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

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

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.

Mostly historical fiction with a few sci-fi and fantasy elements mixed in. It's cleverly done and the overall effect is very interesting. David Mitchell has a wondrous way with words. Highly recommended.

I finished reading for the second time awhile ago, but ended up sitting on this "review" for some time now because I could not find anything to say, other than "highly recommended." This one of those books you have to experience for yourself. No review can can sum it up or give you an idea what's inside. How anyone think they could turn this into a big-budget star-studded movie is baffling to me. ("This book defies a lot of things, so let's turn it into a movie??" Because that always turn out amazing.)

So what is this book like? I'll try to give an overview. There are six novellas nested inside and each story is set in a different place and time period, with one set in a distant apocalyptic future, which isn't as strangely out of place as you'd think. There's a common thread woven through these six stories linking them to each other across time and space, and each story is told by a character from the next story. The writing is unique in that all characters have well-defined voices that reflect their time periods. Mitchell experiments with different styles and genres, and the result is six distinct stories that actually read like they're written by six different authors.

The beginning was slow for me though, mainly because it's fragmented and difficult to follow. It wasn't until I got to the second story that I could sort of grasp what was going on. During the first half of the book, I had to push myself to read on, which I'm glad I did, because when I reached the end of the sixth story and the beginning of the second half of the other stories, things started coming together methodically, almost magically, to form the big picture, and it was at that moment that I finally saw what Mitchell had been doing all along. And it's beautifully done. I'm still in awe.

There are so many quotable passages--Mitchell really does have a wondrous way with words--that I could fill this whole space with quotes, but I think these will do.

The mind abhors a vacancy and is wont to people it with phantoms.

[...]

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.

[...]

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

[...]

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes.

I won this book from a Goodreads Giveaway and would like to thank the people at Random House for sending a copy.

* * * * *

UPDATE: May 2020

Really curious to see if I still feel the same way about this book as I did when first finishing it in 2014, aka a lifetime and a half ago in covid time.

REREAD:

Still a good read and an excellent experimental novel. For the past couple of months, I have been in the mood for short (or short-ish) fiction that I can gulp down in one or two sittings. No reason for it, really. Just what the mood called for. So I went through a number of novellas and and reread a few favorites. It was a mixed bag, all things considered. A few were great, many were fine, and a couple were duds, as to be expected. More importantly though, the rereads stood the test of time.

Cloud Atlas fits this short-fiction mood I'm in as it's a series of novellas "disguised" as a novel. For this reread, I went with the full-cast audiobook and found it to be a different reading experience than the novel. I wouldn't say it's better, just different and a bit more immersive. Each character has a different voice actor, so you always know who is speaking in each novella. That made the different plots easier to follow, especially near the end as they come together and you get the "big picture" of this very segmented, multifaceted story.

That said, I no longer love this book as much as the first time I read it. It's still a work of art and I fully appreciate the work that went into crafting it. However, it's not the kind of book I enjoy anymore, and I don't see myself picking it up again. I used to think that it was way back in 2014. In fact, I loved it back then and couldn't recommend it enough.

So what happened? A lot of things, but the main one being I'm no longer easily impressed by nice prose and clever plotting. A novel needs more than that to pull me in.

Sidenote: why does 2014 feel like it was so long ago? It's almost like it existed in an alternate timeline. I think it seems that way to me because of all the things that went down since then. I think they may have changed me on a fundamental level. Years from now, I have a feeling I'll look back at 2020 and say the same, except 2020 will change all of us on a cellular level.

* * * * *

Cross-posted at http://covers2covers.wordpress.com/20...

