After finally dusting off this book from my shelf, which sat for eight years untouched, I devoured it like an irresistible drug. The spirits of the literature gods, dead and alive, have convened with Mitchell, and Mitchell has embraced the half-seen and the unseen, the lives and half-lives, and the mystical, boundless forces that turn a book into a world, a narrative into a universe. There's as much meaning outside the pages, and between words and passages, as there is in the explicit text--a potent cosmos of orbiting ideas. Mitchell has punched a hole in the sky with this book.

That “everyone is connected” is not an original theme of literature. It has been done as prosaically as Coelho or as lofty as Nabokov. Mitchell’s book of six nested stories is a furious and radiant masterpiece of formal structure and polyphonic elasticity, with the universal theme of connection—between generations, geographies, and centuries; people of vastly different ethnicities, cultures, even fabricated clones!

From the South Seas of the mid-19th century to the post-apocalyptic future on Hawaii’s islands, Mitchell explores the link between people as much as a thousand years apart in time and an incalculable amount of distance. Our undertakings, our destructions, our sorrow, our humanity, and our imperfections reach across the millennia. What communicates our exertions is our recording of things said and done. “Sunt lacrimae rerum,” writes the protagonist of the second story. The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.

The six novellas that comprise the novel are written in ascending and descending order. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. There are great tonal shifts between stories, yet the parts equal the whole. As the narrator of the second novella says about his composition, Cloud Atlas Sextet, for six overlapping soloists (piano, clarinet, cello, flute, violin, and cello), they are “each in its own language of key, scale, and color.” There is much to say about music and the structure of this novel.

And, in each story is a character with a comet-shaped birthmark, inferring incarnations of the same soul. The first five titles end in “Half-Lives” (which makes sense because they are only half a story) and the narratives end in a cliffhanger, usually an interrupted sentence or moment. The descending order (or latter half of each novella) pick up the Half Lives where they left off in the ascending stories.

Story #1 is written Melville style, about a notary, Adam Ewing, on a ship in the South Seas, who is facing an ugly truth about people and their predatory nature. In story #2, Belgium, 1931, a scheming, disinherited opportunist, Robert Frorbisher, procures a job as an amanuensis to an ailing, syphilitic composer. His narrative is told via letters to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, Waugh-style. He finds the interrupted journals of Ewing at the composer's house. In the third tale, set in mid-70's California, Luisa Rey, a journalist investigating nefarious activity at a nuclear power plant, is after some sensitive information from physicist Rufus Sixsmith. Luisa also acquires some of the letters that Sixsmith received from Frobisher. Her story has a distinctly Grisham/Chandler style.

Story 4 is about a British publisher, Timothy Cavendish, who has a manuscript of the Luisa Rey story, but ends up imprisoned in a nursing home, trying to escape. Very Amis-y in narrative and characters. In the fifth story, Mievillie-ish, set into Korea’s future, the country is ruled by a totalitarian government, or “Corpocracy;” they clone “fabricants” who function without human sentience. When one fabricant, somni 451, develops human consciousness, her life becomes endangered. This is an era where words like starbucks and disney aren’t proper nouns anymore. Somni is charmed by an archived disney from the 21st century called The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.

The central story, #6, is whole, and the hardest to read (linguistically), where Somni is revered as a kind of enigmatic god-spirit. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world far, far into the future, where humans have reversed to a primitive or Iron Age state. The language is a sort of Twain-esque Pidgin. It takes a while for the dialect and colloquy to make sense, but the effort is worth the reward.

Six places, six times, six vocabularies--in one choate, mind-twisting tale. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (as Churchill would say), and obscured by clouds (as Pink Floyd would sing). There's always treacherous forces coming to annihilate us, manmade and cowardly; there are also moral, stouthearted, everyday flawed heroes with fugitive wings and incorruptible souls. We endure, and we endure, and we endure. We touch one another. Occasionally, we punch a hole in the sky.

The other night I had a dream. I dreamt I was floating down a roiling murky river, tossed this way and that as the waters swirled and eddied, sometimes towards the shore, sometimes away from it, twirling in circles as the river, trees and sky formed a dizzying kaleidoscope of cloudy blues, greens and browns.
Beneath the muddied surface of the water, fish of all sizes swam about, the larger ones chasing the smaller in an endless and vicious dance.

Floating alongside me were a great many objects, some of which sailed so close that I could almost reach out and grasp them. Among the drifting debris was a row of shells, some larger, some smaller, all bobbing about like floats on a fishing line. I managed to grab one of the larger ones and pulled it towards me. It seemed unattached to any line that I could immediately see and I wondered what purpose I could put it to. Being quite thirsty, I dipped it in the cloudy water and drank a mouthful, but the water was so oily and unpleasant that I spit most of it out again. I turned the shell in my hands, examining it closely. The exterior was covered all over in symbols as intricate as a Maori tattoo.

