Lack of Connection with Time & Space

While I certainly did love the buried connections in Ghostwritten that make me want to read it again, Rita Barnard's reference to Anderson's theory that a novel should have a shared space or time (to link it nationally) is exactly what may have bothered me most about the novel. As Barnard states, the timeline is actually "randomly overlapping succession". She points out that some sections are straightforward - for me, the most noticeably is St. Petersburg. In the complete other direction is that of "Holy Mountain" where I wasn't sure "when" I was at in many given points of the narrative. I knew where, but not when. The Tea Shack woman goes through childhood to death in this section, not sequentially, and through so much history that it's a real whirlwind to get through. I found it fascinating because through all of the world's changes, she kept on with her Tea Shack, rebuilding when she needed to, but never changing her ways. The thing that changed for her was the guests and the ease of her getting supplies, and that's about it.

Like Jennifer or Julie said, I wanted the connections to be bigger. There were so many minor characters that I wanted to know about and I assumed they would all come together, but they don't (e.g. Poppy and her daughter, India; Alfred and Roy, etc.). And at first I thought the ending was fantastic - were they all on this subway train? But that has to be false, because the majority were never even in Tokyo. Maybe it's kind of a disturbing connection and way to end, but at the same time I felt that it was great - unfortunately it's not what happened. The nods to each section are awesome, but at first I thought these nods would connect to each character specifically and link them to being on the train, instead it's more of a wink from Mitchell to us with references to places and people.