Like I said, I have serious doubts about translating my love of this book from its native incomprehensible paroxysms of adoration into, like, words.

So what do we do when words fail us? We drink heavily! defer to photos:
n  n

107th book of 2021.

1.5. Firstly I'd like to say that despite not enjoying this novel, it's a bold and noble attempt by Mitchell and I'm glad others (many others) clearly enjoyed it. I often joke that no "interesting" literature comes out of England and this is certainly (or at least I hoped) interesting. I think most people know the plot or at least the idea that the novel is comprised of 6 separate parts in multiple timelines, some in the future, even, and they all somehow connect to one another. There are ideas of reincarnation and fate, souls, etc., all of which are ideas I love myself, particularly being interested in Buddhism. I don't want to rant for too long so all I'll say is that this novel was not how I imagined it. The writing was fairly weak in my opinion and often felt closer to a YA novel than literary fiction. After hearing that this was massively influenced by Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveller (which I read for the second time this year) I thought I would love it even more than I first thought. People apparently struggle with the first part which is written in a sort of Herman Melville like style, but I actually enjoyed the 1st and 2nd parts the most. The rest were horrible. Part 3 about Timothy Cavendish was the worst, perhaps. I skimmed parts of parts 5 and 6 because I thought they were so dull. The idea of having a different style per chapter was also interesting to me, and I imagined it like Ulysses, but again it's not at all. The styles are hardly styles, but different (mostly annoying) narrative voices. Part 6 is just decimated with apostrophes to make some strange dystopian-future dialect, but it didn't come across as skilful, only unnecessarily difficult. So none of the stories after the 2nd part interested me. Of course once you get to 6, the structure inverts itself and you read all the parts again but in a mirrored order. Finishing the novel with my favourite two chapters was a saving grace. The faux-Buddhist thing going on was completely underdeveloped; I'm not going to say Mitchell isn't a smart guy but I was expecting the connections to be profound, they're not: most of the connections between characters are fairly bland, diaries and films and other forms of media written or made in some parts are simply later found in different parts. There's something to do with a birthmark again that connects the characters and brings in the idea of the soul/reincarnation, but again that is mostly mentioned and then forgotten about. Had the writing blown me away this might have got 3 stars, but as that was as disappointing as the plot, I had no choice but to rate it fairly (by my own ratings) with a 1-star. Like I said though, I respect Mitchell for what he attempted to do, even if he failed in my opinion. Closing the back cover of this novel was a huge relief and sadly I had hoped to finish it yesterday but we had our friends over from France and I was downstairs drinking Norwegian spirits that my parents brought back from the country two years ago with B. (English but raised in France) and her French boyfriend till 2.30am. Not liking this book puts me in a tiny minority but B.'s mother saw I was reading it and said she had read it years ago and thought it was awful. Most of the reviews for this book remain stellar, though I cannot fathom why myself.

n  Bulgarian review below/Ревюто на български е по-долуn
You probably wonder now and then if the chords of your soul reverberate through time. I do too. Or if those 21 grams caught in several dozen kilos of flesh fly away like startled little birds when our time to go strikes. Maybe that’s also possible. We probably haven’t awaken to such a degree of consciousness as to know the answer of this question and to be drawn to some hypothetical ‘beyond’ instead to the quite material and palpable ‘now’.

‘Cloud Atlas’ is a story about the reincarnation of a single soul (in the author’s words). Some of its embodiments chime in with something larger than themselves and for others conceitedness and its blotchy baby brother – egoism – are a creed. David Mitchell does not judge though. He doesn’t glorify and doesn’t stigmatize. He builds his stories upon the simple assumption that everything we do will matter somewhere, sometime, on a large or small scale, and he creates objective connections. The soul swims through time and space, solitary and rejected in one incarnation, almost forgotten by everyone or deified in another.