So entranced was I with the pattern that I was almost knocked senseless by a piece of debris that came sweeping towards me with a powerful rush. A raft was my first thought, and I grabbed at it with my free hand and hoisted myself onto it. But this was no ordinary piece of debris. Instead I found myself lying across the battered body of a concert cello; the softer wood of the top had been smashed, but the back and sides which had been carved from a sturdier tree were still intact. I now had a makeshift canoe and holding my tattooed shell close, I hauled my legs aboard and sat clear of the murky water and the scavenging fish beneath.

Using both hands as paddles, I tried to steer myself towards the bank but the current was too strong. The row of floating shells continued to bob close by me so I plucked another from the water. This one was smaller than the first and although it was also intricately decorated, the designs were entirely different. Dots and dashes, some with tails, some without, swooped and dived like little black birds all over its surface but hidden among them, almost invisible, lay one of the symbols from the larger tattooed shell. I was a little intrigued and reached for another. Smaller than its companions and with a less interesting design, I almost threw it overboard but decided to keep it as it fit so perfectly inside the other two. It also made for a better sized drinking cup and being ferociously thirsty by this stage, I decided to drink from the river again. Oily and slimy as it was, this time I swallowed more and felt my strength restored enough to try again for the shore and escape the roiling river. But the current held me fast in its grasp and I could do nothing but fish for another of the floating shells. Smaller again and covered with a pattern of overlapping circles like the internal workings of a clock, I placed it inside its companions where it nestled snugly. Again I drank from the river and found it strangely addictive. An even smaller shell now lay within my reach so I pulled it in and searched its surface for familiar patterns. Nothing struck me as recognisable at first glance but then I spotted a symbol I had seen several times already and I knew that this shell also belonged in the set. I drank some more river water and fell into a deep coma-like sleep.

When I opened my eyes, the canoe was floating within yards of the shore and I reached out to grab a tree root so that I might pull myself free of the river at last. Just then a most intriguing little object floated not far from me, inscribed all over just like the shells and I had to make a decision, ignore it completely or paddle river-ward to retrieve it and so lose my chance of pulling myself free of the viscous torrent. The temptation of the mysterious object was so strong that I left the safety of the bank and followed in its wake. When I finally reached it and pulled it on board, it proved to be an egg-like shape covered in the strangest markings yet but which fitted perfectly within my nest of shells, inspiring such a protective instinct that I immediately looked about for something to cover it with. Of the remaining shells floating about me, I fished out the one closest in size to the egg and placed it carefully on top. Now I was more intrigued than ever as I could see the pattern of this one resembled exactly the one which matched it in size. I drank once again from the river and reached for another shell. Again the correspondence with the one beneath it struck me forcefully; the same clock-like patterns covered it as if this was somehow itself part of the workings of some giant time piece, some cog within a greater cog. Gone were all thoughts of escaping the river now as I alternately drank the viscous liquid and then fished out yet another shell to fit over the last, each covered in symbols, and each finding their match until I had a giant tattooed egg inside which five others lay snugly, each telling a different story.

I felt so euphoric from drinking the river water and so impressed by the neatness of this treasure that I raised the egg to the stars in orison and immediately toppled overboard into the murky depths of the river where the fish swam about busily eating each other. Two larger specimens were fighting over a smaller one, and as I watched, the largest one chased the other away and turned towards its prey. For an instant, I thought it was about to release it but no, its powerfully tattooed jaws swallowed it whole while its gaze turned towards me. Eat or be eaten, I thought and opened my mouth wide to attack. Before I could sink my teeth into its scaly flesh, I woke from my dream in a lather of sweat. When my heart finally stopped racing and my mind unclouded, I felt a huge relief to have finally escaped that viscous river.
But I noticed the oddest thing, my mouth tasted most curiously of soap.

Ironic that I happen to read Cloud Atlas in the same year I read Calvino AND Gibbon's Decline and Fall. All I would have to do is read a little more Melville and perhaps some Jared Diamond and it would be impossible to explain as a mere coincidence. I loved the book. Maybe I'm a pushover for puzzle novels, structural creativity, narrative flourish, thematic clouds, etc., but I really enjoyed every page of Cloud Atlas. I do think this is a strong enough book that it deserves a place on the shelf next to DeLillo or Rushdie. Mitchell took a couple big risks and they paid off fairly well. Not that this is a perfect novel, and it is hard to justify giving it five stars when I also give Dostoevsky and Kafka five stars (certainly they deserve galaxies not stars). I guess the way I look at it is thus - if I read a novel and it makes me want to read another couple novels by the same author it deserves at least 4 stars. If, after reading an author's work, I want to go buy every damn work written - I'm pretty certain that justifies a five star rating.

What a pretentious overwritten book! Mitchell indulges in overblown language and a gimmicky structure that does little in furthering the plot and themes of the book while significanlty slowing the reader. The stories often drag as the author seems more interested in revelling in his own virtuosity than creating a lean, subtle piece of literature. The recurrent motifs are handled in an exceptionally heavy-handed manner, so much so that the reader feels a bit bludgeoned by the end. Further, the characters for the most part fail to make a serious emotional connection to the reader to the point that the reader finds himself not caring about the outcome of any given story. I found the whole thing boring and exceptionally trite. As one other reviewer put it - the more you have read the less impressed you will be with this book. Truly shocked that it made the short list for the Man-Booker Prize. Definitely not worth another read.

