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.

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.

David Mitchell is becoming one of my favorite authors! He can thrill with character, technique, style, and meaning and leave you wanting more.

Cloud Atlas presents six views of the world, past, present, future, not sequentially but with an order Mitchell's own, linked by subtle internal signs and the contrasting avarice and dignity of man. At times historical fiction, at times science fiction, at times post-apocalyptic terror, Cloud Atlas documents the passage of time and possible results of predatory human behavior. There are some internal hints (at least for me) at possible futures.

Frobisher speaks (p470):


Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools,
and states, you find indelible truths at one's core. Rome'll
decline and fall again....you and I'll sleep under Corsican
stars again, I'll come to Bruges again...you'll read this
again, the sun'll grow cold again....
....We do not stay dead long.


Reincarnation is posited as a truth twice, in two narratives.

One narrative foretells an apocalypse of the type man has been awaiting since 1945. But is this inevitable? Mitchell's novel floats through time and types of people and beings to investigate the worlds life.

In the final pages his historical character Adam Ewing thinks upon his life and the future. (p 507-8)


My recent adventures have made me quite the philosopher,
especially at night, when I hear naught but the stream
grinding boulders into pebbles through an unhurried
eternity. My thoughts flow thus. Scholars discern motions
in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern
the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary,
however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes.

What precipitates outcomes? vicious acts & virtuous acts.
What precipitates acts? Belief.


Belief is both prize & battlefield....If we believe humanity
is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation,
exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought
into being. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the
fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world....
Is this doom written within our nature?
If we believe that humanity many transcend tooth & claw,
if we believe divers races and creeds can share this world...,
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....It is the
hardest of worlds to make real.


Here Mitchell appears to be providing his thesis for Earth and mankind's future through Ewing. The hopeful case is the last thought. Nothing really changes. Ewing fought slavery. Rey fought corporate power. Sonmi ---the future itself.

I will definitely read this book again, after a suitable waiting period. I will also read more of Mitchell's works (I'm now at 2 having read and loved The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet).

Ah the rating. This is difficult. 4. 4.5, or 5. The more I think, the higher the rating has risen. After considering everything involved in the construction of Cloud Atlas and my enjoyment while reading I've finally decided on 5.

If you liked the book, see the movie!

Very enjoyable book, the pages just flew by (except for the innermost chapter, which I found slow reading because I was often puzzling over what the narrator was saying).

The following describes details of the novel's structure, which you may not want to know!
The book's structure was unique (to me, at any rate): The first five chapters are narratives, journals, or letters in the first person, written by five different characters. These chapters end (sometimes abruptly) without any resolution, and have only slight connections to each other. The sixth "innermost" chapter has a clear ending. Then the last five chapters take up, and complete (in reverse order) the stories of the first five chapters.

It works pretty well, and I did find all the stories very interesting and well-written. But I feel there were a couple negatives. First, chapter six is in a sense the end of the overall story (if the novel can be said to have an overall story). Thus the remaining chapters, although completing the other five stories, don't add much to that "overall story". The fact that they remain engaging reading is a testament to Mitchell's skill in story-telling. The other negative was that I was expecting the five story conclusions to somehow connect all six stories in a cohesive way, maybe paint some sort of "magical realist" picture which would be the ultimate "story" in the novel; but except for some very minor brush strokes, I didn't see any such picture painted. (Maybe I just didn't see it!)

Overall, it's a book well worth reading: six stories, each superbly crafted, featuring six completely different narrative voices, in six completely different settings; and, as a bonus, having a few interesting historical/philosophical/moral viewpoints thrown in.


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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.

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...)

Video review

If novel writing is architecture, this here is the Duomo di Milano.
Pulls off the inexplicable trick of offering six perfect stories, each one engaging, fun, heartbreaking and unforgettable, encasing them in a symmetrical structure whose constant intratextualities I could reread at nauseam.

All my fears that this book would be a pretentious head-trip were initially reinforced when the first segment of the book ended abruptly. Right when I felt myself getting attached the main character, a Englishman aboard a merchant ship in the South Pacific circa 1830, I was moved into the mind of an unrelated character about 90 years later, a man escaping nefarious schemes in London to pursue an assistant position with a prominent modern composer in declining health. But once I came across mysterious and resonating links between the stories, I was able to relax and enjoy the ride. And a ride it is, skipping forward to stories in more contemporary times and eventually to a time of a dystopic society followed by a post-apocalyptic period where civilization is barely holding on.

Each of the six story settings represents a robust free-standing novella with engaging characters and distinctive (and marvelous) writing styles. Yet each repeats and elaborates themes central to human culture and history and each connects forward and backward with the other stories. If that reminds you of music, Mitchell lets his hair down at one point and has his musical character write to a friend about his work on a “sextet for overlapping soloists” which is a clear analogy to his book’s structure: “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.” His character’s humility about his experimental approach seems likely to reflect Mitchell’s own attitude about his creation: “Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until its finished, and by then it’ll be too late…”

