All autumn, with the release date of movie adaptation of Cloud Atlas fast approaching, interest in the novel among my Goodreads friends has been high. I have not seen many subdued reactions. Fans of Mitchell discuss his ability adeptly to assume so many different voices and styles, the intricacy of the novel’s structure, and the relevance of its themes for today. Detractors have dismissed Cloud Atlas as gimmicky, a work by a much-hyped writer who is showing off his style but neglecting to anchor it in themes of substance. And some readers simply found his shifts in voice tedious.



I recently re-read Cloud Atlass, bearing in mind both reactions to the novel. I also remembered my first time reading it. I was mesmerized by Mitchell’s ability to pay homage to six very different genres and voices in the six novellas that make up Cloud Atlas. I delighted in tracing connections and interconnections among the different sections of the novel. I was entranced by Mitchell’s high wire act.

Mitchell structures Cloud Atlas as follows: six novellas are organized in chronological order. The first five break off abruptly in the middle of their respective stories. The sixth novella, “Sloosha’s Crossin’,” appears in its entirety in the center of the novel. After its conclusion, Mitchell moves in reverse chronological order through the remaining five novellas, bringing each to a conclusion, but also providing numerous points of connection and resonance among all six novellas.

The novellas are as follows:

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing: tracing the travels of Adam Ewing, a notary, who is sailing to Australia and New Zealand in the 1850s, and who comes face to face with human greed on individual and communal levels;
Letters from Zedelghem: the composer Robert Frobisher writing to his friend, Rufus Sixsmith, about his experiences in post-World War I Belgium as he seeks fame and fortune while negotiating a precarious relationship with a famous composer at the end of his career;
Halflives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery: Luisa Rey, a young investigative reporter, seeks to carry out her father’s legacy while combating the corporate greed and corruption of Seaboard Power Inc. in Reagan-era California;
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish: a vanity publisher gains and loses a fortune, and loses his freedom, in England;
An Orison of Sonmi-451: Sonmi-451, a genetically modified being or fabricant, shares her memories of her quest for knowledge and her fight against government-sanctioned murder in the name of corporate greed;
Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After: Zachry, a Pacific Islander who is a member of the Valleymen, tells about his experiences with Meronym, a Prescient, as they seek past knowledge and combat the savagery of the Kona and devastation by plague in the future.

With my second reading of the novel, I delved deeper than focusing on its structure. I focused on themes. Did Mitchell have the content to support his style and technique, or was Cloud Atlas all style and no substance? After a careful re-reading, I concluded that Mitchell’s approach to writing Cloud Atlas is successful, not simply as an exercise in writing style, but because the style and structure support his exploration of central themes, of critical importance to 21st-century readers.




Knowledge in Cloud Atlas: History, Language, Belief, Memory, and Forgetting

In a 2004 interview in the Washington Post, David Mitchell provided some insight into his main interests in writing Cloud Atlas. After reading a reference to the Moriori in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, Mitchell became fascinated with the tribe, who lived in the Chatham Islands of New Zealand. He researched them and visited the Chatham Islands as well. The Moriori appear in Cloud Atlas, as Ewing meets them and attempts to come to terms with the many forces that overpower them: Western missionaries in search of souls, whalers in search of profit, and Maori exercising their power over the Moriori through force. However, as Mitchell describes, the Moriori’s influence appears throughout the novel, as a main influence for a central theme: “Knowledge can be forgotten as easily as, perhaps more easily than, it can be accrued. As a people, the Moriori ‘forgot’ the existence of any other land and people but their own.” This led to Mitchell’s first theme in Cloud Atlas: how does knowledge transform over time, from generation to generation? How are we shaped, not only by what we remember from the past, but also by what we forget or rework? Why is it so important for us to be able to tell stories about the past, and to know the conclusion of those stories? Mitchell’s interest was fueled in part by his being a father, and wondering what the future would hold for his child, but also by his interest in history.


Moriori people, 1877



Spirit Grove- Hapupu, Chatham Islands

As a novelist, Mitchell explores these questions while also paying homage to different genres of writing, and in some cases specific books that were particularly inspiring to him. (See the Washington Post interview linked above for a list of these influences.) However, these voices are not simply an opportunity for him to demonstrate his ability to shapeshift as a writer. A quotation from this interview gave me insights into the significance of the different voices that he adopts in Cloud Atlas: “I learned that language is to the human experience what spectography is to light: Every word holds a tiny infinity of nuances, a genealogy, a social set of possible users, and that although a writer must sometimes pretend to use language lightly, he should never actually do so -- the stuff is near sacred.” He is not simply showing off his chops as a writer when he adopts six different voices in Cloud Atlas--instead, he is creating new worlds, painting pictures of cultures with words. In doing so, he considers the knowledge these cultures retained and the knowledge they lost from the past. If you read closely and carefully, you can see how language is shifting over time, particularly in the novel’s central section, “Sloosha’s Crossin’.” Some readers found this section to be painful to read, but I loved the challenge of diving into Zachry’s language, identifying unfamiliar words, and considering what social factors led to their creation. I felt like an ethnographer, listening carefully to stories told by an informant from a very different world, and finding clues to recreate that world. That quest to understand, and the impact of discovering points I had in common with Zachry, speak to a larger theme -- continuity in some aspects of human culture over time, and the necessity of preserving and understanding the past as much as possible, even as it recedes from us in time.

The title of the novel, Cloud Atlas, itself ties back to Mitchell’s conception of history. We think of an atlas as a book that guides us through unfamiliar terrain and captures the contours of mountains and valleys, the depths of seas and lakes. An atlas of clouds suggests something much more ephemeral -- clouds are constantly moving, shifting, transforming, and eventually dissipating into the ether. Mitchell’s conception of history is built on a sense of constant movement and change. Even as we try to capture the past in works of history, literature, and art, we change and transform its meaning to fit our present.

In the Luisa Rey story, the engineer Isaac Sachs outlines this view of history as he takes notes during a plane ride:.
• …. The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
• The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to “landscape” the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
• Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up—a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
• Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows—the actual pas —from another such simulacrum—the actual future?
• One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each “shell” (the present) encased inside a nest of “shells” (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of “now” likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.