In Memory of Double Bills

I saw a lot of double bills in the heyday of independent cinemas.

They weren’t just two current release films that had been packaged to eke out some extra dollars for the exhibitor. They were carefully curated films that shared a theme and formed part of a whole season of similarly matched films.

Usually, the season was promoted by a poster that illustrated each film with a fifty word capsule review. For many years, I kept these posters in a folder, at least until I got married and had to start hiding what I hoarded.

The double bills themselves were where I learned about the greats of film culture. Hitchcock, Ford, Godard, Truffaut, Woody Allen, etc.

They whetted an appetite that continues to this day.

The thing about a double bill is that the films could be enjoyed individually, but they also fed meaning to each other.

One of my favourite matches was Antonioni’s “The Passenger” and Polanski’s “The Tenant”, both of which involved a character adopting the persona of another character and then embarking on a journey or travelling under the guise of the other character.

Both films benefited from the juxtaposition, and it made for great discussions between friends when you emerged from the cinema.

Almost 20 years later, I was sitting next to a very appealing, strong, independent, older woman at a film industry lunch, and I told her this story.

She smiled and said, “That was me. I curated those seasons.”

She was then a co-owner of one of the most successful chains of independent cinemas. Unfortunately, her chain didn’t survive the multiplex, nor did double bills, as far as I know.

Film culture is the poorer for it. It can’t just be learned from books, it must be learned in front of a screen, preferably a big one.

Why Don’t You Show Me?

I’ve started with this diversion, because, even though this is my second reading of “Cloud Atlas” and the first was well before I learned there was to be a film, the novel always struck me as filmic.

If it wasn’t made to be filmed (however challenging the prospect), it seemed to be influenced by film, particularly genre film, and possibly the sort of double bills that I had consumed.

I love the fact that David Mitchell’s works ooze film and cultural literacy, not to mention cross-cultural diversity.

It’s one of the things I hope doesn’t disappear as audiences become less genre and art form diverse.

Just as James Joyce alluded to the Classics in “Ulysses”, many modern novelists allude to diverse art forms.

If we restrict our interest to only one or a few, we might not “get” the allusions. And not getting them, we might not pay sufficient attention.

To this extent, I'd argue that “Cloud Atlas” isn't so much a difficult novel, as it just requires an attentive reader.

I’ve Tried and I’ve Tried and I’m Still Mystified

I originally rated the novel three stars on the basis of a reading several years ago, before I joined Good Reads.

Having re-read it with a view to a review, I’ve upgraded my review to five stars. So what happened?

When I finished my re-read, I had decided to rate it four stars.

There were things I still didn’t get, even though they were there on the page in front of me.

As I collated my notes, things started to drop into place and I started to get things, at least I think I did.

My initial reservation was that there were six stories juxtaposed in one book, and I wasn’t convinced that they related to each other adequately.

If together they were supposed to constitute a patchwork quilt, some patches jarred, others weren’t stitched together adequately. I couldn’t see the relationship. It wasn’t manifesting itself to me.

I didn’t think Mitchell had done enough to sew the parts together. I couldn’t understand why the six films on the same bill had been collected together. I didn’t know what the glue was. There was no bond. They were all just there.

If they were supposed to be connected, I couldn’t see the connection.

Who was to blame: Mitchell or me? Was anyone to blame, or did I just need to exert myself a bit harder?

In a way, this review is the story of how I exerted myself a bit harder, got back on top and managed to give the author his due.

Spoilers

I'll try to discuss the novel with minimal plot spoilers. However, many of the themes revolve around aspects of the plot in the six stories.

In an effort to reduce spoilers, I’ve limited the mention of specific stories and characters.

I apologize if this detracts from your enjoyment of the review or your desire to read the novel.

”Where is the Fundamental Mystery?”

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a mystery or the fact that a mystery might retain its status after some investigation.

Not all mysteries are intended to be worked out or revealed to all. Some things are intended to remain secret. Some things need a password or a code to unlock them. Some things just require a bit of effort or charm or both.

The thing about “Cloud Atlas” is that it consists of six quite disparate stories (a “Cloud Atlas Sextet” in its own right), five of which have been broken into two.

The result is 11 sections, ten of which surround the unbroken sixth story in the middle.

Without disclosing the titles of the stories, they follow the following timeline:

•t1850;

•t1931;

•t1976;

•tThe present (?);

•tA highly corporatized future; and

•tA post apocalyptic future (the middle story).

Once you’ve got half-way, the book works back towards 1850 in reverse order.

Getting your head around this structure is the first task. The second is to work out the relationship between the stories. The third is to work out how to pull the whole thing together into one integrated whole.

Choosing a Structural Metaphor

The structure has given rise to metaphors like Russian or Matryoshka dolls or Chinese boxes.

Each successive story is nested or nestled within the next. [One character’s letters survive the burglary of a hotel room, because they are nestled in a copy of Gideon’s Bible.]