‘We do not stay dead long. Once my Luger lets me go, my birth, next time around, will be upon me in a heartbeat. Thirteen years from now we’ll meet again at Gresham, ten years later I’ll be back in this same room, holding this same gun, composing this same letter, my resolution as perfect as my many-headed sextet…
Sunt lacrimæ rerum.’

Mitchell himself says in an interview that there wasn’t some grandly conceived plan behind the creation of the novel, and he just wanted to write the craziest and most gargantuan thing that comes to his mind. I think this proves something of a rule of thumb – if you don’t much care what others will have to say about your work, you are free of the ambition to ‘achieve something’ with it and just surrender to some internal rhythm, and that’s when the results really glow.

The narrative I liked most was that of Sonmi-451. Sonmi’s fate reminded me of Emiko from ‘The Windup Girl’ – there was this whiff of fatality in it too. People have low tolerance threshold for things with a higher level of consciousness than themselves – are we not proud to be the only species who think and create? Well, and if that’s not true?

‘- Do you regret the course of your life?
- How can I? ‘Regret’ implies a freely chosen, but erroneous, action; free will plays no part in my story.’

In our stories though free will (if we can speak of such category at all) has its place on the mise-en-scene. Who could tell if Mitchell was right when writing his ‘juvenile whim’ as he calls it? We all go down the miniature spirals of our lives and we are dashing to their end. We might as well think about what follows next. It might be far more real than what we are capable of imagining.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Вероятно все някога сте се питали дали акордите на душата ви отекват във времето. И аз съм. Или пък тези 21 грама, залостени в няколко десетки килограма затвор от плът, се разлитат като подплашени птички, когато ни дойде времето да си идем. Може и това да е. Навярно сме още твърде недоосъзнати като вид, за да знаем отговора на този въпрос и да се интересуваме от някакво хипотетично „отвъд“, вместо от съвсем вещественото и осезаемо „сега“.

„Облакът Атлас“ е история за прераждането на една-единствена (по думи на автора) душа. Някои от въплъщенията ѝ трептят в съзвучие с нещо по-голямо от самите себе си, за други самомнителността и пъпчивият ѝ по-малък брат – егоизмът – са верую. Дейвид Мичъл обаче не осъжда. Не величае и не заклеймява. Изгражда историите си върху простичкото предположение, че всичко, което правим, някъде някога ще има някакво значение, голямо или малко, и създава обективни връзки. Душата плува из времето и пространството, в един живот самотна и отхвърлена, в друг почти забравена от всички или пък обожествявана.

„Ние не оставаме мъртви за дълго. След като моят Люгер ме изпрати в отвъдното, само след миг ще ме споходи раждането ми, следващото поред. След тринайсет години ще се срещнем отново в Грешам, след десет ще се озова отново в същата тази стая, стиснал същия този пистолет, ще съчинявам същото това писмо с решителност, съвършена като многоглавия ми секстет...
Sunt lacrimæ rerum.“

Самият Мичъл в интервю казва, че зад романа не е имало първоначален грандиозен замисъл, а просто е искал да напише най-шашавото и мащабно нещо, което му хрумне. Мисля, че това доказва почти желязното правило, че колкото пò не ти пука какво ще каже някой за работата ти и, освободен от амбицията да „постигнеш нещо“ с нея, просто се оставяш на някакъв вътрешен ритъм, толкова повече сияят резултатите.

Разказът, който най-много ми хареса, беше този на Сонми-451. Съдбата на Сонми твърде ми напомняше за тази на Емико от n  The Windup Girln – и от нея лъхаше същата обреченост. Хората трудно понасят нещо да е по-осъзнато от тях – нали се гордеем, че сме единственият вид, който може да мисли и твори? Да, ама ако не е така?
„– Съжалявате ли, че животът ви протече така?
– Как бих могла? Съжалението предполага свободно избрано, но погрешно действие; в моята история свободната воля не играе никаква роля.“

В нашите истории обаче свободната воля (ако изобщо може да се говори за такава категория) има своето място в мизансцена. Кой би могъл да каже дали Мичъл е бил прав, пишейки своята „младежка приумица“, както я нарича той? Всички се въртим по миниатюрните спирали на живота си и устремно се носим към края им. Хубаво е да помислим и за онова, което става след това. То може да е по-истинско, отколкото сме способни да си представим.