Throughout Cloud Atlas, Mitchell develops this depiction of the interplay of the actual and virtual past and the actual and virtual future in shaping the present. In doing so, he leaves the door open for societies to shape their actual futures through this process of creation and reinterpretation. However, one important limitation on their ability to do so for the better is the ubiquitous influence of power dynamics across human societies, past, present, and future.


The Will to Power in Cloud Atlas

This interest in history leads another of Mitchell’s themes in Cloud Atlas: the centrality of acquisitiveness, of the drive to acquire and possess, to the human experience throughout time. He takes a broad approach to exploring this force, as explained in his Washington Post interview: “Perhaps all human interaction is about wanting and getting. (This needn't be as bleak as it sounds -- a consequence of getting can be giving, which presumably is what love is about.) Once I had these two ideas for novellas, I looked for other variations on the theme of predatory behavior -- in the political, economic and personal arenas.”

Mitchell is not alone in focusing on wanting, getting, and giving as main factors forming human relationships, and shaping history. Anthropologists such as Marcel Mauss in The Gift have explored the role of gift exchange in fostering relationships, and in determining power dynamics, in human societies. Historians have looked at these elements from a broader perspective, particularly in studies of colonialism in the early modern and modern world. Investigative reporters uncover instances of the abuse of power, as measured by wealth and influence. Wherever we turn, our past and present are shaped by power relations and the desire to possess -- wealth, political influence, land, beautiful objects, and people. What does this mean for our future?

In Cloud Atlas, Mitchell explores power in many manifestations. “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” provides a deep exploration of the intersections of colonial interests and local power struggles and how they affected the lives of the Moriori, whose commitment to peaceful interactions with their neighbors were no protection against the combined forces of missionaries, whalers, and the Maori: “What moral to draw? Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience.”


Portrait of New Zealand man


Reception of Captain Cook in Hapaee


Robert Frobisher confronts power on two scales: on an individual level, he experiences the combined forces of sexual power and greed in his interactions with Vyvyan Ayrs and his wife Jocasta. As Ayrs tells him in a final confrontation: “Any society’s upper crust is riddled with immorality-- how else d’you think they keep their power?” He also explores power in a world-scale through attempts to come to terms with World War One:

“What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be..... Our will to power, our science, and those very faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man, are the same faculties that’ll snuff out Homo sapiens before this century is out!”




Sonmi-451 provides another perspective on the evolution of conflict and wars, showing that the basic dynamics are not different in her future:

Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaration posits how, in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only “rights,” the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful. In corpocracy, this means the Juche. What is willed by the Juche is the tidy xtermination of a fabricant underclass.

Meronym provides a cautionary perspective on the future that may await us in our zeal to acquire power in all its forms:

The Prescient answered, Old Uns tripped their own Fall.
Oh, her words was a rope o’ smoke. But Old Uns’d got the Smart!
I mem’ry she answered, Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o humans, yay, a hunger for more.
More what? I asked. Old Uns’d got ev’rythin.
Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay. Now the Hole World is big, but it weren’t big nuff for that hunger what made Old Uns rip out the skies an boil up the seas an poison soil with crazed atoms an donkey ’bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned an babbits was freakbirthed. Fin’ly, bit’ly, then quicksharp, states busted into bar’bric tribes an the Civ’lize Days ended, ’cept for a few folds’n’pockets here’n’there, where its last embers glimmer.


Image from Riddley Walker, inspiration for Sloosha’s Crossin’

Is there any form of power than can combat corporate and governmental power and greed? Luisa Rey presents another form of power: that of public outrage, driven by the media, which can provide a counterweight to greed that acts against the public interest. However, what happens when the media is co-opted by the same corporate powers which it should be scrutinizing?:

Van Zandt’s bookshelf-lined office is as neat as Grelsch’s is chaotic. Luisa’s host is finishing up. “The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power, and influence. Our sole weapon is public outrage. Outrage blocked the Yuccan Dam, ousted Nixon, and in part, terminated the monstrosities in Vietnam. But outrage is unwieldy to manufacture and handle. First, you need scrutiny; second, widespread awareness; only when this reaches a critical mass does public outrage explode into being. Any stage may be sabotaged. The world’s Alberto Grimaldis can fight scrutiny by burying truth in committees, dullness, and misinformation, or by intimidating the scrutinizers. They can extinguish awareness by dumbing down education, owning TV stations, paying ‘guest fees’ to leader writers, or just buying the media up. The media—and not just The Washington Post—is where democracies conduct their civil wars.”


The Individual and the Forces of History: Is There Hope For Our Future?

After considering the kaleidoscope of human power and greed in Cloud Atlas, are we left with any hope for the future, or is Mitchell leaving us with a pessimistic prognosis? Cloud Atlas provides a staggering exploration of different manifestations of power and greed over centuries of human history: colonialism, missionary activity, 19th-century whaling, the modern quest for fame and fortune, and corporate greed, to name a few.



In spite of these dark depictions of the negative influence of the human quest for power, Mitchell does provide some hope that individuals can and do make a difference. Luisa Rey and her allies uncover the publicize the deception and danger of Seaboard Power Inc.. Zachry and Meronym band together and manage to survive plague and attacks from the Kona. Sonmi-451 sacrifices herself for the good of the fabricants, and lives on in the religious practices of the Old Uns and the studies of the Prescients. Fittingly, Mitchell gives Adam Ewing the last word, as he reflects on his experiences after his rescue from poisoning and drowning:

If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword.
A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.
[W]hat is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

Just as Mitchell channels his concerns about his son's future through Ewing's words, so does he provide us with a clear sense of how critical our individual choices are in shaping our own children's future. Individuals are not swept aside by the forces of history--one by one, we make up these forces. The actual future of our species and our planet is in our hands. Will we act for a just world, or sit back and contribute to the demise of our planet through inaction, or greed, or cowardice? These pivotal questions, and this critical choice, give Cloud Atlas its power.

