Eiji Miyake's search for his father takes place against impossible odds. Dad is somewhere in Tokyo and does not want to be found by the son he has never met. Then there is Eiji's old man's female lawyer, a monster not to be trifled with on any level. Not that the boy has been overly lucky with parents. His alcoholic mother abandoned him and his now dead twin sister as children. Yet, as he approaches his 20th birthday, Eiji, a likeable if hapless narrator, sets out from the quiet country area where he lives, for high speed Tokyo - and the answers he seeks.
Mitchell's exuberant, often funny, at times violent and surreal second novel is certainly an inventive variation of the traditional quest and coming of age novel. The diversity and sheer pace of the narrative sets it well apart from most contemporary British fiction and Mitchell is an original with a flair for fantasy.
Even more unusual, however, is the tone of this novel. Despite the high tech video and computer culture, Eiji's series of disasters, the snappy New York one-liners and the number of surreal dream sequences as well as the brutal gangland element, the narrative retains a reflective, almost gentle quality that manages to undercut all but the most crazed episodes. Eiji is an innocent abroad, he is also one with surprisingly little guile, and above all, is a romantic with a sense of humour, healthy amounts of justifiable anger and a stray cat.
Mitchell, author of Ghostwritten is extremely confident, and, initially, does not make things too easy for his reader. But once you realise that Eiji lives largely in his imagination and that most of his most daring utterances are left unsaid, a natural affinity for him not only emerges, it takes over the book.
That said, Mitchell is shrewd enough not to allow Eiji to become either pathetic or heroic. The dream of the title is more than a mere nod to Eiji's hero John Lennon and one of his songs. The dream motif is ever present. Conversations and encounters revolve upon it. Late in the story a helpful truck driver, another character with an active imagination advises the boy, "Trust what you dream. Not what you think".
Elsewhere another minor character, a mysterious old lady who trades fruit for dreams, admits to Eiji she owes her long life to living off the dreams of the young. The narrator's fantasies go far beyond speculating about the long awaited reunion with dear old dad. His method towards even discovering his father's identity instigates a Bruce Willis-like raid on a Tokyo lawyer's maximum security office. Much of it is more Walter Mitty than Quentin Tarantino, albeit that of a Mitty who has been flung headlong into the 21st century.
It is true that Mitchell calls upon everything, including the metaphorical kitchen sink - not forgetting a crocodile - in creating a story of stories. Eiji's misadventures amount to a variety of daft plots from movie thrillers. Some of the gangster episodes are horrific, and the ways in which the identity of Eiji's father is withheld from him, are cruel - but the narrative seldom loses its comic touch. It is also, as expected, highly cinematic.
But even at their most crazed, the baddies are more ridiculous than menacing, and Mitchell is clearly more drawn to creating engaging eccentrics, such as Eiji's benign landlord, Buntaro, the middle-aged boss of a video rental store, awaiting the birth of his first child. When not musing on the wonders of pregnancy he engages in wacky conversations with his tenant whose cat he also feeds. "What's the difference between frogs and toads, country boy?" he asks. "Toads live for ever. Frogs get run over," replies Eiji. "My taxes went on your education," says Buntaro in one of many examples of offbeat banter.
Everywhere Eiji goes he meets up with at least one person who becomes a friend. These friends then contribute to the texture of the novel as well as the dialogue. A waitress with a perfect neck turns out to be a music student and, in time, Eiji's love interest. The postgraduate student Eiji replaces in the railway station's lost and found department is a computer hack and a useful person to know. Another part-time job brings the narrator to Nero's pizza joint and the missing clue to what had seemed a wrong number. At times, the dynamics of plot and a liking for coincidences are all too breezily handled by Mitchell. The novel is overlong, some of the digressions indulgent, but all the while, he is doing something different - and with style and humour.
Possibly because at the heart of the book lies an acceptance that culture has become blander and more generalised, a strong sense prevails that Eiji could be encountering a big city anywhere. It is not so much that Mitchell has cracked hyper-commercial modern Japanese culture as has grasped the fact, at its most urban, that some places, and apparently Tokyo is one, could be anywhere.
This novel, more Martin Amis than Haruki Murakami, could as easily be set in London or New York. Readers more intent on experiencing a specific sense of modern Tokyo life as it hovers between tradition and universal post modernity; the old and the new might prefer Murakami's dazzlingly realistic, evocative fictions.
Truth ultimately outweighs the surprises Eiji experiences. Mitchell has fun juxtaposing the real with the surreal. As the narrator's quest nears its close he returns to the places he knew before he had quite so many answers. It is in these final pages that number9dream acquires sadness and dramatic loss.
There are many vivid set pieces throughout, including a hilarious gag with an automatic bank link machine that takes to sending personal messages to Eiji. Yet for all its fun and poignancy and Mitchell's heavy plotting, there are as many loose ends as overly neatly tied ones. While an enjoyable performance oozing panache, this cosmopolitan and fresh odyssey engages and entertains if not quite convinces.
Shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, the outcome of which is decided on Wednesday, Mitchell's book is the lively dark horse in a contest that should deservedly be fought out between previous winners, Ian McEwan and Peter Carey. Yet by including it, the Booker judges have acknowledged the daring and the new, as well as an original voice.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