A few pages before the end of Mitchell’s novel, one of the narrators, a young composer, discloses the unusual structure of his musical “masterpiece” — at it happens, Cloud Atlas is originally the title of a piano sonata:

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year’s fragments into a ‘sextet for overlapping soloists’: piano, clarinet, ’cello, flute, oboe and violin, each in its own language of key, scale and colour. In the 1st set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the 2nd, 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 1st thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep. (Sceptre edition, p. 463)

This simple, yet entirely original idea is, by way of metaphor, the one that governs the whole novel. Mitchell interlocks six stories into a A-B-C-D-E-F/F’-E’-D’-C’-B’-A’ Matryoshka / palindromic series. A creative and surprising device that could put Mitchell almost on par with Nabokov, Calvino and Borges.

These six stories are written in different genres: seafaring adventure, spy fiction, science fiction, comedy, etc. Should we try to unravel the symmetrical mosaic of the whole sextet and consider each of these six novellas individually, much of the charm and effect of Mitchell’s novel would probably vanish. The fifth story, titled “An Orison of Sonmi~451”, written as a sci-fi novella (loosely inspired by Soylent Green) is powerful enough and would make an excellent stand-alone; but the rest of the lot can sometimes feel a bit uneven.

Still, interwoven as they are, and spanning across continents and centuries, they map out at their core a vast polyphony on the unrelenting oppression and exploitation of human beings by other human beings. According to Mitchell, it is everywhere and ever-present: on distant colonies, in art and trade, within political and industrial endeavours, in the treatment of vulnerable people, in social inequality. As says one of the characters, probably alluding to Schopenhauer or Nietzsche:

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. (p. 461)

All this is, one way or another, the many manifestations of universal cannibalism. Or, to put it in an aphoristic manner: “The Weak are Meat the Strong do Eat.” (p. 508)

Yet, Mitchell truly shines as a writer in his ability to give each story “its own language of key, scale and colour”. In other words, he is a true virtuoso of mannerism, able to emulate just as well the style of writing of a 19th-century American mariner (cf. Moby-Dick) or the sci-fi neologisms-ridden lingo of a late-21th-century Korean clone, and every widely different type of language in-between, just as convincingly and with just as much knack and chameleonic finesse. Coming from someone who suffered from a stammer and had a hard time expressing himself as a child, this ability to bend the English language every which way (sometimes almost to the limit of readability) is nothing short of a stroke of wizardry.

Cloud Atlas is probably Mitchell’s most famous novel, thanks to the 2012 movie adaptation directed by the Wachowskis, with (among others) Tom Hanks and Halle Berry — it is still in my to-watch list. By the way, Mitchell also worked on the TV Series Sense8 with the same directors. While the LGBT+ themes come undoubtedly from the Wachowskis themselves, the idea of individuals interconnected across great distances is certainly David Mitchell’s trademark. Better still than the series, though, Cloud Atlas masterfully illustrates this concept.

So, is this whole thing “revolutionary or gimmicky?” Shan’t know until you’ve read it, and by then it’ll be too late. For my money, it’s probably somewhere in the middle, but I did enjoy this intricate, playful, stimulating novel tremendously.

Well Mr Mitchell, I have to say that I'd heard very mixed things about this book before I read it with people swinging between rapture and rage at its mention. But I enjoyed Ghostwritten so I was happy to give it a go. Some proclaimed you to be a genius while others compared it to Dave Egger's Heart Breaking work of Staggering Genius (you can draw your own conclusions on what I mean by this).

Initially I was looking forward to reading. I mean what's not to like? A visually pleasing cover in pretty pastels with little metallic birds and trees and a blurb which promised "the erasing of boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us."

