Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell

As I really liked Cloud Atlas I wanted to read the first book by Mitchell.

I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. In many ways I think Ghostwritten is a better book than Cloud Atlas, it is raw and direct in a way that a really appreciate. The characters feel more elaborated and in balance with the underlying narrative (not just pieces in a very smart plot). I felt pulled into a whirlwind of ideas that had an underlying idea.

While Cloud Atlas is more beautiful and grander in scale, the shifts between perspectives in Ghostwritten feels more honest, as if they happen in real time and you are just following some random, but still connected stories that evolves in front of you (rather than being engineered in a way where you feel that there was an overall interesting ideas that the author then tries to build a story around). It is as if you are thrown between the characters perspective and get to live their lives for a short while rather than hovering above as an ideal observer.

It is a hard book to describe the book as it moves between so many different perspectives, but if you liked Cloud Atlas and like to follow an epic story trough the perspective of multiple individual levels and many ways to thinking this is a book you should read.