At the Museum of Science in Boston, there is an exhibit just outside the doors of the Planetarium that demonstrates—through a series of adjacent panels—the scale of the Earth in relation to the universe at large. The first panel shows the Earth’s location in the Solar System (as a microscopic dot, mind you), which is followed by a second panel showing the Solar System’s location in the Milky Way (also microscopic). The third panel is of the galaxy’s location in its Supercluster or whateverthefuck it’s called, and so forth and so on, concluding with a final panel depicting the entire observable universe. Reading Cloud Atlas is like zooming out from a point on the Earth to the edge of the universe and then back in again, as represented by those aforementioned panels. Do we need a visual aid?

nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzYHWI...
n

This novel, of course, has little to do with the cosmos, but the analogy is fitting for describing the vastness of its scope. It is a hugely ambitious novel connecting characters through space and time, from Adam Ewing’s mid-nineteenth century voyage from the Chatham Islands to Sonmi~451’s ascent to sentience at an indeterminate period in Korea’s future, and several places in between. The novel then goes even further into the future, so far in fact that it becomes indistinguishable from the past, and like the reverse zoom in the video above, the novel collapses back in on itself, ending exactly where it began.

n  “Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an’ made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more.”n  
n

Cloud Atlas is about human slavery and captivity as it exists in all its forms, at all points in time. Throughout history, humans have enslaved each other on the basis of skin color and racial background, religious beliefs and cultural or ethnic differences. The weak have been enslaved to the strong, the old to the young, and the poor to the well-to-do. This novel goes a step further by exploring the concept of knowledge and how it relates to the socioeconomic hierarchy of the future. Knowledge is all that separates us from savagery, and yet it is our most transient asset. I am probably making this book sound like a course in sociology, though it is anything but. Cloud Atlas is a brilliantly constructed novel delineating the cyclicality of human civilization and it is written by someone who has immediately become one of my favorite authors. In fact, David Mitchell’s only flaw is that he is indecisive. Unable to choose among the various genres of fiction available, he ends up...writing them all! Cloud Atlas is historical fiction, it is a dark comedy, it is a crime thriller, it is science fiction, it is a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

The middle chapter, while the most difficult to read, is easily my favorite. In Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After, humanity’s perpetual quest for domination provides the very spark needed to create and sustain civilization. However, this quest is a double-edged sword that becomes its own downfall, since domination is a self-defeating goal, and it is this downfall that ultimately causes civilization to collapse. But despite its bleak forecasts, Cloud Atlas inspires a glimmer of hope for our future, for as insignificant as one person may be, as much as one fathoms his life to have no impact greater than that of a single drop in a limitless ocean, the question is posed: “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

n  n
The Milky Way’s Galactic Center
© 2009 Serge Brunier, The Sky of the Earth

There's the sound of a deeply contented sigh emanating from the lips of someone clutching this book to herself like a long-lost friend, a bead of tear perched precariously atop disorderly eyelashes. And there's the barely audible sound of her turning the pages ricocheting off the pliant walls of time and space, sculpting a minuscule dent on the surface of a collective fate and this perplexing cosmic interconnection.

She cannot properly articulate her awe or even fathom her own bewilderment at being rendered so tearfully sentimental by another case of 'old wine in new bottle'. Now she longs to believe that any or all of her trivial actions will lift her out of her predestined prison and place her somewhere on the crisscrossing grid of timelines and geographical boundaries, enable others to hear the distinct echo of her shout into the void. She just by herself is insignificant, not even a mere drop in the pool of time and she fears this looming threat of obscurity above all. But then David Mitchell gently reminds her that mute resignation to the 'natural order of things' is cowardice and billions and billions of droplets like her coalesce to form the ocean itself. She can will herself to shape the world any way she can.

American notary, Adam Ewing sails reluctantly across the Pacific aboard The Prophetess, unaware of the events that will set into motion a change of heart which will contribute toward the making of history.

A disinherited, arrogant and musically gifted Robert Frobisher chronicles the making of his avant garde 'Cloud Atlas' sextet in a series of letters addressed to his dear friend from distant Zedelghem.

Dauntless Luisa Rey doggedly pursues the truth and exposes the nexus between the Nixon administration and corporate corruption, emerging victorious against the tide of adverse circumstances.

Ageing, pedantic and self-important vanity publisher Timothy Cavendish endures a 'ghastly ordeal' partly as comeuppance for his lifelong selfishness but manages to emerge from his own predicament with a reformed worldview.

Fabricant Sonmi~451 rises above the 'catechisms' of institutionalized servitude to 'corpocratic' masters in futuristic Korea to light the spark of revolution.

In a post-apocalyptic Hawaii, valleysman Zachry witnesses mankind on the brink of a choice between complete annihilation and survival through self-reform.

And master puppeteer David Mitchell pulls all their strings from the background.

As she delights in her newfound admiration for the sweeping scope of this masterpiece and Mitchell's ambitious foray into the Matryoshka-doll structured story-telling, she doesn't fail to notice the accusations of gimmickry and pretensions, of self-indulgent writing, of 'trying too hard', of 'contrivances' and acknowledges the legitimacy of these opinions.
But then she remembers Robert Frobisher answering Mitchell's detractors on his behalf.

n  "Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late..."n

Do you blame her for chuckling at the man's foresight and wit?

Enthralled, she notices the parallels drawn between the rabid consumerism of our times and a 'predatory society' based on principles of the empowered devouring the disenfranchised and the voiceless, the invisibility of the aged in the eyes of the young and unwrinkled, carefully inserted allusions to virulent sexism, racism and xenophobia through the ages, the enthusiastic nod given to cross-cultural harmony and freedom of sexuality and she wonders if Mitchell has left any of the issues haunting mankind since times immemorial unexplored.

Thus as Mitchell tips his hat to the likes of Melville and Calvino, to prose stylists like Joyce and Nabokov, to the traditions of intertextual witticisms and metafictional references, to all the disparate voices and genres that help enrich the body of literature today, she tips her hat to Mitchell's genius and the sheer audacity of his vision.

Unhappily she then takes cognizance of the fact that never again will she read 'Cloud Atlas' for the first time.
But then again, she might.