Apart from the fact that the sentence "humanity's will to power" makes f**k all sense to me, I waded into the pages quite happily. I actually quite enjoyed The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing and Letters from Zedelghem. Admittedly I am easily suckered in with a little bit of historic fiction so down I went hook, line and sinker.

Reading Half Lives- The first Luisa Rey mystery I felt the book was now meandering from the historical fiction section of the library and nestling in between a couple of pulpy Dan Brown novels (plucky rebellious hero/heroine puts neck on the line to expose the truth no-matter-the-cost pushed along by slightly thin plot). The Orison of Somni read like an A-level creative writing essay and then the wordy, crunchy, indigestible icing on the literary cake - Sloosha's Crossin' and ev'rythin' after.

I'm not entirely sure what was going on in this chapter. Admitedly this is mainly because I got bored of trying to read it and so skipped at least half of it. The best I can work out is that Mitchell's assessment of a post-apocalyptic landscape is based in Yorkshire (why else would the chapter sound as if it was written by someone from Barnsley?) Did the post apocalyptic fall out include rains of real ale? A plague of whippets and flat caps? Did coal become a currency? Were people forced to take refuge in working mens clubs to avoid being crushed by the rain of meat pies? (sorry to people from Barnsley for this - I'm not trying to stereotype the north, I am northern.)

Overall this book left me with the impression that David Mitchell was sitting on a pile of short stories and cobbled them together into one book. Unfortunately for me, the binding element that sticks them all together was about as effective as glue made from clouds.

It took me a couple of days to gain some distance and write this review. During this time I realized that, despite being profoundly entertaining and intellectually demanding, this book did not leave a lasting impression on me. Therefore, I reach only for 4 stars despite David Mitchell’s virtuosity with language and structure. I fully agree with the reviewer of the Sunday Times, when he says “Mitchell …. combines a darkly future intelligence with polyphonic ease.”

Reading this book was rewarding, and it sparked lively discussions with my Goodreads friends. Finding and following the links between the stories challenged my ambition as an attentive reader. The different, highly adaptive language challenged my knowledge of English, in case of Sloosh’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After even beyond my skills, so that I had to revert to a German translation.

I marked an exceptionally high number of phrases worth remembering in my Kindle edition, such as An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton. or A half read book is a half-finished love affair. (all from Letters from Zedelghem). Laughter is an anarchic blasphemy. or All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen, then they become historical inevitabilities and the fundamental fear of every dictator: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor (all from An Orison of Sonmi)

The quote that best conveys, in my mind, the underlying philosophy of the book: In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction. The one that best summarizes the story: In the beginning there is ignorance. Ignorance engenders fear. Fear engenders hatred, and hatred engenders violence. Violence breeds further violence until the only law is whatever is willed by the most powerful. And the most prophetic one, to my chagrin: Tortuous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen …

The whole story is about the nature of history and the fact that it admits no rules; only outcomes. So in the end the question that we, the readers have to answer is Can you change the future of not? Personally I am not sure. If we cannot change the (violent and selfish) human nature, then our future may well be predetermined. This has been a concern of mine for a long time and the reason why the book has resonated so well with me.

(DISCLAIMER: This review was my knee-jerk reaction right after reading the book. Since then my admiration for CA has diminished. I will let the original review stay as it is. I disown this review though.)

WOW. With my vocab-deficit, I can't find the perfect word to express how reading Cloud Atlas felt. I will put spectacular as a placeholder. It has been quite some time since I read something this exciting.

So. The thing about Cloud Atlas is that everything explaining the central theme of the novel is embedded, in very clear words, within the novel, but rather in-conspicuously. Mitchell does not try to expound his theory anywhere, he does not hold a laser pointer attracting the reader's attention to the heart of the matter.
I can easily pull out a couple of quotes from the novel, which would perfectly summarize what, for me, is the essence of the book. Most of those quotes appear to be just another thing that one of the characters said. Seen within the scope of the individual stories where these quotes appear, they wouldn't amount to much. It is only when you look at the complete map that Mitchell has laid out, that they begin to be meaningful. However, unless the reader has already developed a vague understanding of what Mitchell is trying to tell us, one could walk by those sentences/dialogues unsuspectingly. You need to know what you are looking for, to be able to notice them. And figuring this out makes the reading experience entirely wonderful and intellectually engaging. Which is why I am refraining from including any quotes giving away the theme.