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

STRUCTURE


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

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

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

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

THEMES

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

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

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

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


1a THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING

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

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

2a LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEM

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

3a HALF LIVES: THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERY

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

4a THE GHASTLY ORDEAL OF TIMOTHY CAVENDISH

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

5a AN ORISON OF SOMNI-251

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

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

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

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

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

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

5b AN ORISON OF SOMNI-251

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

4b THE GHASTLY ORDEAL OF TIMOTHY CAVENDISH

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

3b HALF LIVES: THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERY

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

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

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

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

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

2b LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEM

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

1b THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING

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


LANGUAGE/DIALECT

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

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

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

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

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

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



LINKS BETWEEN SECTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

SOME LINKS WITH HIS OTHER WORKS

Katy Forbes in Ghostwritten has a comet-shaped birthmark.

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

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

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

MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*t“The colour of monotony is blue.”



My review from early 2000s...

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

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

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

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

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

Three good pieces about this on Guardian Bookclub:

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

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

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

Round 2: I just finished Rereading over the holidays and I was dead set about to go on one knee and propose to the damn book.

n  n    n      “My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?” n    n  n

n  People: So Bill what’s your favourite book…n

n  Me: (Takes the Microphone) Cloud F$#@! Atlas!!!!! (Drops the Mic)n

n  n     “A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”n  n

Before Starting this book…



Reaching Halfway...



Closing the book...

n  “Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.” n

Utterly shocked & left completely speechless! Yes, this is the very same book that intimidated me to a level like no other and I am sure it will haunt me till my last breath because of its epicness. I am still not sure how Mitchell accomplished this masterpiece, How??? How??? The reason why I was held back from picking this book is the general opinion of it &n   if you are reading this don’t go looking into reviews about this because you will be ripped apartn. I would advise you to plunge head first into Mitchell's deep river of a book... Yes, some might crash into the rocks but those who find the flow just go with it and let your brain explode page after page after page

n  n    “I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.” n  n

The plot of this book is totally bonkers, the author (bless him) managed to squeeze almost every n  genren into this one book and also slays each and every one of them. From The beginning of civilisation in New Zealand to Artificial intelligence in a futuristic Asia and everything in between. I was left amazed at the wonder of each narrative. The stories intertwine and unfold like a Matryoshka doll…

  n  This is basically the plot of the book :0n[/caption]

 
He brought each character to life and connected them in some intricate way  through literature, music, art, letters etc. He captured this concept beautifully with a hint of reincarnation it played out masterfully. The stories are so different yet so similar to one another and will leave you breathless, I swear…

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

Themes on top of Themes were explored to the max… Philosophy of Human Civilization (without being too preachy) Religion & reincarnation, colonialism, racism, feminism, environmental issues, death, literature and so many  gems… Honestly, I think everyone who attempts this book will get something out of it (even if you won’t like the book) it opens such a wide platform for so many different conversations and it’s originality(Trust me I have never ever read such a book before) just elevates it to a whole other level.

n  “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” n

I didn’t want it to end, I was online ready to order more of his works because his style is poetry to my eyes. I appreciate a book that can alter my perspective on life in general and also manages to introduce me to a new genre (or multiple genres) I will look forward to seeing more of his books. So if you are looking for a book that…

t Has an original concept (or one that’s new to me)?
t Multiple Narratives & Plot
t Beautiful writing across different genres
t Totally breaks the rules of the norm of literature
t Colourful characters with amazing intellect
t Just a badassery
t Also my favourite book of all time (If you care that is)



n  P.S. If you have read this tell me about your experience plus recommend what book by Mitchell I should read next because I need more (Especially David Mitchell fans)n



Thank you for reading :)

Cloud Atlas video review for beginners (Here)

P.S.S. The movie was absolutely amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnAq...

Cloud Atlas is layered, complex, uniquely structured, occasionally puzzling, often moving, and definitely not for the faint of heart. It's famously (or infamously) structured with a sextet of interconnected stories that range from the mid-1800s to the distant future.

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.

I like that Mitchell has a sense of humor about his story. :) Like this Cloud Atlas Sextet musical piece written by one of the characters, each story is told by a different voice, and cuts off abruptly (sometimes in mid-sentence) until the central story. Then the storyline moves back again through time, wrapping up each tale. To use another simile, the novel is very much like a set of Russian nesting dolls that is taken apart and then put back together again.

