Just finished Ghostwritten, which was David Mitchell's debut novel. Got it from the library as I'd read and really enjoyed Cloud Atlas (his third and most famous novel).
While this was not quite as good as Cloud Atlas, I still enjoyed it. He uses a similar construction to the book (several short stories linked and making a larger narrative sense or ethos).
Where maybe it falls short is that I felt it copped out with a cynical, world-view replacing his enthusiastic optimism with a doomed-earth closing chapter. while the stories are again linked throughout, they all take place in the "now" time-frame, which while still effective, misses out on the proposition of a link through ages and through the ages.
This linking though still gives a way of looking at our futures as beginning from different similar-ness, that we're all in this together and that there are underlying themes that affect us all.
There are some links between this and Cloud Atlas (comets, atoms, comet shaped birthmarks, Tim Cavendish and Luisa Rey), and I'm sure all his books will contain this kind of cross-referencing. It makes the works seem more part of a whole, like his individual novel structures and like...err life really.
Anyway as a sum-up, I'd give this a go, but Cloud Atlas is the better book, for it's expanded scope, and the courage of its own convictions.
God I talk some rubbish sometimes.
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