I suppose everyone has already heard enough about how Cloud Atlas consists of six different stories and how it is structured in an innovative manner. These six stories are very different from each other, yet they belong very much together. Mitchell connects these stories in various ways and at multiple levels. There are some direct connections which Mitchell spells out for everyone. He even mentions a few things which mirror the form of the novel itself. Then the stories are sprinkled with numerous subtle hints which give one delight if discovered, but do not take away much if not. And at last there are connections at a conceptual level which bind and unify the entire thing.

Sadly, an undiscerning reader may not notice much going on beyond the structure of the novel and perhaps label it as gimmicky. One of the characters in the novel itself brings up the question about whether this form is revolutionary or gimmicky, with respect to a musical composition that he is writing. In my opinion, the form is well justified and does a marvelous job at putting the point across. However, this form itself could also be held responsible for obfuscating the main point by diverting a reader's attention.

Each of the six stories is largely plot-driven. As Mitchell moves from one time period to another, the story's setting, tone, language, characterization etc. changes drastically. There are authors who sound the same in their different novels. And here we have Mitchell who sounds like six different authors within one novel. Each story can be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone novella. But the whole is definitely more than the sum of the parts, by an astonishing amount.

Dear David Mitchell,
I’ve been trying to figure out the nicest possible way to tell you what I’m about to tell you. I sort of feel like I’ve failed you as a reader, but I just couldn’t suspend my critical mind for long enough to enjoy your book (“how I envied my uncritical…sisters” – I hate it when my own words come back to bite me in the ass, don’t you?). Don’t take it personally though. I’m the girl who didn't like The Matrix. I know, right? How could anyone dislike The Matrix? All of the neat-o keen-o special effects, the super cool concept of the world actually being run by sentient machines, the homage to Baudrillard (If you haven’t read Simulacra & Simulation, read it. It’ll blow your mind.)(By the way, Baudrillard said the siblings Wachowski completely misinterpreted his work, but I digress), and the kick-ass soundtrack (okay so it wasn’t really all that kick ass). Unfortunately at the end of the day, Keanu Reeves can’t act his way out of a paper bag, and this girl just couldn’t get past that fact.
 
For the first half of the novel, I kept trying to psych myself up by reminding myself how much I disliked the first four episodes of season one of The Wire: “This is just another contrived crime drama!” “Dominic West really needs to work on his American accent." "Not enough Idris Elba.” Then we meet Omar Little and BAM! It all starts to click. (Don’t you just love Omar?)(shhhh, no spoilers, I’m only on season three). I kept waiting for that BAM! moment, but it just never came. Instead I found myself more and more frustrated, finding fault with every gimmick. E.g., If language has devolved in the future, you really need to commit to your chosen alterations. If you decide flight will be ‘flite’ then sight should be ‘site,’ etc. Go all the way, I say! Oh what, you think that would be too annoying? Ur rite. It would b. So y chanj da spelng at al? It just ends up being distracting. Think of another way to say "THIS IS THE FUTURE!!!" without being so obvious about it. Similarly, when you wanted the audience to know it was the 70's, you could have found a more subtle way of doing it than saying "THEY'RE AT A PARTY LISTENING TO DISCO AND DOING COCAINE!" It's the 70's man, I get it.

It seemed to me like you didn’t have enough faith in the intelligence of your audience to get the gist without spoon-feeding it to us. If the reader didn’t pick up on the “nested dolls” analogy all by themselves (or by having Chabon tell them on the back cover) you make sure Grimaldi spells it out for us: ‘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.” Etc. “Revolutionary or gimmicky?” I’ll take gimmicky for 1000, Alex (damned if your words don’t keep biting you in the ass, eh Davey boy?).