One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now" likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.

Despite the sometimes huge leaps in time, each story is tied to the stories before and after it by colorful threads: characters read (or view) each others' stories; themes resurface, showing a different face; memorable scenes--like increasingly small fruit being shot off a reluctant clone's head with an arrow--are unexpectedly reflected in a similar scene in a later story; characters experience deja vu moments that tie them to another character in a different story. karen's description in her review is so apt: "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."

Part 1 is the 1850-era journal of Adam Ewing, an American notary who is traveling in the South Pacific. He witnesses the brutality of the Maori people toward the Moriori natives, not realizing — at first — that his own white people are often equally as brutal and predatory. This story is told in the style of Herman Melville, which, frankly, makes for a tough start to the novel. But don't lose heart, because very soon comes:

Part 2: Letters written in 1931 by a young Robert Frobisher, an amoral, self-centered, dishonest, but very funny and charming bisexual musical genius, to his friend Rufus Sixsmith. Frobisher, disinherited and looking to escape from his debts, attaches himself as an assistant to an older, nearly blind musician, Vyvyan Ayrs, who is living in Belgium. After a rocky start, the musical collaboration goes well, but soon problems start to surface again. Adam Ewing's journal is discovered by Robert while he is fishing around in the Ayrs' home, looking for old books to steal and sell.

Part 3: It's 1975, and Rufus Sixsmith is now an older man who meets a journalist, Luisa Rey, in California when they're stuck together in a broken elevator. Luisa is looking for a good story, and Rufus has some dirt on the new nuclear reactor in the area. This piece reads like a fast-moving crime novel that you'd pick up in an airport to distract you on your flight.

Part 4: In the early 2000s, Timothy Cavendish, a 60-something British man who is a vanity publisher, is writing his memoirs. One of his authors (who comes from a rough family) tosses his worst literary critic over the side of a skyscraper, killing him. The resulting publicity makes the author's book an instant bestseller. Though the author is in jail, his brothers come to Timothy looking for a piece of the monetary pie. Timothy goes on the run . . .

Part 5: Sometime in the not-too-far-distant future, in what used to be Korea, not-too-bright clones ("fabricants") are used as a source of slave labor. They are deemed to have no soul. Corporate power rules, and the slang amusingly reflects that as several trademarks are now the generic names for everyday objects (people wear nikes on their feet, drive fords and watch disneys). Sonmi-451 is a fabricant fast food worker who is unexpectedly "ascending," gaining greatly increased intelligence and understanding. A group steals her away from the restaurant, but what is their agenda for Sonmi-451?

Part 6: In a far-distant future, Zachry tells the story of his adventures in his youth on the "Big I" of "Hawi" to a group of children. Zachry's people, the Valleymen, are a no-tech, superstitious, rural people who worship the goddess Sonmi and are periodically in danger from Kona raiders, who seek to enslave them. The Valleyman are also visited annually by the Prescients, who seem to be the one group of people who still have technology and scientific understanding. One of the Prescients, Meronym, asks to stay with Zachry's people for a year and Zachry's family is elected to host her, much to his dismay. They eventually become friends as he leads her on a pilgrimage to what's left of the observatories on Mauna Kea, symbolically capping the novel as events start to descend from there.

Mitchell's ability to create very distinct narrators, writing styles, and futuristic languages without sacrificing (too much) understanding is truly praiseworthy. It helped me to know that each story section was (with the exception of the culminating central story) only about 40 pages long, so if I was having difficulties with one narrator I had the comfort of knowing that a different narrator would soon take over. Also, I cheerfully sacrificed the element of surprise for the satisfaction of better understanding, and read several online discussions and reviews of Cloud Atlas while I was reading each section of the book. The Cloud Atlas Readalong at editorialeyes.net was particularly helpful. http://editorialeyes.net/the-cloud-at...