Another way to think of it is to pretend that you have opened up six separate books to the middle pages, then sat them on top of each other, starting with the oldest on the bottom, and then bound them together, so now hopefully you’ve got one idea of the structure.

A third way to look at the structure metaphorically is to see the past as embracing the present, and the present embracing the future.

Thus, the past has within it the potential of the present, and the present has within it the potential of the future.

This metaphor raises the second question of the relationship between the layers.

Does one determine the next? Does the past determine the future? What is the relationship or connection?

Where does Mitchell and his novel stand on the continuum between Determinism and Free Will?

Interconnectedness

Apart from the question of how all 11 sections contribute to an integrated whole, there is a narrative connectedness between the 11 sections.

Characters or objects from one section reappear in others as important narrative elements. In a way, they are like screws or pegs that lock one part of a piece of modular furniture into another, so that the whole doesn’t dissemble.

Various characters (in five out of the six stories) have a comet-shaped birthmark between their shoulder-blade and collarbone.

They also share other personal characteristics, despite not necessarily sharing genders, and there is a suggestion that the five characters with birthmarks might be reincarnations of the same soul.

From a narrative point of view:

•tthe Journals in Story 1 are found in Story 2.

•tThe Letters in Story 2 are written to a character in Story 3.

•tThe music in Story 2 is heard in Story 3. (When Luisa Rey hears the music, she feels that she might have been present when it was composed, hence the implication that she might be a reincarnation of the composer, Robert Frobisher.)

•tStory 3 is submitted to a character in Story 4 for publication.

•tThe character in Story 4 writes a memoir that is filmed, and watched by the character in Story 5.

•tAn interview with the character in Story 5 is recorded and becomes the “holy book” or “scripture” for a post-apocalyptic religion in Story 6 (even though it is an audio-visual work, not a written work, embodied on an “orison”).

Eternal Recurrence in and of Time

Time is a silent partner in the narrative of the novel.

We start in the past and move forward into the future, before reversing or heading backwards (or forwards into the past?), so that eventually we come full circle:

"Time’s Arrow became Time’s Boomerang."

In this sense, the narrative is revolutionary, if not necessarily gimmicky.

We must assume that the cycle continues to roll or revolve in this fashion ad infinitum.

In Nietzsche’s words, it is an "Eternal Recurrence":

"Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (and barbarism!!)": Nietzsche

Culture and Civilization, whether good or evil, positive or negative, sophisticated or barbaric, are conveyed through time by people.

Human beings are vessels through which human nature passes into the future, from the past via the present (and vice versa, it seems).

Each of us carries aspects of human nature, ideas, beliefs, biases, prejudices, goals, ambitions, aspirations, appetites, hunger, thirst, desire, the need for more, the inability to be satisfied, the inability to be appeased.

Human nature is concrete, permanent, eternal, continuous, recurring.

Individuals are separate, discrete, temporary, dispensable, ephemeral.

Like an oak tree, we are born, we grow, we die.

A body is just a vehicle for human nature (within a family, its DNA).

You can see that, if each of us is a vehicle, then when we pass the baton onto the next runner, we (or the human nature that we carried) is reincarnated in our successor.

If our characteristics continue, they succeed, instead of succumbing.

In this sense, a comet birthmark is just the mark or marque or ink or stain that we pass onto our successor as evidence of the eternal chain of which each of us is but a link.

You Can’t Stop Me, Because I am Determined

It’s arguable that there is a determinism or fatalism going on here.

However, I think Mitchell acknowledges Free Will as well, again, both in a positive and a negative sense.

Much of the novel is concerned with the Nietzschean will to power, the ascent to power, the acquisition and abuse of power, the use of power to victimize and oppress.

The character, Alberto Grimaldi, the CEO of the Corporation Seaboard Power (surely the name is well chosen) argues:

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

"Yet how is it some men attain mastery over others while the vast majority live and die as minions, as livestock? The answer is a holy trinity.

"First: God-given gifts of charisma.

"Second: the discipline to nurture these gifts to maturity, for though humanity’s topsoil id fertile with talent, only one seed in ten thousand will ever flower – for want of discipline…

"Third: the will to power.

"This is the enigma at the core of the various destinies of men. What drives some to accrue power where the majority of their compatriots lose, mishandle, or eschew power? Is it addiction? Wealth? Survival? Natural selection? I propose these are all pretexts and results, not the root cause.

"The only answer can be ‘There is no ‘Why’. This is our nature. ‘Who’ and ‘What’ run deeper than ‘Why?’ "

While human nature shapes us, I don’t think Mitchell is positing a completely Determinist cosmos.

What people do impacts on their Fate.

Some rise to the top as Supermen or Ubermenschen, some fall to the bottom as Downstrata or Untermenschen.

Some Men are predators, others victims. Some rise, some fall. In between, some are “half-fallen”, Mitchell calls them the “Diagonal People”.t

Like the character Isaac Sachs, their tragic flaw is that they are “too cowardly to be a warrior, but not enough of a coward to lie down and roll over like a good doggy.”

Virtue Incarnate (or Reincarnate?)