I lied. I stopped reading on page 441. I can't ever recall doing this before. If I start a book I finish it always holding out hope or at least out of respect for the written words. It began eloquently with me falling through the words into the story. The writing and the told stories diminished for me from here where it became unbearable, a self inflicted wound to continue. I kept pushing myself catching the intricate threads, some of the subtleties, the themes of power, vulnerability, loss, identity. This craft is not easy to do. It gained my respect. Respect however is not enjoyment, or the book becoming part of my inner life therefore exerting some degree of a profound change within me. What happened? I believe that the quality of writing, even within the limitations of changing genre-writing, became so that it evolved into noise, obliterating for me what he was trying to accomplish. I understand Mitchell was pointing fun at some genres but when that itself is done so poorly it is like music at a concert hall that is set to make fun of some type of noisome music and continues it for two hours to get the point across. I think it is unreasonable, possibly unfair, to expect the audience to stay.

Flipping through the reviews many of the people I most respect on GR had positive reviews. Some-many, of these reviews were after rereads. What was being done became more apparent and fruitful. These people are better readers than myself. That is why I befriended them with the hopes of improving my skills. I don't expect that in such a short time I have gotten there yet and I may have missed much. The book will never call me back for a rereading. These reviews will, despite some equally impassioned, articulate, negative reviews. I will plant the book on my shelves and even if the time is never right at some point I will settle it in front of me and see what I may have missed.

I struggled with 1 or 2 stars. Trying to be honest instead of nice the book for me was not, o.k. I didn't like it. I just hit the 1 star and didn't injure myself. When I reread Cloud Atlas this rating may change. I may have changed.

*Cada vez que vuelvo a mi libro favorito sigo siendo testigo de que es mi libro FAVORITO.*

Este libro me ha enganchado de una forma única. El libro nos narra una mezcla de historias en distintas épocas temporales que tienen un nexo en común entre todas ellas. Pasaremos por 6 historias diferentes, con un notario del siglo XIX que va a través del Pacífico; un músico brillante en periodo de entreguerras en Europa, una periodista intrépida de los años 70, un editor con su propia editorial independiente en un mal momento, un clon que es camarera del futuro y un superviviente del fin del mundo.

La novela narra diferentes relatos dentro de una trama general, en los que va variando muchísimo el tono, el estilo, la orientación, el ritmo y por decirlo casi todo; ya que pasamos de un diario a cartas, de cartas a una novela de misterio, luego a una autobiografía y luego a una supuesta grabación de una entrevista. Lo que a mí me ha fallado de la novela, ha sido un par de relatos, que se me han parecido bastante lentos o insulsos mismamente, como son el que comienza la novela, del notario a través del Pacífico y el de el hombre que sobrevivió al fin del mundo. Pero sin embargo, el resto de relatos compensan toda la novela, el del músico Robert Frobisher es absolutamente genial como se mete en la época, la historia detectivesca de la periodista Luisa Rey me tuvo muy enganchado, con el editor Timothy Cavendish me eche unas cuantas risas con sus desventuras alocadas y por último, mi favorita fue la entrevista entre el Archivador y Sonmi 451, por ese mundo tecnológico futurista tan asombroso que relata el autor.

Así a través de las seis historias vamos tejiendo una historia basada en las relaciones humanas. Además tiene una estructura un tanto especial, una especie de muñecas rusas donde una historia va dentro de otra. Nos presentan primera las historias más antiguas hasta llegar a la más futurista en el tiempo, cortándolas todas en un punto clave, tenemos una historia central completa del máximo futuro y vamos regresando de nuevo hacia el pasado, estableciendo esas pequeñas conexiones que suceden de forma directa o indirecta, pero que han sido prometidas por el subtítulo de la novela.

Lo recomiendo mucho, me ha parecido una joyita de la literatura de hoy en día, esa mezcla de estilos y esos personajes tan diferentes en diferentes épocas, me ha parecido algo ambicioso y bastante sorprendente y sobre todo, original, no creo que te encuentres otro libro así. Te hace pensar, te hace disfrutar, estarás buscando hilos conductores de la historia, encontraras reflexiones sobre multitud de temas (amor, avaricia, envidia, confianza, caída de civilizaciones, extinción del mundo, racismo, religión, poder…etc) y además de millones de párrafos para subrayas o marcar. Mi nota es un 5/5 por lo adictiva que es, de esas cuesta dejar de leer aunque tenga algunos momentos en donde se estanque un poquito.

Cloud Atlas is a book that I have put off for a long time. Yes, it was on my radar, but the only reason I finally bit the bullet and bought my copy was because I found it for a couple of pounds in a charity shop. It still took me over half a year to get to it. I have Mercedes from MercysBookishMusings on YouTube to thank for finally spurring me on to just get stuck in.

My initial concerns about this book were that it would be complicated and challenging, and I'm sure these are concerns that are shared by many other people who have yet to approach this book (or maybe David Mitchell's writing in general). After reading it, I can safely say that yes, it is challenging, but it is not complicated like you may think.

The narrative structure is the most interesting aspect of this book: You make your way through 6 narratives during the course of the story. The first five narratives are stopped halfway through until you reach the sixth which acts as a 'mirror', running all the way through before taking you backwards to finish up all the previous narrators' stories. So essentially, you start and end in the same place. The narratives all take place at different points in time, starting during the Gold Rush period and ending in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii.

The structure of the book is not difficult to understand, and I really enjoyed the nesting of stories inside each other (no matter how subtly done). There is a link between each narrative, which I did find believable, and Mitchell has verified himself that all but one of the narrators are re-incarnations of each other progressing through time. Although I don't believe in re-incarnation, I found the idea very interesting, and I liked seeing the links pop up here and there. Although at times I felt Mitchell could be a little ham-fisted with the more physical links, I thought generally the way he tied so many vastly different narratives together worked incredibly well.

