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. “

No es un libro para ir recomendando alegremente a la gente, porque es de esos que o lo amas o lo odias. A mí personalmente me ha encantado.

Es un libro muy diferente y me ha maravillado la facilidad con que David Mitchell va cambiando de estilo según la historia sin despeinarse ¡qué fácil lo hace! Y me ha parecido muy original como te va desgranando las 6 historias y luego vuelve a ellas pero en sentido inverso. Menos la número 6 que es la única que no se repite. Son relatos de ida y vuelta.

Tenemos la historia de Adam en forma de diario narrada como un libro de aventuras tipo Stevenson, la historia de Frobisher a modo de cartas, la de Luisa Rey como una novela negra, la de Timothy con mucho humor, la de Somni a modo de entrevista y la de Zachry en primera persona e inventándose un montón de palabras (estupendo trabajo del traductor)
Los párrafos finales son una auténtica maravilla.

Vamos que me pienso ir leyendo todo lo que pueda del Sr. Mitchell.

Curiosidad tengo ahora por ver la película, a ver qué tal la habrán adaptado los hermanos Wachowski. De momento he visto el tráiler y me ha parecido espectacular.

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

Friend-read with Donna! <3 Here's a link to her amazing review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

This book is vastly overrated. Mitchell spins a tale of reincarnation with no real punch and no real endgame. I kept waiting for the mindfuck, none was forthcoming.

This book is like a sandwich:
Bread: 1850 Adam Ewing, story cut off mid-point.
Mustard: 1931 Robert Frobisher, story cut off mid-point.
Onion: 1975 Luisa Rey, story cut off mid-point.
Lettuce: 2025(?) Timothy Cavendish, story cut off mid-point.
Cheese: Let's say 2125(?) Sonmi, story cut off mid-point.
Meat: Only complete story in the book, 2325 (?), Zachry, full story.
Cheese: Sonmi's story concludes.
Lettuce: Timothy's story concludes.
Onion: Luisa Rey's story concludes.
Mustard: Robert Frobisher's story concludes.
Bread: Adam Ewing's story concludes.

Is this a unique and innovative way to write a book? Yes.

Do I really care? No.

Mitchell does employ a gimmicky method of storytelling, but brings nothing new to my brain with his ramblings. I think he's trying hard to be deep and mindblowing, but it is a miserable failure.

Mitchell 'tackles' race and race relations head-on in this story, starting with Ewing living in a world (1850) where Aryan races are deemed 'naturally' superior and destined to take over Earth, and "ending" with the far post-apocalyptic future in which the ruling class, the class with technology - are all dark-skinned because more melanin means more resistance to plague. White people run around in "tribes" down on Earth, where they hunt and gather and kill each other in tribal wars, while the black ruling class flies around on ships and sends their scientists to study the "primitives."

One, this was fucking heavy-handed and not very enjoyable to this reader. No subtlety and nuance here. Secondly, Mitchell was severely pissing this reader off due to his insistence that while racism and race hierarchies could be eliminated (most explicitly in the Sonmi section in which the MC marvels that humans once judged each other by melanin levels in the skin), patriarchy and the subjugation of women will never go away. Women are raped, seen as sexual objects, and made to be the beasts of burden no matter how far ahead in the timeline Mitchell has created you travel. It's really quite depressing. And he insists on - whether in the past or the future - not only making women sex objects, but if no women are available during a situation, the men will rape and subjugate young boys and teenage boys. (Male on male rape is featured in two stories, the farthest past and the farthest future, both stemming from a situation in which no females are around to serve as sexual objects.)

I can't say that I'm surprised that Mitchell has his eyes on race and seems to boldly say that skin color doesn't matter or make up an innate core of a person, but is a social construct - while at the same time seems to just accept the "fact" that women are the weaker sex, who can either choose to fuck (or not choose, as the case may be) in order to move up the social ladder and save their lives, or choose (again, not really choose) to die. "Naturally" men are rapist scum, and women are their victims. "Naturally" if men have no women or girls around to rape, they will rape younger or weaker men because, you know, that's how men are. That's just the way life is. Accept it.