Mitchell’s six stories feature heroes (of sorts), five of whom are or might be reincarnations of the same soul.

Each of them has the courage to fight against evil or power or oppression or cruelty.

They are idealists, liberals, [affirmative] activists, boat rockers, shit-stirrers, young hacks, non-conformists, dissidents, rebels, revolutionaries, rogues, rascals, “picaros” (the Spanish word from which the word “picaresque” derives), messiahs and naughty boys.

They eschew duplicity, dishonesty and falseness, they seek authenticity, honesty and truth:

"Truth is the gold."

"Truth is singular. Its ‘versions’ are mistruths."

"The true true is presher’n’rarer’n diamonds."

They oppose power, corruption, and lies, tyranny and mutation. [They must be fans of New Order and Blue Oyster Cult.]

Talkin’ About a Revolution

Our heroes create messages and symbols to overcome tyranny: journals, epistles, memoirs, novels, music, films, video confessions, “orisons” (a word that actually means “prayers”), scripts, catechisms, declarations, even new post-apocalyptic languages.

Like hippies ("the love and peace generation"), they oppose mainstream culture with their own counter-cultural artifacts, as if the reincarnated souls, the Grateful Living, are perpetuating the Grateful Dead.

The eponymous artwork, the "Cloud Atlas Sextet", is composed by Robert Frobisher, a bisexual wunderkind:

"Cloud Atlas holds my life, is my life, now I’m a spent firework; but at least I’ve been a firework."

Just like Guy Fawkes, it’s explosive and revolutionary.

Frobisher composes the work while engaged as an amenuensis for the older composer Vyvyan Ayrs, who believes that the role of the musician or artist is to “make civilization ever more resplendent”.

Perhaps ingenuously, for one of the reincarnates, Frobisher counters:

“How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are mere scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.”

His own composition resounds throughout the entire novel. It also describes the central metafictional device that Mitchell uses to construct his fiction:

"A sextet for overlapping soloists: piano, clarinet, ‘cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale and colour. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late, but it’s the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds."

Artists might live in a private world and a public world, but there is a sense in which they also live both in the present and in the future.

An Atlas of Clouds

At a more metaphorical level, the Atlas contains maps of the human nature that Mitchell describes.

The Clouds carry the vagaries of human nature across time, encircling the world on their journey, obscuring and frustrating our aspirations and desires:

"Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."

Revolutionary or Gimmicky?

Mitchell directly asks us to consider whether his own work is gimmicky.

Superficially, it is, but what finally convinced me that the novel deserves five stars is a conviction that his subject matter and his metafictional devices are genuinely and effectively stitched together.

It wasn’t easy to come by this realization. I had to work on it, but it was worth it.

Men and Women and Eroticism

Women play a significant role as both characters and subject matter in the novel.

To a certain extent, they represent an alternative to the corrupt corporate culture symbolized by Seaboard Power (even though its Head of Publicity is a woman):

"Men invented money. Women invented mutual aid."

There is a sense in which men [males] are driven by the hunger, the acquisitiveness, at the heart of the novel’s concerns, far more so than women:

”Yay, Old Un’s 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…Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay.”

Still, men and women still get into bed with each other, and the sexual encounters in the novel are usually either entertaining or slyly erotic, no matter how economically they are described:

”Accepted this proxy fig leaf cum olive branch and our lovemaking that night was almost affectionate.”

”Our sex was joyless, graceless, and necessarily improvised, but it was an act of the living. Stars of sweat on Hae-Joo’s back were his gift to me, and I harvested them on my tongue.”

[For all the talk of comet-shaped birthmarks, this view of sex as an act of the living will stay with me for the rest of my life, even when I can no longer lift myself up on my elbows.]

"Eva, Because her name is a synonym for temptation...all my life, sophisticated idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to understand me, to cure me, but Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly...Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning...here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart."

And isn’t this exactly what life is all about?

To be understood, to be cured, to be explored (unhurriedly), to be laughed at, to be sprayed all over, to be in love, in the soundproofed chambers of your heart.

David Mitchell, this image alone deserves five stars.


SOUNDTRACK:

Jordi Savall - "Por Que Llorax Blanca Nina"(Sephardic Jewish music from Sarajevo)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP_6Y7...

This music is playing in the Lost Chord record store in the novel.

Tracey Chapman – "Talkin’ About a Revolution"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKYWOw...

"Don’t you know
They're talkin' about a revolution.
It sounds like a whisper.
Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share."

Bob Dylan - "Shelter From the Storm"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8TayM...

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Joni Mitchell - "Both Sides Now"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqI...

I've looked at clouds from both sides now...

+Post 125

How do I even begin to review a book like this? This book is one of the most incredible books that I have had the pleasure of reading. David Mitchell not only managed to write 6 unique and fantastic stories that I would love to read on there own, but he managed to connected them almost seamlessly making one mind-blowing story.

Like I said I would love to read each story as an individual for each one is so dynamic in itself. It is almost hard to believe that the same author wrote each story since each has its own unique writing style. You go from a sailing journal, to comedy, to mystery, to science fiction, and even a post apocalyptic world. He threw in all of my favorite genres and the best elements of each.