The more challenging aspect of this read is the differences in narrative style. This book tells its story in so many different genres and mediums (journal entries, letters, interviews, crime fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, comedy, etc.), and although I think this one of the best things about Cloud Atlas, it can also be one of the most infuriating aspects too. With anything that contains a range of styles, you are going to find stuff you love - but you're also going to find a lot you don't love, maybe even hate. Personally, my least favourite narrative was the sixth, and only un-interrupted narrative, that of Zachary's post-apocalyptic world. I found the dialect used stilted and difficult to concentrate on at times, and the alterations to words to give them different meanings (e.g. babbit for 'baby') annoyed me at times. As this was slap-bang in the middle of the novel, and with no interruption, it was a longer and more arduous read for me. However, there were several narratives in here that I adored, and the fact that they were interrupted didn't really bother me as I was already gearing myself up to get back to them.

For me personally, Timothy Cavendish's comedy sections were the best in the novel. I loved the style of humour, and the situations he got himself into were ridiculous but also strangely believable, and I read both halves of his narrative in one sitting each. I also throughly enjoyed the futuristic, sci-fi sections with Sonmi-451, and also Luisa Rey's character whose tale read as a fast-paced crime novel filled with danger and intrigue.

With this book, I think you really have to commit to it, and prepare yourself to not necessarily love every single part of it. Overall, I think the narratives you really click with are well worth the read, and I'm very glad I picked it up. And maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones that love everything about every narrative, and this book will be something you return to again and again.

I will definitely be seeking out more of David Mitchell's writing in the future, and I'll have to give the film a re-watch now as I'll definitely be more attune to what's going on this time around! (I guess that's what being jet-lagged watching a 3 hour film on an incredibly long flight does to you...)

My year of reading is starting off quite nicely so far with the books you've all helped me select. I think I'll be hard pressed this year, however, to read anything better than Cloud Atlas.

What a remarkable achievement!

The author, David Mitchell, starts off in 1850 on a ship in the Chatham Islands and jumps ahead through time and setting, telling six separate, but connected stories. He ultimately takes us in the future to a post- apocalyptic Hawaii and then reverses the sequence returning us to 1850. He shows off his writing skills using six distinctive narrative voices. To describe the stories as being only 'connected' though, isn't quite right. Together, they paint a larger picture of the human condition.

And the picture, although not without redeeming features, is not a pretty one.
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But the skill with which he paints it is damn impressive. At times, he even appears to be showing off - I'll forgive him for it though, because, even if it is a tad pretentious, this is a work of a man at the top of his game.

This is definitely a book that is richer with rereading, but I still prefer his "Ghostwritten" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), which has significant echoes of this.

STRUCTURE


It’s often described as a matryoshka doll or a turducken, but that’s not the best analogy, imo.
Imagine six very different short books, each open at roughly the middle, then pile them up - and that is the structure of Cloud Atlas (story 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, 6, 5b, 4b, 3b, 2b, 1b). The structure is echoed in this clever and very brief review:http://www.fromnought2sixty.com/final....

This is a close lifting of what Calvino describes in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler: "the Oriental tradition" where one story stops "at the moment of greatest suspense" and then narrative switches to another story, perhaps by the protagonist picking up a book and reading it.

(The structure of the film is entirely different: it cuts between all six stories repeatedly, which emphasises the parallels in the different stories. In the medium of film, I think it works quite well - if you already know the stories.)

Each story is a separate and self-contained tale, told in a different format, voice and even dialect, but with similarities in theme and some overlapping characters.

THEMES

There are many themes. Connectedness (and possibly reincarnation) are perhaps the most obvious - and the themes themselves are often connected with other themes. In addition to connectedness, themes include: victim/predator/leech, journeys, escape, transformation, falling/ascending (both literal and metaphorical or spiritual).

I think the overriding theme is the many, varied, but perhaps inevitable ways that humans exploit each other through power, money, knowledge, brute force, religion or whatever: “The world IS wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. ‘The weak are meat, the strong do eat.’… One fine day, a purely predatory world SHALL consume itself.” This is echoed in The Thousand Autumns, "In the animal kingdom... the vanquished are eaten."

There are also connections between characters and events, and, less subtly (completely unnecessarily, imo), someone in each has a birth mark that looks like a comet.

(Connectedness is much the strongest theme in the film, partly through rapid switching between stories to emphasize the parallels, and also because the same actors are used in multiple stories.)


1a THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING

The opening tale concerns a voyage, and immediately draws the reader in with echoes of Crusoe, “Beyond the Indian hamlet, on a forlorn strand, I happened upon a trail of recent footprints”. Adam is a wide-eyed and honourable young American lawyer in 1850 (somewhat reminiscent of Jacob de Zoet in Mitchell’s latest novel: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), on his way to the Chatham Isles to trace the beneficiaries of a will. He struggles with the politics of the ship’s crew and issues of colonialism, slavery, genocide (Maori of Moriori) and then… it breaks off mid sentence!

This story has particular parallels with Matthew Kneale's English Passengers (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... a voyage between colonies, with a theme of exploitation.

2a LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEM

This is a series of letters from Robert Frobisher, a penniless young English composer, to his friend Rufus Sixsmith, written in 1931 (quite a lot of sixes in this book). He has a wealthy and educated background, but has been cut off from his family, so is in Belgium (Edinburgh, in the film!), searching for the aging composer Vyvyan Ayrs, where he hopes to gain a position as amanuensis and collaborator: the journey involves literal travel, but also the seeking of fame and fortune. This section opens with a visceral passion for music, which infuses this whole section; Frobisher hears music in every event: dreaming of breaking china, “an august chord rang out, half-cello, half-celeste, D major (?), held for four beats”. Frobisher is an unscrupulous opportunist (very unlike Adam Ewing), but not without talent. The latter enables him to wheedle his way into the complex lives of the Ayrs/Crommelynck household (the latter cropping up in other Mitchell books).

3a HALF LIVES: THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERY

It’s 1975 and Dr Rufus Sixsmith is now 66. He is broke and either in trouble with mysterious forces or paranoid. This one’s a thriller, involving a would-be-investigative-journalist, Luisa Rey. Mitchell inserts a caveat via Sixsmith, “all thrillers would wither without contrivance”, though actually much of this story is obscure until the second half.