Cloud Atlas grapples with some heavy themes: power, greed, slavery, predatory vs. selfless behavior, prejudice, love, the nature of souls . . . I could go on. I think I may admire this book more than I love it, but it's an amazing achievement and really made me think. It is absolutely worth reading if you're up for a mental challenge.

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ‘morrow? Only Sonmi the east an’ the west an’ the compass an’ the atlas, yay, only the atlas o’ clouds.

This book proves David Mitchell can be any writer he chooses. The six novellas that comprise Cloud Atlas are forgeries - and they are original. Each adopts the voice of a distinct author. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but all of the parts are superb. It is a sextet, like the one found within the novel, with piano, clarinet, cello, flute, oboe, and violin - every individual instrument pleasing, but when played altogether becomes something different and brilliant - the Cloud Atlas Sextet.

Each novella is broken, torn in two, or interrupted, and later continued after the sixth, which is the only one completed in one section. Then the previous five stories are concluded in descending order.


1. THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWING
Written as a journal. The first story is a delightful combination of Melville, Defoe, and James Fenimore Cooper. It has the serious tone and charm of 18th and 19th century literature, but goes a bit too far, just short of mockery. It is not parody, nor disrespectful. Somehow it has a layer of - what? invisible mirth?

The acknowledgments notes Michael King’s definitive work on the Moriori, n  A Land Apart: The Chatham Islands Of New Zealandn which provided Mitchell with a factual account of Chatham Islands history. This part of the story is interesting, and adds historical details essential to the plot in the way Moby Dick does with whaling information.

Moriori, 1877, survivors of the 1835 Maori invasion

2. LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEM
Letters, one way. Robert Frobisher, writes amusing accounts of his escapades in Belgium to his lover Rufus Sixsmith while he works for a famous composer as an amanuensis. I pictured Frobisher to be like a young Hugh Laurie. There is something of Waugh, or Nancy Mitford in style and humour. He finds the Adam Ewing journal.

The acknowledgments notes "certain scenes in Robert Frobisher’s letters owe debts of inspiration to n  Delius as I Knew Himn by Eric Fenby....The character Vyvyan Ayrs quotes Nietzsche more freely than he admits." And like Nietzsche, Ayrs has tertiary syphilis, "The syphilitic decays in increments, like fruit rotting in orchard verges".

"Eric William Fenby, OBE (22 April 1906 – 18 February 1997) was an English composer and teacher who is best known for being Frederick Delius's amanuensis from 1928 to 1934. He helped Delius realise a number of works that would not otherwise have been forthcoming...In 1928, hearing that Delius had become virtually helpless because of blindness and paralysis due to syphilis, he offered to serve him as an amanuensis." - Wikipedia

"Delius, Delius amat, Syphilus, Deus, Genius, ooh". - Kate Bush

n
The amanuensis Eric William Fenby
n

3. HALF-LIVES, THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERY
It's terrible! in a good way. A classic thriller/mystery/crime novel. Cheesy style and plot: spunky girl reporter, whose father (Lester Rey, now dead) had been a cop fighting corruption. Several highly improbable escapes from certain death. All the clichés of this genre are here and brilliantly strung together. Rufus Sixsmith, the addressee in the previous episode, is a key character and his letters from Zedelghem are discovered after he is murdered. Does Sixsmith's prediction about the nuclear reactor come true?

n  n  
n  Lester del Reyn

4. THE GHASTLY ORDEAL OF TIMOTHY CAVENDISH
The memoir of a sixty something publishing agent, trapped in an old folks home. Cavendish is like an acid-tongued old geezer Randle McMurphy, battling another Nurse Ratched - but as written by Martin Amis. He reads the manuscript for Half-Lives, intending to publish it, as well as his own memoir, "I shall find a hungry ghostwriter to turn these notes you’ve been reading into a film script of my own."


Nursey

5. AN ORISON OF SONMI~451
Written in Q & A form; sci-fi; a dystopian future, the economy dependent on slave clones. The clone Sonmi becomes the first stable, ascended fabricant, i.e., fully human. Some plot elements of Bladerunner.

