Wood s lot also pointed me to this Guardian essay — Pete May on turning into your dad — and pulled this quote: ” It is a weird and far
from pleasant feeling, this cross-generational migration of souls.” A striking metaphor, but it grabbed me also because my loose association was to the absorbing, if abit uneven, novel I’m reading. David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten spins a web with its structure of nine individual narrators, drawn with skillful characterization and sharp clear prose, scattered to nine disparate corners of the world but connected by serendipity. A masterful and lyrical chapter which I could not help feeling throughout my reading can — and perhaps should — be read independently ‘describes’ the journey of a transmigrating soul in Mongolia struggling to understand its place in the world, its relationship with its succession of human hosts, and the meaning of their humanness. Of course, one reviewer castigates Mitchell as “a bit heavy on the supernatural hooey.” Interestingly, that reviewer too observes that the Mongolian chapter could stand alone.