4a THE GHASTLY ORDEAL OF TIMOTHY CAVENDISH

This is contemporary comedy: Cavendish is a vanity publisher with an unexpected best-seller on his hands (memoirs of a murderer). Like Sixsmith, he ends up broke and fleeing enemies, though this one is more of a farce, with echoes of Jonathan Coe’s “What a Carve Up” (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...).

5a AN ORISON OF SOMNI-251

This is set in 22nd century Korea, which is an extreme corpocracy (corporate capitalism taken to its logical conclusion – which even affects the language (see below)). Purebloods are “a sponge of demand that sucked goods and services from every vendor” and it is a crime to fail to meet one’s monthly spending target. (In the film, this section looks stunning, but the underlying philosophy is largely ignored.)

The format is an interrogation of Somni-251, a fabricant (humanoid clone), who is a monastic server of fast food at Papa Song’s – which just happens to have golden arches as its logo (the film plays safe and is not so obviously McDonald's). She is knowledgeable and opinionated, though it’s not immediately clear what, if anything, else she’s done wrong. There are plenty of nods to Orwell, Huxley and others – even to the extent that Somni mentions reading them. The ideas of ascension, heaven, an afterlife and so on that are suggested in many sections are explicit in this one; it’s where the themes of the book really begin to come together. What it means to be human, exemplified by the relative positions of purebloods and fabricants, are reminiscent of the slavery that Adam Ewing considers: the idea that fabricants lack a personality is a “fallacy propagated for the comfort of purebloods”. She has a distinctively poetic voice, which lends beauty to the section of the book, but causes problems for her: a fabricant that is as eloquent as a pureblood creates unease.

6 SLOOSHA’S CROSSIN’ AN’ EV’RYTHIN’ AFTER

The only section told, unbroken, from start to finish, which is ironic given that it’s set in a very broken future world. Even the language has disintegrated to some extent, much as in Russell Hoban’s “Riddley Walker”, to which Mitchell acknowledges a debt in this article:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005...
See below for specific linguistic quirks, and here for my review of RW: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....

Zachry is explaining his life, beliefs and practices, though it isn’t clear who he is addressing (or why). He talks of “The Fall” and “flashbangin” which were the end of “Civ’lize Days”, though some “Prescients” survived on a ship which visits and barter at regular interval, but never leave anything “more smart” than what is already there. “Human hunger birthed the Civ’lize, but human hunger killed it too” – even though Malthus was revered as a prophet by that earlier civilisation.

Then one of the Prescient, Meronym, comes to stay for six months. She wants to learn and observe, but many of the islanders fear her motives. Zachry is keen to explain himself and to learn from her. His language can make him sound simple, but he’s actually quite prescient: “There ain’t no journey what don’t change you some”, which is perhaps the message of the book. The deeper question in this section is who is exploiting whom (there is also a warfaring tribe, the Kona)?

5b AN ORISON OF SOMNI-251

Somni’s story starts to make more sense, particularly the meaning and method of ascension and her story’s connections with Sloosha’s Crossin’ (6).

4b THE GHASTLY ORDEAL OF TIMOTHY CAVENDISH

Imprisoned in a most unlikely place, Timothy hatches an extraordinary and comical bid for freedom. (It’s not quite The Great Escape.)

3b HALF LIVES: THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERY

There is real excitement in this, though some may find it slightly confusing. When one character writes notes comparing the real and virtual past (p392-393), the levels of stories-within-stories and boundaries of fact and fiction are well and truly blurred, which is part of what this whole book is about. (Is Luisa "real" in the context of the book? She doesn't always feel it, but there is a direct link between her and another character.):

“The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming… in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.”

“Power seeks + is the right to ‘landscape’ the virtual past.”

“One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments” – something this book is often likened to.

“The uncreated and the dead exist solely in our actual and virtual pasts. Now the bifurcation of these two pasts will begin.”

2b LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEM

Will Frobisher make good – or even be good? “We do not stay dead for long… My birth next time…”

1b THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING

Adam lands on an island where white Christian missionaries appear to be doing good work. However, the relationship between blacks and whites (and even between man and wife) exemplify the unequal power relationships that are common to all the stories. Adam dreams of a more utopian world, though.


LANGUAGE/DIALECT

The two futuristic sections are notable for their language. Some people seem to dislike or struggle with this aspect, but I think it adds depth, interest and plausibility.

The corporate world of Somni-451 (5) means that many former brand names have become common nouns (as hoover, kleenex and sellotape already have): ford (car), fordjam, sony (PC), kodak (photo), nikes (any shoes), disney (any film/movie), starbuck (coffee).

There are neologisms, too: facescaping (extreme cosmetic surgery), upstrata (posh), dijied (digitised).

Perhaps more surprisingly, a few words have simplified spelling: xactly, xpose, fritened, lite (mind you, that is already quite common), thruway.

In the post-apocalyptic world of Sloosha’s Crossin’ (6), the dialect is a mix of childish mishearings and misspellings, very similar to that in Russell Hoban’s “Riddley Walker” (see links in the section about Sloosha, above): I telled him, hurrycane.

At times, it’s very poetic: “Watery dark it was inside. Wax’n’ teak-oil’n’time was its smell… An’ then we heard a sort o’ roaring underneath the silence, made o’ mil’yuns o’ whisp’rin’s like the ocean.” More graphically, “We’d get a feverish hornyin’ for each other… I was slurpyin’ her lustsome mangoes an’ moistly fig”!



LINKS BETWEEN SECTIONS

Adam Ewing’s journal (1) is found by Robert Frobisher (2).

The recipient of Robert Frobisher’s (2) letters is Rufus Sixsmith (2, 3).

The letters from Frobisher (2) to Sixsmith are sent via Sixsmith (2, 3) to Luisa Rey (3). Rey ponders, “Are molecules of Zedelghem Chateau, of Robert Frobisher’s hand, dormant in this paper for forty-four years, now swirling in my lungs, in my blood?”

Ayrs/Frobishers’s (2) music is heard by Luisa Rey (3), and she has a sense of deja audio.

Luisa Rey’s (3) manuscript is sent to Timothy Cavendish (4).

Luisa (3) sees Ewing's (1) ship, The Prophetess, in a marina.