When I started reading this book I instantly enjoyed it and liked each story and then loved when I started to realize all the parallels between the stories and characters, and how all the themes came together I was even more in love with the story and flew through the second half.

It is hard for me to pick which story I loved the most but if I had to choose it would be between the mystery story featuring Luisa Rey and the science fiction story featuring Somni. The Luisa Rey story was an intricate mystery filled with all the best elements, the heartless assassin who enjoys killing, the investigative journalist trying to prove herself, and all in all the conspiracy of the mystery that goes higher up than believed. The Somni story was brilliant science fiction where there are clones and the world has become dependent on technology and Big Brother is watching you.

One of the very interesting elements of the book was the language throughout the novel. Once the story about Somni started there was an extreme difference in the use of language. Words were forgotten and things such as movies were all clumped together and called Disneys and all cars Fords. In the last story the language we know was gone. The story itself was hard to read because of how the people talked. Even though this element was on of my favorite themes throughout the book it also was a reason why the last story was my least favorite.

This book will keep you guessing up until the end and even then you will still sit there afterwards just observing everything. The end of each of the stories is amazing and mind-blowing. As soon as you start reading this book you will not be able to put it down and you will be a better person for it. This book will give you a different outlook on the people around you and wonder how everyone’s actions actually effected your own, because one thing this book taught me is that everyone is connected and even the smallest things can impact someone in the future.

Well there is my review I would give this books as many stars as possible. But if you would like to read a fantastic review of this book I would like to send you here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
My brother and his review are the reason I read this book in the first place. ☺

Cloud Atlas is a book which is not particularly easy to read, requires patience and perseverance, but is ultimately very rewarding. It is a story spanning more than one hundred years that combines an entertaining - even humourous - plot with far bigger and more important issues like slavery and exploitation. The novel's language changes and develops with time and every new character introduced is as fresh and interesting as all those who came before. In the end, it is pure genius. It is also not a novel that I can adequately put into any kind of review, so I suggest instead that you watch this beautiful trailer created for the 2012 film adaptation - it convinced me to read it, after all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgI6Ee...

One adjective that I find apt whilst describing this novel is ‘Clever’. Yes, it’s a clever book, not w.r.t. to its contents but its mere structure. For me, reading this book was like reading two volumes which constitutes of reading Cloud Atlas and then reading Cloud Atlas Reviews. Now you see, With Great Books, comes Great Reviews and that’s why I read its thorough analysis by experts as well as regular readers both on GR and those that are available on internet, that of course to quench my own thirst of completely consuming every nuisance this book has to offer and not being describe by something like this: “Come now, what’s a reviewer?” I reasoned. “One who reads quickly, arrogantly, but never wisely”. I wonder if it was a message from David to the book critics around the world. I can merely hope that I was able to read this book with the wisest level possible for me.

Its composition didn’t astonish me completely may be because I did my homework beforehand but it was certainly something that I haven’t read before. So there are six different stories unfolded through 6 different eras having their own individual cultural building blocks. Now the genius of Mitchell is clearly evident in his prowess of using completely different writing styles in each of the story, which IMO is an impeccable imitation by him. Another master stroke by Mitchell is that on reaching the second story, you start getting the gist of what Mitchell is up to and the curious reader in you has to go ahead without looking back.

So when I started with the first story, I was frustrated to the core with that oh-so-indecipherable English and since I was not able to get emotionally attached with the narrative, it became all the more difficult and led to a lot of digression but I somehow managed to sail through. Afterwards the ride was pretty smooth. I liked the reckless ways of Robert Frobisher, the indomitable spirit of Luisa Rey, the humor in the ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, the mastermind narrative about Sonmi-451 and the naivety displayed on part of Zachry.

In the last story though, a lot of experimentation has been done on part of Mitchell. It’s like he invented a language of his own by mocking the English grammar( For eg: If past tense for Say is Said then why the past tense of think is Thought and not Thinked, Nay *winks*) as well as the contemporary internet slangs with generous use of apostrophes. In fact, I read some parts of that story loudly just to hear how it would sound if brought under practice.

The structure Mitchell employed in this meta-fiction constitutes of interrupting each story abruptly and carrying on a new story having some connection with the previous one (read Incarnation) of the protagonists. Each story is treated this way except the last one which is continued till the end. The central theme is same for all stories that humans can be real jerks when exposed to power, money and superiority and wouldn’t cringe a bit on exploiting or betraying their fellow human beings in order to fulfill their greed. Their selfishness can lead to far disastrous results than one can even imagine. Here, in this novel however, Mitchell did imagine and what an imagination!!!

As a reader, it challenges you from every direction and it would be advisable to have a tight grip on each story in order to avoid the wavering from the main plot of one story or the other, but there are some loopholes.

I am not sure if the idea of incarnation was well executed or even called for. The culture I belong to, there are certain myths that goes around with reference to incarnation, like:
-A person is incarnated if he/she died an untimely death; or
-There is some unfinished business that must be completed in next birth.