What a bunch of fucking bullshit. Science fiction-fantasy books always highly annoy me because despite being a genre in which an author can DO anything, make ANY reality possible, bend time and space and send people to new worlds, the future, the past, ANYTHING - rarely do I find a science fiction or fantasy book that TRULY revolutionizes our world or our way of looking at our world. Authors just CANNOT seem to escape whatever "truths" they already know, whether it be the 'truths' about human nature, the 'truths' about race, the 'truths' about sex and gender, or the 'truths' about human sexuality. It's so sad. Books that truly challenge your mind and the status quo (for example, Nexus or vN) are rare and far between. Stuff like this book, which is apparently trying hard to be daring and mindblowing, is actually sadly mundane and mired in uneducated ideas that are going to be left behind in the past.

It's ludicrous, Mitchell is saying, that once we enslaved people and hated them and thought them inferior due to their skin color. How primitive. How revolting. However, he gleefully has women acting as slaves, sex toys, and love interests with no apparent clue in his head that perhaps the shackles of sex and gender can also be discarded and left in the past. It's eerie, because he has absolutely NO IDEA that he is even doing this. It's completely unconscious on his part. Every time I thought we were going to get a female MC that would have a storyline with no sex in it... and trust me, sex is not needed... she would end up having sex or being sexualized in some fucking ridiculous way for no reason whatsoever. I was rabid.

The women in this book act completely as if they were written by a man. Insult intended. They have sex for no reason with men whom they would have zero sexual interest in. If a woman is a MC in Mitchell's story, she is of course attractive and sexy. And ends up banging male characters for no reason whatsoever. Men, no matter what century they are in, can't stop themselves from being rapist pieces of shit. Because Mitchell believes that this is somehow an innate feature of manhood. Wild sexuality that can't be tamed. Women are victims. Men are dominant.

Even women who are created with NO genetalia end up performing sex acts because ostensibly 'they fell in love' (with a man whom I had NO inkling she was romantically or sexually attracted to, after witnessing something NO person would ever want to have sex right after seeing, for no reason imaginable). Other women who seemingly are going to sidestep Mitchell's insistence that they fall in love with and have sex with men end up being talked about ad-nauseam in regards to their "big breasts" and having men moon over them non-stop.

This kind of relentless gender stereotyping and 'sexual roles are innate' crap is non-stop throughout the novel. Even Mitchell's bisexual man who is extremely sexually active with countless people is boringly shunted into a typical "normative" male role with no room for actual boundary-breaking or innovation.

This is a quote from the most far-reaching future of the book, let's say 2300s. Zachry, a tribal white man, and Meronym, a technologically-advanced Prescient, are discussing the differences between what is a "savage" and what is a "civilized person."

"So is it better to be savage'n to be Civ'lized?"

"What's the naked meanin'b'hind them two words?"

"Savages ain't got no laws," I said, "but Civ'lizeds got laws."

"Deeper'n that it's this. The savage sat'fies his needs now. He's hungry, he'll eat. He's angry, he'll knuckly. He's swellin', he'll shoot up a woman. His master is his will, an' if his will say-soes "Kill" he'll kill. Like fangy animals."

"Yay, that was the Kona."

"Now the Civ'lized got the same needs too, but he sees further. He'll eat half his food now, yay, but plant half so he won't go hungry'morrow. He's angry, he'll stop'n' think why so he won't get angry next time. He's swellin', well, he's got sisses an' daughters what need respectin' so he'll respect his bros' sisses an' daughters. His will is his slave, an' if his will say soes, "Don't!" he won't, nay."

At this point I just gave up all hope in life. If Mitchell is expecting me to believe a black woman is explaining to a white man in the year 2400ish that men are still naturally rapist shit, and the only reason men don't rape women is because they might not like it if their women were raped, well. Fuck. I might as well give up on humanity now. Forget the possibility that men might be human beings who care about other human beings and not want them to suffer. Forget the possibility, even, that men will ever see women as human beings at all. Mitchell seems to think this will never happen, and woman are going to be raped and shat on until the end of time. Because, you know. That's how men and women's natures ARE. Which is a fucking repulsive attitude to have.


So, your feminist ranting aside, how is this book otherwise?

Well, as you can see, Mitchell chooses to write in the most annoying way possible. The Ewing section and the horrendous Zachry section are particularly eye-bleeding due to Mitchell trying to be clever and butchering the English language in order to make people talk in a dialect. It's horrible and a nightmare to read. Heaven help you if English isn't your first language. You might have to give up on the book in frustration and disgust. I have no idea why authors insist on pulling this crap.