If you’ve read the book, than you know that each chapter or story is in some way “read” by a character in another story (journals, letters, film). A clever idea for sure. The thing about clever ideas is this, you really need to trust that your reader is as clever as you! We can pick these things up without you telling us. I mean come on when Cavendish reads the Luisa Rey story and remarks about ‘the insinuation that Luisa Rey is this Frobisher chap reincarnated’ the look of disgust on my face must have been a sight to see.

Let's talk about the Sloosha chapter for a moment (but just for a moment because I’m trying to repress the memory). I'm sure you were going for something really important and profound there, but it was completely lost on me because that 'style' you came up with was ridiculously irritating. I was unable to become emotionally invested in the relationship between Zachry & Meronym in the slightest. It’s the fall of humanity for chrissakes and I could not have given a shit less.
 
At least you have a sense of humor about it all, right pal? You saw the criticisms coming, and you gave them a swift kick in the ass (well, your character did, literally) right from the get-go. "The Ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, “But it’s been done a hundred times before!” – as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void[sic]-Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How!” Oh man, you said it. Art is not the what, it’s the how; and in this instance, for me, the how is, well, not great. From the Mrs. Robinson romps to the three stooges escape hijinx, and let’s not forget the lovable Erin Brockovich Luisa Rey chapters. If you were experimenting with genres, take note, pulp is not your thing. I could go on and on (honestly I could) but I really don’t think it matters.

Anyway, I’m sure one little dissenter doesn’t matter much, right? Millions of people love this book, just like Dan Brown’s! Hey, they even got the same actor to star in the film! AND you got Wachowski directing (isn’t it serendipitous how my Matrix side story is actually relevant now?). You’re going to rack in the Euros buddy. If it means anything, I thought Black Swan Green was ace in the face!

Hug?

The morning after I finished Cloud Atlas, there was such a gorgeous, windswept symphony of clouds across the sky, such as you get in Southern California after a storm, that I could not stop thinking about this novel every time I looked out my window. I’ll leave it to future readers to discover for themselves the significance of the title “Cloud Atlas.”

This is truly an ingenious work. It has skillful storytelling and a unique structure that links and weaves the stories together in a way that explores themes of power, corruption, individual responsibility and morality across the ages. Suspense is engaged within each story as the characters deal with their particular challenges, but it is also generated by the waiting to see how the parts all work together to support the themes as well. The book is like climbing a mountain: the first half takes you up to the summit of the central story, the second half brings you down the other face of the mountain, offering a different and more complete view of what’s going on. I had a college professor who once said, “You can only read a book for the first time once,” which is, of course, very true. A book is a different experience the second and subsequent times, for a variety of reasons. But that will be especially true of Cloud Atlas. The next time I read it (and there will be a next time), it will be almost like another book.

David Mitchell can really tell stories, and his hugely inventive imagination and the versatility he exhibits are awe inspiring. Each story is told in a radically different style from every other, including a couple told in sorts of dialects about societies very alien from our own, but it all works. This is unconventional, but great fun for those of us who enjoy stories about story-telling and who appreciate that “the more things change, the more they stay the same. “

3 conflicted stars !

Gosh I struggled with this book.

Is this book well written? No doubt about it.

Is this book overwritten and too stylized? At times, yes it was.

Were the stories wonderfully original? Yes they were.

Did the stories fail to move me? Alas, they did.

This was the main crux of the matter. The stories did not resonate with me one bit. At times I could enjoy them but I found them so empty and unsatisfying. These stories were intellectually brilliant but emotionally bankrupt. (there I said it and I apologize as I am aware of how many people adored this book.)

I'm glad I read it but I am more relieved that the book is over.

Well. Now. My-oh-my, Mr. Mitchell.