But here, none of the characters had anything to do with untimely death or unfinished business except Robert Frobisher, but he died after composing his best composition. Rebirth is a more accepted point since it relates to Karma. Possibly Mitchell wanted to bring up an exciting angle, but it failed to excite me.

Another grumble is how easily the author gave away certain points within the novel that explained his further plans and also how vocal he became about whether his writing style would be revolutionary or gimmicky, which was kind of annoying. It snatched away from me that Eureka moment I wanted to experience and it somehow conveyed as if he didn’t have much confidence in his readers who won’t be able to understand what he is trying to prove. Authors of his mettle shouldn’t bother with interpretations and let readers decide what they want to render after reading such novels.

So all in all, this book is a 3.5 for me. I must admit that Mitchell is a genius at work with his innovative and unique style. I am surely going read rest of his works, and although cloud atlas was not that enriching experience as I expected it to be, it still stand at an altogether different level and has carved a place for itself amidst thousands of books that world has to offer us.

Once in a while every reader crosses path with a book that seems to be a friends' favorite, highly acclaimed, and you are just unimpressed. You try your best to like it and to find what exactly make it such a great book and you are just struggling to get past some events/characters. This is that kind of book for me. Even the end made me feel like, "Finally, it's over. I can move on now." The friend that I read this with is still singing praises of this and here I am thinking what went wrong. But in the end I accepted that this was not for me. I loved Black Swan Green and Ghostwritten (whatever I have read of it), so I guess its the book and the author and I can be good friends.

Don't get me wrong I liked it initially and then unthinkable happened and I just couldn't get past it. It was a big struggle to finish that chapter and move on. And I think it just ruined the whole experience for me. Also, I appreciate author's approach to tell this story in matryosha dolls style but I confess it proved to be as complex as a math problem to me. Phew, there I said it.

I will still be reading his other works and hope he just does not try too hard.

First and foremost, this is a book about form. Four of the five stories are broken in half, each one ‘nesting’ (thanks, Chabon) inside the other until we get to the apex of the novel in one complete, contained story. It’s an intriguing project for many reasons. Firstly, there are the more formal experiments that are taking place: Mitchell sets up his stories to question a reader’s sense of how a story is told—how we deal with chronology, the ways in which readers organize elements of plot and character, and what obligation the author has to guide the reader through new information. (Mitchell tends to drop us in headlong—no preface for what sort of world we are entering or how it is related to the one which preceded it.)

But what is really interesting about the way Mitchell sets up his book is the way the characters and stories end up relating to each other. Each story makes an appearance in the next one, becoming a minor element in an ever-expanding, ever-widening plot arch. Mitchell has a lot of freedom with this given that his subject matter is somewhat fanciful and blankly fictional all the way through. Where in a stridently ‘factual’ and ‘realistic’ novel readers may find the process of one story becoming a book in the next, which then becomes a movie in the one after that, a bit convenient and cheesey—the feeling of invention in Cloud Atlas allows for such literary devices without seeming cheap. (I did think the final stretch was a bit silly—a little too Brave New World dystopia-laden for me, but otherwise was rather pleased with the linkages.) This is something that I believe fantasy and sci-fi writers generally are allowed more freedom with—look at the Harry Potter series—the woman literally pulls plot devices out of a hat, and more power to her. Because that is (at least to me) what really puts the spark in truly ‘fictional fiction.’ You don’t have to constantly tell yourself to Suspend Your Disbelief because you did so at the beginning.

The other thing that is interesting about this is that you start reconsidering the ‘What’ of the thing. If Character A is reading letters from Character B, but Character A is a fictional person in another novel—what is the ‘real’ story? Where did these ‘fake’ fictions get generated? As each story expands, it throws the last into question, merely by reframing our sense of ‘real’ and ‘not real.’ The fact that this matters to any of us when we set out to read a fictional novel is, perhaps, one of my biggest literary ticks.

One seemingly small thing that really irked me by the end of the book: I hate it when authors use their characters to make commentaries on the quality of their fiction. At worst, this is a cheap absolution for a writer who isn’t willing to really defend a choice he has made in a work, and at best it’s cute editorial winking that I don’t need. I know that such meta-commentary is part of the dialog, per se, but I fail to see its true usefulness. If you’ve put your story out there, it should stay out there, and it no longer needs your commentary. Don’t patronize me.

Lastly, in a novel that has ‘come unstuck in time,’ where events intermingle and expand and contract with a fluidity that you don’t often see, I was a little disappointed at the sentimentality that this connection seemed to inspire in the writing. Call me a cynic, but I think novels lose their punch when they try to Really Matter. Suffice to say that honing in on the 20/20 hindsight/unacknowledged foresight of history, on the inevitability of humanity’s ironic destruction is pretty unnecessary in a novel that has spent so much thoughtful, patient time and effort doing just that. Once we have the god’s eye view perspective of time repeating, further discussion almost strikes one as prosaic and simplistic. To my mind, just the fact that there is a connection is enough in and of itself.