A film about Timothy Cavendish (4) is watched by Somni-451 (5).

Somni-451 (5) is prayed to by those in Sloosha’s Crossin’ (6) and a recording of her interview is watched by Zachry. She also has a memory of a car crash (perhaps like Luisa 93)?)

Kazuo Ishiguro tries something slightly similar and less ambitious in his short story collection, Nocturnes

Somni is apparently a fan of Jorge Luis Borges; she has read Funes' Remembrances - a nod to Funes, His Memory, which is in Artificies.

Who has comet birthmarks:
(1) No one
(2) Robert Frobisher
(3) Luisa Rey
(4) Timothy Cavendish
(5) Somni-451
(6) Meronym - but in the film, it's Zachry (why??)
Mind you, the first time I read it, I expected it to be Zachry who had it.
There is also a character in Ghostwritten (see below) with such a birthmark.


See discussion here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...

SOME LINKS WITH HIS OTHER WORKS

Katy Forbes in Ghostwritten has a comet-shaped birthmark.

Adam Ewing (1)'s ship is seen in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (see 1.30 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNpwR...)

Luisa Rey (3) and Timothy Cavendish (4) appear in Ghostwritten.

Vyvyan Ayrs (2)'s daughter is an old woman in Black Swan Green.

MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES

*tI love the bathos of “cancerous suburbs, tedious farmland, spoiled Sussex… versified cliffs [Dover] as romantic as my arse in a similar hue.”

*t“Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction.”

*t“I felt Nietzche was reading me, not I him.”

*t“Most cities are nouns, but New York is a verb.” Attributed (in the book) to JFK.

* "Power. What do we mean? 'The ability to determine another man's luck.'"

*t“The room bubbles with sentences more spoken than listened to.”

*t“A predawn ocean breeze makes vague promises.”

*t“Time is the speed at which the past decays, but disneys [films] enable a brief resurrection.”

*t“Lite [sic] from the coming day defined the world more clearly now.”

*t“Sunlite [sic] bent around the world, lending fragile colour to wild flowers.”

*t“We [over 60s] commit two offences just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly… Our second offence is being Everyman’s memento mori.”

*t“Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary… its victory is assured.”

*t“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

*t“As dear old Kilvert notes, nothing is more tiresome than being told what to admire.”

*t“Her contempt… if bottled, could have been vended as rat poison… I heard male indignation trampled by female scorn.”

*t“The colour of monotony is blue.”



My review from early 2000s...

A novel comprising six interlocking tales on the theme of connectedness and predacity (few likeable characters, though certainly some interesting and amusing ones).

The idea is that souls drift through time and space (and bodies), like clouds across the sky. As one character learns the story of another, the layers of fiction meld: which are "fact" within the overall fiction?

Each story has a totally different style, appropriate to its time, genre and supposed authorship. The two futuristic ones use two different versions of English: etymologically logical, but lots of made up words; the capitalist Korean one hints at the political/corporate philosophy underlying the society (as in Orwell's 1984) and the primitive Hawaiian one has more shades of Caribbean/Pidgin and a very similar feel to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). One crucial but evil corporation is a fast food place with a golden arches logo - I hope Mitchell's lawyers checked that was OK!

Somewhat incestuously, a couple of main characters had a mention in his first novel, Ghostwritten (Louisa Rey & the Cavendish brothers, the latter having echoes of Coe's What a Carve Up) and the composer's daughter from this book appears in the later Black Swan Green.

Much as I enjoyed this, and think the Russian-doll, nested story structure is clever, I preferred the more subtle and less gimmicky approach he uses in Ghostwritten (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...).

Three good pieces about this on Guardian Bookclub:

* The importance of interruption: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010...

* Connections: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010...

* Mitchell talking about his inspirations: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010...

7. COLLECTING MY THOUGHTS: A REVIEW BY A. H.

Buddy read with the amazing Fabian (whom everyone here knows as Councillor).

If this doesn't end up on my top three reads in 2017, I will eat my hat. Before I start my review, I must say I love Matthias's review of this book. Not only is it my favourite review of the book, but it is one of the best book reviews I've ever read.

Also, I was skimming some of the reviews of this book, and from what I could see, not many people liked Half-lives - The First Luisa Rey Mystery. I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed it, because I love me some hard-boiled detective stories. What slowed me down, however, was Sloosha's Crossin' and Ev'rythin' After.

RTC.

A origem de tudo sempre intrigou o Homem. Desde tempos ancestrais, questões como "De onde venho?" e "Para onde vou?", são ecos na nossa mente. Muitos têm sido os arautos a apresentar soluções diversas para estes dilemas existenciais. Não deixa de ser caricato que, aquela que tem vingando, coloque um ovo como "coisa" primordial. No entanto, do seu chocar, não resultou o mundo idílico presumido, numa política defendida pelos criacionistas, baseada em teorias incompreensíveis de geração espontânea. Quebrando uma ignorância hipnotizante, surge Darwin, com a sua Teoria da Evolução das Espécies, na qual defende que, para garantir a subsistência, seres unicelulares cooperaram numa simbiose mística. Fundamenta-se uma ideia de comunhão entre os seres terrestres, descendentes de um progenitor comum que sofreu sucessivos processos de adaptação. A par das imensas espécies que habitam na Terra, também os céus são forrados por diferentes tipos de nuvens - cúmulos, limbos, estratos, cirros - que, em conjunto, sustentam a atmosfera, como filhas de Atlas.

Quiçá inspirado por uma ideia tão etérea quanto esta, David Mitchel apresenta neste livro várias histórias de cometas que resplandecem no astro literário, ofertando-lhe um brilho intenso. Aproximando o leitor das realidades narradas, o autor faz uso de um género epistolar que adensa a empatia, num pacto inquebrantável. Numa viagem de circum-navegação atmosférica, ele é banqueteado com seis vivências (!?), díspares ou complementares, que o levam para oceanos de sucessivas épocas - desde as ancestrais viagens marítimas com intuito comercial, mascarado pela intenção civilizadora, até a um futuro distópico, no qual a subjugação se mantém. A genialidade do autor resplandece pela criação de diferentes cenários, vários elencos, diversas linguagens e formas de agir, criando uma manta bem cosida, num Patchwork formidável - que nem a escrita densa nem a complexidade do enredo ofuscam.