I gather that the stories all have a lot to do with the nature of history and the history of human nature, with an overriding concern on the misery and devastation wreaked by the minority of wealthy societies and classes and races within cultures. This seems to mirror the current squaring off of the 1% haves and 99% have nots in the West and the thrust of Jared Diamond’s work on how disparities in control of resources arise and how their squandering contributes to collapse of societies. In the 19th century scenario, a venal character who benefits from colonialism quips that there are two laws of survival, the first being: “The weak are meat the strong do eat” and “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.” In the early 20th century story, the lead character predicts: “Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man, are the same faculties that’ll snuff out Homo sapiens before the century is out!” In the dystopian future, a revolutionary intellectual returns to the first theme: “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.” By the postapocalypic movement, a wise elder recognizes with simple clarity that: “human hunger birthed the Civ’lize, but human hunger killed it too” …”hunger that made Old Uns rip out the skies an’ boil up the seas an’ poison the soil with crazed atoms an’ donkey ‘bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned…”

Another key metaphor for the structure of the book and Mitchell’s exploration of history is that of a set of Russian matryoshka dolls, the ones with multiple figurines successively encased. A character in the 1970’s concerned with stopping implementation of an unsafe nuclear power system notes down a model of time as “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 shall call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.” This fascinating distinction between actual and virtual pasts and presents is explained by this character’s notes. Suffice it to say here that their divergence has to do with an individual or a society's beliefs, which can empower them to swim against the tide of disparity and destruction. Each lead character in the novel represents such a hero, and their combined stories make for a very satisfying and uplifting symphony.

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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.

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.

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

Is narrative linear?

We all know that we tell a story in a linear fashion – “begin at the beginning, go on till the end, then stop”-but isn’t the linearity imposed by us? Isn’t history a multitude of narratives taking place simultaneously, like a multi-piece orchestra?

And what about the narrator? Is the external narrative same as the internal one? Is the story paramount, or the teller? What would be Wuthering Heights, say, if narrated by Heathcliff?
Writers and filmmakers across generations have struggled with these questions. Many of the gifted have tried to break free from the linearity that the story form imposes upon the teller. Most have succeeded to a greater or lesser degree.

I would rank David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas among one of the great successes.

*

Cloud Atlas is packet of six nested narratives, rather like one of those Chinese dolls nested inside one another or (for the mathematically minded) a series of nested functions in a computer program. Each of the stories adopts a different tone of voice, purposefully parodying established literary forms. Thus, the first story is written as a journal, rather like Robinson Crusoe: the second is in epistolary format: the third is a pulp thriller: the fourth, a partially dystopian novelette full of black humour: the fifth is an out-and-out SF story and sixth, a story of the far future dystopia with its own language, rather like A Clockwork Orange. The second story starts in the middle of the first, the third in the middle of the second and so on till we reach the sixth, which is told at a stretch; once that finishes, we are again taken “out” through the stories in reverse order, from fifth to first.

The narratives are all linked, and they are progressive in time. The linkage is tenuous initially, but in the second half of the broken stories, the previous story has become all important to the protagonist of that one. Each of the earlier narratives is “read” by the protagonist of the subsequent one, and the author purposefully inserts a question mark on the authenticity, perhaps to stress the unreality of the fictional universe we are inhabiting – rather like the alienation techniques of avant-garde filmmakers and playwrights. While getting caught up in each story, we are reminded continuously that this is the narrative of a flawed human being like ourselves – and the narrator might be unreliable.

*

I will not dissect the stories in detail. Better reviewers than me have analysed the novel in detail on this site and elsewhere, and have explored the historical context of the novel in depth. Rather, I will concentrate on the overarching themes that run as a common thread through the connected narratives, and the structure of the book in general.

Man’s endless cupidity and greed, and the part it has played in human “progress”, can be seen as the underlying theme. In The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, the Western powers are in the nascent phases of their ruthless domination of the “savage” world; the so-called “White Man’s Burden” to “civilise” the Earth. In Half-lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, we can see the corporate behemoth this mission has given rise to – a juggernaut that crushes everything that stands in the path of its insatiable greed. In An Orison of Sonmi ~ 451, we are introduced to the future dystopia that is the ultimate result of the consumptive nightmare of our times, and one clone’s fight against the faceless corporate. In Sloosha’s Crossing’an’ Ev’rythin’ After , we see the ultimate result of our greed: a future society not very different from the ones of the Maori and Moriori in the first novella, where the strong enslave and plunder the weak and the rule of fang and claw hold sway.

But there is hope even in this bleak landscape: for the mythical ancestress of the Valleysmen is none other than Sonmi~451, the renegade clone from the previous novella. When her interrogator asks why she became a willing scapegoat, she answers:

To Corpocracy, to Unanimity, to the Ministry of the Testaments, to the Juche and to the Chairman, I quote Seneca’s warning to Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.

This is the fire that carries the revolutionary forward, from Prometheus via Spartacus right down to Che Guavera and Suu Kyi: the promise of a golden tomorrow. And even though in a way unanticipated by her, the image of Sonmi and the recorded interview has become a sort of rallying cry for the downtrodden Valleysmen.

As Adam Ewing, protagonist of the first novella, says (as he replies to the imagined taunt of his father-in-law that “…only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!”):

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

*

And it is one this standalone note that this strange book ends, like the Cloud Atlas sextet written by Robert Frobisher, the doomed protagonist of the second story. It should be noted that this particular novella stands out from the rest, as it is different in tone and content from the others. Here there is no establishment trampling upon the individual, rather it is the tale of an outsider, an individual who would find any system oppressive. This rather unlikeable person has the gift of art inside him, which allows him to endure the torture of mundane human existence, which is the only thing he can share with lesser individuals like us.

The shifting kaleidoscope of clouds creating their own eternal yet ephemeral dance formations in the sky of human existence – and the artist, working like a mad cartographer, to create for us an atlas of the clouds.