Great novel with a fascinating style of writing. Highly recommended. I had my problems with the futuristic styles in the middle of the book.

Der Aufbau des Buchs in verschiedene Handlungsstränge, die nacheinander erzählt werden, aber jeweils nur bis zur Hälfte, um dann in der Mitte des Buchs in absteigender Form wieder zum Ende zu führen, fand spannend. Die größte schriftstellerische Leistung bestand aber darin, die jeweils richtige Sprache für die entsprechende Epoche zu finden. Von antiquiert über gewählt, schön, flüssig, umgangssprachlich bis futuristisch ist da alles dabei. Manche Handlungsstränge gefallen da einem besser als andere. Ich liebte zum Beispiel die zweite Geschichte des verarmten Pianisten in Belgien, dessen Erlebnisse in Briefform erzählt wurden und tat mir dagegen mit den letzten Geschichten um den koreanischen Klon sowie der postapokalyptischen Schilderung eines Hirtenjungen auf Hawaii am Schwersten. Daher gibt es auch einen Stern Abzug, denn die Phase, bis die Erzählweise wieder meinem Geschmack entsprach, dauerte mir zu lange. Anfang und Ende gehörten dagegen zum Besten, was ich je gelesen habe. Der dünne rote Faden, der alle Geschichten zusammenhält, ist geschickt gelegt worden. Insgesamt ein tolles Buch und ein faszinierende sprachliche Leistung des Autors. Unbedingt lesenswert.

This book has been in my TBR pile for about a year, the recently released trailer  of the movie adaptation finally galvanized me to get on with it. The trailer actually looks quite good and having read the book I think it serves quite well as a book trailer also. Like a lot of readers, I tend to stick to reading within my comfort zone which in my case is science fiction / fantasy, the problem with that is I tend to miss out on the ideas and perspectives that other genres and the mainstream has to offer. Fortunately, sometime I chance upon genre busting books like Cloud Atlas that remind me to widen the scope of my reading to get the most out of this favorite pastime.

Cloud Atlas is comprised of six interconnected novella-length stories spanning hundreds - possibly thousands - of years (some of the dates are not explicitly indicated). The unusual structure of the book has been described as "like a Russian doll" or "nested", sort of 1-2-3-4-5 -6- 5-4-3-2-1, Stories #1 to 5 are split in halves, #6 the middle story is narrated in its entirety. The best thing about this narrative structure is that it is unusual, yet not confusing, and kind of fun. You meet several new friends on your way to the middle of the book, then on your way back home you meet them again. I find it very pleasant, a little like passing through towns on a road trip and going back the same route.

David Mitchell's versatility is awe inspiring, the range of genres, styles, moods and tones in Cloud Atlas is a virtuoso performance. The six different prose styles cleverly represent the evolution and devolution of language as civilization rises and falls. However, the complexity of the book makes it quite hard for me to review so I will just cop out and briefly comment on the stories:

1) The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - a high seas adventure which tackles the theme of racism more directly than the other stories. A good start (and end) to the book, though not really my pigeon, as it were. I have yet to finish Moby Dick.

2) Letters from Zedelghem - the story of a young composer and his struggle to write a lasting piece of music while assisting a sick and elderly famous composer. This story is written in a flippant prose style somewhat reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse though the plot is not nearly so farcical and takes a dark turn later on. Of all the six protagonists Robert Frobisher is the least sympathetic, he is, however, witty and charming, which makes the story more readable than it would otherwise be.

3) Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery - This story is a nuclear conspiracy thriller, with a plucky journalist at the centre. Some critics have dismissed this story as cliche or somehow "beneath" what the author is capable of, damn literati. Plebeian that I am I find it a riveting read with sympathetic characters, it seems like one of the more brightly colored components of the book.

4) The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish - A lighthearted romp about a dishonest publisher jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I enjoyed this story tremendously, it is narrated by a curmudgeonly old man in our times (21st century)

5) An Orison of Sonmi~451 - A dystopian sci-fi story set in Korea in an unspecified far future year, very much my usual cup of tea. The story is narrated in a William Gibson-ish prose style. This story reminds me of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a little. Wonderful characterization of the clone Sonmi 451 (a little shout-out to Ray Bradbury there), man's inhumanity to clones remind me of Greg Egan's "dust theory" in Permutation City which basically posits that ill treatment of man-made sentient beings is cruel and unethical.

6) Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After - A post-apocalyptic sci-fi story set in Hawaii, the prose style reads as if it could have been written by Forrest Gump, it takes a little getting used to but the power and passion of the story are undeniable. The narrator is more of a Watsonian supporting character I think.

The little links between the stories are a little tenuous but together they form a chain of stories with some common themes, the one theme that is present in all the stories is the individual's struggle against authority, be they the government, the corporation, the hospital staff, the captain and crew of a ship etc. All the protagonist eventually manage to "stick it to the Man" against all odds. Other themes repeated from time to time include social injustice, racism, friendship, and loyalty. At the end of the day, though I believe the author's intent is to create a work of art in fiction form, the themes and messages are secondary to the art. A truly unforgettable book.