Sendo humanos, claro que as preferências pendem mais para uma histórias, fruto das nossas próprias vivências. Selei laços com um pianista, de nome Frobisher, que, entre promiscuidades, se enamora pela arte, com laivos fatalistas. Este destaque não pretende menosprezar qualquer outra das camadas de uma obra brilhante, até porque funcionam em perfeita consonância, qual garfada de um trifle de vários sabores - nenhum se sobrepondo ao outro. E o que dizer da última página!? Aquele manifesto contra uma supremacia mesquinha que não leva a lado nenhum - antes nos confina a um estatuto de mero animal que definha ante o poderio alheio. Tão actual, tão necessário (Gates acertou no ano para o recomendar!)

Tal como a teoria das cordas, que dispersa as quatro forças básicas do Universo, a partir de uma origem comum; há também um trilho que conecta todo este emaranhado, centrando numa ideia que nunca perecerá: a natural bestialidade humana. A descendência dos chamados animais deixou um rastro no nosso âmago, fundado no arqueoencefálo, onde ideias de luta e tirania dominam o pensamento primitivo. Esta sede pelo poder levou o ser humano ao conceito de civilização, em que haveriam governantes e governados, num sistema baseado na cor, sobretudo. Mas alguém se esqueceu de avisar que por ser inesgotável, essa sede poderá levar à loucura e ao degredo de uma espécie (ou várias), num dilúvio civilizacional. Nessas águas, ainda que revoltas, são espelhadas as nuvens dos céus, conectando mundos distantes no tempo e no espaço, mais semelhantes do que aparentam. Afinal, "somos feitos a partir de poeira estrelar" - moléculas perenes num tempo curvo, que, mediante o ciclo vital, se emaranham em diferentes formas. Tantas como as nuvens no céu!

"Tudo é verdade, se houver gente suficiente para acreditar."

"Não se pode mudar o que já se escreveu sem esborratar tudo mais do que já está."

"O poder ilimitado nas mãos de gente limitada conduz sempre à crueldade."

"Ouve: os selvagens e os civ'lizsdos não se dividem por tribos ò' crenças ò' vales; tod's os humanos são ambas as coisas."

"Todas as revoluções são pura fantasia até que acontecem; então passam a ser inevitabilidades históricas."

"A ignorância gera medo. O medo gera ódio e o ódio gera violência. A violência cria mais violência, até que a única lei que existe é a vontade dos mais poderosos."

What a complete disappointment. Seriously. After reading Mitchell's latest novel The Bone Clocks in the fall of last year, and absolutely loving it, I thought I would dive into one of his earlier and most celebrated novels. To my dismay, I found Cloud Atlas to be contrived, preachy, excruciatingly slow, and, ultimately for me, a waste of time.

So what happened? Why did I not like one of the most popular books of the 21st century and something I expected I would enjoy very much? I mean, it has all the elements of a book I would like: interconnected story-lines, historical fiction, sci-fi, mystery, philosophy.

Here's my problem with the book: the structure.

It sounds cool, right? 6 stories of 6 characters across 6 different times and 6 different spaces. And it's framed like a Russian nesting doll. With each chapter, we end mid-story, until we reach the middle section, and slowly work our way back out getting the conclusions to the stories begun in the first half.

Big mistake. Since each chapter is around 50-60 pages long, and we don't get any resolution in the first half, jumping instead into the next narrative, there is practically nothing to be engaged with. And the 6 different narratives all are written in very different styles, so if you don't like one, good luck sticking with it for 50+ pages.

It all sounded so promising! But it's a bunch of pseudo-Buddhist [and poorly executed] drivel. Mitchell tries to 'connect' all the protagonists of the stories to one another with a comet-shaped birthmark somewhere on their body. And they all have some sort of auxiliary material (i.e. old letters, diary entries, a film) that connects to the narrative before them. It really does sound cool, but the broken up structure of the novel leaves you wanting so much more.

I think I would've liked this book a lot more if each narrative had just been told completely, and then we moved on to the next one. But we have to wait 500 pages to get the conclusion to the first story because it doesn't come until the last chapter! I didn't actually finish the book. I made it 86% of the way through before I stopped myself and said, "Why are you forcing yourself to sit down and read something you are thoroughly disliking?" And then I Wikipedia-ed the ending because I didn't care anymore.

Since I was such a big fan of The Bone Clocks, I will still give Mitchell's other works a chance. Probably not Ghostwritten since that sounds a lot like this one, but maybe one of his more linear novels.

Terminé este libro decepcionado y hasta irritado con el autor.

La novela tiene un pase como proyecto de fin de curso de escritura creativa. No niego que está muy bien escrita, que los cambios de estilo y de registro estén muy conseguidos, que las historias sean entretenidas, pero ahí se queda la cosa. Para mí no deja de ser una colección de cuentos juveniles presentados de forma... digamos que ingeniosa. Aunque también podría decir tramposa.

Claro que también puede ser un problema de expectativas. Uno esperaría (al menos yo lo hice) que todo ese fuego de artificio de capítulos interrumpidos, de historias dentro de historias, de antojos viajeros, de búsqueda de relaciones, terminara con algún tipo de justificación, ese algo más que llevara a estas historias a un punto por encima de esos fogonazos llenos de color pero con poco contenido calórico. Pero nada de nada; no hay más que esa moralina para jovencitos impúberes de que todos tenemos una semillita de bondad dentro de nosotros por muy perversos que nos creamos.

Bueno, sí que hay más. Como el propio autor nos dice en la penúltima de sus historias: “Una nota de violín horrísona: ése será el final de mi sexteto.” ¿Y qué puede ser peor final que ese discurso happy-flower que nos endosa Adam Ewing al final de su capítulo?

“¿Idea revolucionaria o efectismo insustancial?” Pregunta en un momento dado el autor acerca de su obra. La respuesta seguro que se la imaginan ustedes.