Genres

One could claim that Mitchell is playing around with different genres in this book. Ewing's is a seafaring adventure. Luisa Rey is living in a thriller novel. Zachry is living in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. However, if you are expecting Mitchell to transport you into any of these genres with any skill, you would be horribly mistaken. Luisa Rey is a watered-down thriller at best. Zachry's post-apocalyptic world lacks the punch and innovation one finds in other interpretations by more interesting authors. Ewing's seafaring adventures are at times nigh incomprehensible.


Tl;dr - This book is vastly overrated. I've never seen the film (and never plan to) so I can't comment on that, but in regards to the book: don't waste your time. Mitchell thinks he's being clever, and in a way he is - but it's a shallow way of being clever. He doesn't do anything even approaching being actually revolutionary, and that's a huge disappointment. I predicted the majority of his 'plot twists.' There's no actual meat in this sandwich.

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...

Overrated.

This book left me cold cold cold. I want books to make me feel something...that is, something other than boredom and indifference. I want to feel the people in the books I'm reading, to connect with them, to understand them and love them, hate them, sympathize with them, be confused by them, something, anything. I want there to be substance behind the smoke and mirrors. In Cloud Atlas the characters were flat and secondary to the the true protagonist: the book's structure. It felt like the characters were only there so that Mitchell could play around with themes and ideas and show off the design of his novel. Yes, it's a cool idea. Yes, it's ambitious. But you gotta back it up with the goods. Instead of getting lost in the stories, absorbed in the prose or reacting to the (slight and reaching) character overlaps, I was constantly aware that I was reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and I was on page x and he was trying to say this, that and the other. It was clinical. Formulaic. And ultimately unsuccessful in my humble and brutally honest opinion.

I can appreciate that Mitchell is creative, unique and (mostly) a good writer. I've read and enjoyed his previous two books and his other two books will be eventually pulled off my pile and read without bias. And It's not that I didn't get Cloud Atlas. I got it. Loud and Clear. Well sometimes loud and fuzzy (wtf Sloosha, seriously, just wft?!). I didn't miss the point. I'm not lacking the insight to recognize why some people have labeled this a so-called literary masterpiece. I just don't think it was all that good.

In a nutshell:
- I did not enjoy reading this.
- I was not impressed by the "connectivity" of the characters between chapters (I thought the connection between characters was executed much more successfully in Ghostwritten).
- The rocket shaped birthmarks were eye-rolling-ly lame. I don't care that you're trying to suggest we're all connected, or maybe these people are all reincarnations of each other, you can't think of anything better than a comet shaped birthmark?
- The Sloosha section was one of the most painful and annoying things I've ever read.
- I was bored for most of the book.

Shame...

I can best sum up the brilliance of the novel Cloud Atlas as: a self-contained meta-fictional, layered, narrative of ambitious and epic proportions.

I read that David Mitchell came up with his grandiose plot when thinking about designing a narrative along the lines of a Russian doll. And this is precisely the manner in which Cloud Atlas has been constructed. The novel is constructed of six interlinking stories; each save the sixth is broken into two halves so that we end up with a narrative like this:

1 The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (part 1)
2 Letters from Zedelghem (part 1)
3 Half Lives: The First Lousa Rey Mystery (part 1)
4 The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (part 1)
5 An Orison of Sonmi~451 (part 1)
6 Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After (complete story)
5An Orison of Sonmi~451 (part 2)
4The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (part 2)
3Half Lives: The First Lousa Rey Mystery (part 2)
2Letters from Zedelghem (part 2)
1The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (part 2)

This all seems impressive on paper, yet any skeptic would lack credibility if they did not question whether it truly works. And that is the truly impressive thing about this novel. The multi-layered narrative does work without seeming a clumsy plot device and every story flows together neatly. The second most impressive aspect is that David Mitchell can create a poignant and beautifully scripted tale without making it tedious to read. The book is entertaining, each story proving strong on its own and as part of a whole. Mitchell transcends ordinary conventions without seeming pretentious and rather than feeling jealous at his literary power I am held in awe.

Each story is set in a different genre so that rather than reading as belonging to one particular area Cloud Atlas reads as part of a whole range of genres. The first tale is set in journal form and is a historical fiction for the reader, set in a distant past in the Pacific. The second tale takes the form of letters to a close acquaintance describing the moral failings of its protagonist. The third tale is part crime noir and part journalistic tale. The fourth story is a humorous first person narrative in the style of a memoir. The fifth tale is a sci-fi set in the future in the style of an interview (I found that this was my personal favourite narrative thread). The sixth and final tale was a post-apocalyptic tale that took elements of The Road and A Clockwork Orange, turning them into something different. This final tale was my personal least favourite to read but I can recognise how it fit into the novel as a whole.