Where to begin? With the obvious, I s'pose. Cloud Atlas is NOT a novel. It is six novellas arranged in a forwards/backwards sequence. This is not a complaint, dear cynic. Nay nay nay. Mitchell's conceit is either a structural quantum leap or a very smart hook to keep the reader reading. I suspect both. Here are the specifics:

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing: This opens and closes the book. It is a swashbuckling riff on the intrepid postcolonial adventure novel, very reminiscent of John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor. Only nowhere near as masterful.

Letters From Zedelghem: An epistolary tale about a gifted amanuensis struggling with his wandering libido in the mansion of a German composer. Very good riff on melodramatic Victorian novels.

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery: A Davidette-vs-Goliath thriller. It heroically wields every cliché in the toolbox, though is a well-written exercise in action/suspense/intrigue.

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish: Reads like third-rate Will Self until it morphs into One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest set in an old-folks home. Peculiar.

An Orison of Somni~451: A very inventive and immersive sci-fi yarn set in a corporate dystopia. The most original and dazzling section, in my opinion.

Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After: Oh dear. Quite quite terrible. This novella, the centrepiece of Cloud Atlas, is written in a sloppy and uncompelling Hawaiian idiolect. It reads like a fourth-rate Riddley Walker and becomes utterly tedious to wade through.

How to read Cloud Atlas? I would recommend selective reading. Choose the novellas most likely to interest you. Although the stories are tenuously interlinked, you aren't missing part of a broader panorama by skipping the snoozier moments.

Verdict? Ambitious beyond belief but flabbily outstanding. Not a modern classic, but one heck of an attempt.

**okay - i have actually written a "review" for this book, all you early bird voters! feel free to take back your picture-votes if you hate my words (and by "feel free," i mean "don't you dare!!")**

why have i never read this book before??

observe:



do you see how it is wedged into a teetering, lode-bearing stack of books??



removing it was a tricky business, indeed, but i succeeded, and i am finally reading it. so thank you for badgering me about it, internet, because so far, i am really enjoying it!!!

*****************************REVIEW***********************************

the other day, when i was still a whopping 60 pages from finishing this book, greg shoved me out from in front of my work-computer to revisit his review of the book.he muttered aloud "why does anyone even read my reviews. karen, don't ever let me compare a book to a mobius strip again."

and he is both correct and incorrect. because it is a good review, but the book ain't nothing like a mobius strip.

finnegan's wake is a true mobius. infinite jest is a motheaten mobius, with key scenes lost along the way. this is more of a parabola, or the first hill in a rolly coaster. if the rolly-coaster ride-as descriptor weren't so trite, i would explore that here: how at first, you didn't quite know what you were getting into, as you made your ascent, but then, once you got to the top and could see what was coming, you just couldn't read through it quickly enough, and there was excitement and screams and probably some of the weaker readers vomited into their laps. but it is indeed trite, so i won't make the comparison at all.

i can understand the accusations of gimmickry. although as we are learning here on goodreads, gimmicks pay off, no? even the ones with no substance. and if this was just structure without substance, i would completely agree with mitchell's detractors. if it were just a series of short stories, butterflied and stacked on top of each other to form a book, it would be less appealing than it is in reality.

because they do bounce off of each other, the stories. they sneak into each others' worlds both thematically, and more overtly, like foraging little mice on mouse-missions. sometimes they are each others' stories. calvino, borges, arabian nights, david lynch - i can trot out all the expected names if you aren't tired of reading them.but this is something all its own. and i am sure that a second reading would do me a world of good at identifying even more of these echoes. this is a book that pretty much demands a second pass, which i will gladly give.

mitchell addresses the accusations of gimmickry before they are even made, in the novel itself:

spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year's fragments into a "sextet for overlapping soloists": piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. 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.

and i love that - his anticipation of his own critics. yummy.

so - yeah - absolutely read this book if you have been dragging your feet over it. but beware - some of the stories are going to be much more captivating than others. i would read an entire book about frobisher, for example.

people are obscenities. would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer function.

agreed.

i will definitely read this book again.

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