Still with the slgihtly trivial (and Far-Eastern – a theme of this December, it would seem) is a Christmas present from my siblings: David Mitchell’s “Number 9 Dream.” Although famous for his book “Ghostwritten,” I’d never heard of Mr Mitchell, and so the only expectation I had of it was my brother’s inscription “Combining two things you love – Japanese fiction and science fiction.” And this despite the fact I’ve only read a couple of Japanese novels ever (Ishiguro’s “When we were orphans” – genius – and Nobel-prize winner Kenzaburo Oe’s “Rouse up, O Young Men of a New Age“).

Anyway, this book tells the story of a slightly pimply, slightly post-teenage boy who has travelled to Tokyo to track down his father; his father who abandoned the boy’s mother, his mistress, many years ago to her alcoholism, and she, in turn, abandoned her children. Eeji Miyake travels through any number of mediocre jobs and unlikely situations in Tokyo as part of the search, aided and abetted by Buntaro, his landlord, Buntaro’s mother, Mrs Susaki, the girl with the perfect neck, the enigmatic Daimon and the music of John Lennon.

It’s really a fantastic book. The opening plot device – each of the initial scenes are (rather obviously) “dreams” – is a little annoying and comes off as slightly pretentious, but once the book settles into its main story of gansters, trials and tribulations and pizza, the book really comes into its own.

The final chapter, I warn you, is one of the most annoying things ever written. Still, I’d recommend the book to anyone – there is very little science fiction outside the dream sequences; the book is set in the very near future, so this will hopefully allay the fears of any who think of Sci-Fi as anaethma. The only thing you might need is a slightly strong constitution to withstand some of the Pizzas ordered in the book – particularly the Kamikaze. As a pizza lover myself, this is the only book in which the descriptions of pizza have failed to make me hungry…

There’s been a lot going on, and I want to blog an amount of it, so I’m going to start with something relatively trivial and move in a haphazard manner to the more serious, substantial and significant.

First, then, Outlaws of the Marsh: an absolute rollercoaster of a book for all 2000+ of its pages. Lent to me by a colleague at work (as an attempt to teach me something, I think, rather than lending me a book he particularly thought I’d like…), I started reading this beast of a book back in September, and it took me three months to get through volume 1 (of four). When I managed to get through that at the start of December, I burned through the rest…

The story: a number of minor officials and wandering nobles find themselves on the far sides of the law during the course of the Song dynasty in China, and consequently take refuge in the marshes and hillside forts of the bandits. Convinced, for the most part justifiably so, that their exile is the work of corrupt officials and that they are on the side of the just, they begin to consolidate their forces in Liangshan Marsh under the leadership of a few particularly prominent leaders – the 36 stars of heavenly spirits and 72 stars of earthly fiends incarnated. This means, of course, that during the course of the book, you have to chart the progress of 108 heroes: tough work, and requiring occasional reference to sites like this if you really want to know what’s going on. Favourite characters included “Nine Dragons Shi Jin,” “Song Jiang the Timely Rain,” “Sagacious Lu the Tattoed Monk,” and Wu Song, whose honorific slips my mind at the moment…

It’s a bizarre book; the social and ethical mores of Song-Dynasty China are slightly… odd. While always on the side of honour and justice, Song Jiang and his troops feel no hesitation in ensnaring other “gallants” by framing them for crimes and forcing them to join them in Liangshan Marsh, women are treated as property throughout the book, and at one point Wu Song, dealing with the tragedy that is a bowl of plain rice, decides to make use of the “plentiful meat” he has available by roasting some meat from one of the men he’s just killed – not to worry, though, the man was a corrupt official…

In any case, despite its oddity, this is a deeply enjoyable book, filled with fantastic battle descriptions, lively characters and silly anecdotes. I’d recommend it to anyone…