese island, comes to Tokyo to find the father who abandoned his mother when she became pregnant. Soon, he is adrift in a stew of syndicated crime, private sex clubs and an illegal trade in human organs.

Underneath the surface drama, Number9Dream is also a novel about parents and children. Eiji puts the rest of his life on hold until he can connect with his father. But Ai, the girl he falls in love with, shows him what true strength is. When her parents threaten to disown her if she pursues a musical career in Paris, she chooses the City of Light and lets her mother and father go. Eiji's love for Ai and his own risks and brushes with disaster eventually teach him that not all dreams are worth dying for, and that a young man learns his identity by making his own hard choices, not by trying to recapture a lost past.