The power of this novel is in how each of these incredibly strong stories fit together to create one whole narrative (you could almost say that this overall story was the seventh tale). The ways in which these stories link is why I call this a meta-fictional tale. Each story references past stories (whether they appear as novels in subsequent stories, or are referenced through character names and events). There is also the hint of a kind of character reincarnation across all these stories with the protagonists sharing a kind of birthmark and similar traits.

The underlying questions and challenges this book is concerned with did not slip past my attention either. This book challenges many, many concepts: it challenges our concern as readers with time, space and genre; it challenges how fiction and reality are intertwined; it challenges what it is to be human; it even challenges that literary fiction can be incredibly entertaining as well as informative and inspiring. But perhaps the overall challenge that Mitchell provides is how human greed and selfishness - the natural order of things, hamartia, sin - ultimately leads to destruction. He urges humanity to be better than our greedy impulses.

"Why? Because of this - one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction."

The greatest compliment that I can give this book is that I would gladly read it again. I also now desire to read more of the brilliant combination of storytelling and writing that David Mitchell. I admit that many readers may find this challenging to grasp as a novel but once you push past the first areas of the novel it is incredibly fulfilling. Five well-earned stars for this novel and a definite feature on the 1001 books to read list.

"'...and 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?"

Clever

(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.

cross posted at Shelfinflicted

I can find no fault with Cloud Atlas.

Because of that I have had a difficult time coming up with this review. This book could have gone all wrong, its premise could have easily tipped this book over the edge into gimmick but David Mitchell pulled this off seamlessly. It blows my mind.

This book is six very different stories, occurring in different time periods that on the surface have nothing to do with each other. Yet they have everything to do with each other.

In 1850, a lawyer crosses the pacific during which he falls seriously ill and is treated by a doctor on board with unusual methods.

In 1931 a young composer of questionable morals works his way into the house of an old, formerly great composer who, due to late stage syphilis has lost his edge. During his time there he writes his masterpiece.

In 1975 an ambitious reporter working for a gossip rag goes after a big story that makes her a target.

Present day, an older gentleman working in publishing finally finds success, after working his entire life, with a book with ties criminal types. He soon finds trouble as well. In an attempt to find a safe place to lie low he ends up in a retirement home against his will.

In the near future, people are cloned and are genetically engineered for slave labor. They are called fabricants, and one fabricant, Sonmi 451 starts to think outside of the box. When she does all hell breaks loose.

Far into the future, we find Zachry living in Hawaii just as people did in the distant past, in tribes and in huts and with zero technology. Language itself is even breaking down. He meets a young woman that shows up on a ship that still has technology.

Zachry’s story is the center of the book and is the only one that is told completely without a break. All the rest are told up to a certain point and then they break and start with the next story in order. Once we hear Zachry’s tale we move backwards and hear the conclusion to the earlier stories to end up where we started, on the ship crossing the Pacific. It’s an onion.

All of these stories could have been written by different authors. You have an historical novel, a crime mystery, a comedy, a sci fi and an apocalyptic novel all mashed up and connected.

Superb.

This ambitious, unique, and very entertaining novel by David Mitchell is hard to describe. It's success or failure is a matter of debate, a matter of personal opinion, and a good argument can be made from both sides. I personally liked it. I couldn't decide between 4 or 5 stars, so settled on something in between. Truth is, a story written in six different time periods, six different genre's, six different points of view, provides something to like for almost every reader. The stories are inter-connected in small ways, but not enough to make it feel like a "whole",

I use the word ambitious because Mitchell took a big chance with this format. One gets the sense while reading that this could be something really special, even groundbreaking, but it somehow falls just short. Still very good, still well worth reading, but damn, what could have been.

Disclosure: I listened to this on audiobook which is not my usual way of reading. Using the word "reading" even sounds disingenuous. I'm not discountting the use of audiobooks; I certainly see their value and necessity, and for some books it may be the best way to experience them. I think that's the case with this book. This multi-cast of narrator/actor's were perfect. What they achieved was far above what my imagination could produce, especially relating to language, dialect, accents, etc. Highly recommended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terminé este libro decepcionado y hasta irritado con el autor.

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

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

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

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