Sonmi later watches the film ("disneys") The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, "one of the greatest movies ever made by any director, from any age." Ray "451" Bradbury, Orwell, Huxley and Plato's Republic are referred to. Somni is Winston Smith - and she is Jesus.


Doona Bae as Sonmi

6. SLOOSHA’S CROSSIN’ AN’ EV’RYTHIN’ AFTERt
Futurist speculative fiction - civilization has fallen, the few remaining people live a basic existence. Sort of a Tolkienian fantasy but Mitchell's marvelous invented dialect is Burgessish. Zachry the goatherder - there and back again - is a Valleysman on Big I, Ha-Why. "Valleysmen only had one god an’ her name it was Sonmi".


Zachry sees a recording of Sonmi's Q & A interview, because there is a small group of advanced survivors, "Prescients," and one arrives on a great ship to live on the island, to learn the ways of these primitive people. They have a Prime Directive - but who ever follows those? They are nonbelievers,

We Prescients, she answered, after a beat, b’lief when you die you die an there ain’t no comin back.

But what ’bout your soul? I asked.

Prescients don’t b’lief souls exist.

But ain’t dyin’ terrorsome cold if there ain’t nothin’ after?

Yay—she sort o’ laughed but not smilin’, nay— our truth is terror-some cold.

Jus’ that once I sorried for her. Souls cross the skies o’ time, Abbess’d say, like clouds crossin’ skies o’ the world. Sonmi’s the east’n’west, Sonmi’s the map an’ the edges o’ the map an’ b’yonder the edges.

Mauna Kea Observatories on "Big I, Ha-Why".


The stories are connected by certain reoccurring themes and events. Truth. Time. Betrayal. Drugs. Poison. Power. Captivity. Masters and Slaves. Freedom. Cruelty. Worship. The Number Twelve, Seven. Worms, Snakes, Ants, Souls. Birthmarks. Escape. Letters. Books. Music. Films. Aging. Corporate Society. Religion. And there are many literary allusions: Moby Dick; The Bible; Don Juan; Time's Arrow; To the Lighthouse; The Gulag Archipelago; An Evil Cradling; Nineteen Eighty-four; Fahrenheit 451; All Quiet on the Western Front . Nietzsche, Kipling, Conrad, Zane Grey, Homer. Harry Harrison. And more.

One Novella is slyly presented within another. I found myself clinging to the first narrative as the "real" one. When it turns up as "a curious dismembered volume" in the second, damn! I swallowed hard and justified such an appearance as quite possible. Then it is merely mentioned in a manuscript - the third novella - which is being read in the fourth. Got that? making it entirely illogical to continue my belief. And worse: Frobisher says, "Something shifty about the journal’s authenticity—seems too structured for a genuine diary, and its language doesn’t ring quite true—but who would bother forging such a journal, and why?"

So I'm forced into using doublethink of the highest order. The fact is, you want each of these narratives to be the real one. They are that good. The structure weakens the reader's fantasy that this is "real". It becomes very awkward, like explaining a time travel paradox.

Still...never underestimate the power of doublethink. Autua, Adam Ewing, Robert Frobisher, Rufus Sixsmith, Timothy Cavendish, Sonmi, Zachry, Meronym, all remain with me...

*Sob*.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

С една дума - страхотна!!!

Не ми харесва единствено подбора на българското заглавие - далеч по-удачно би било Облачен атлас или дори Атлас/Карта на облаците. Нещо, което е невъзможно реално да съществува, освен в дигитален вариант и е вечна променлива.

Самата книга се състои от плавно преливащи една в друга и във времето и пространството истории. Напред и после обратно.

Фантастично изпълнение на Дейвид Мичъл, години след прочита на книгата съм все още запленен от нея и помня почти всичките и герои и перипетиите им. Рядко попадам на такъв мощен размах на въображението, колкото и клиширано да звучи.

Ще я препрочета със сигурност.

Цитат:

"В началото е невежеството. То поражда страх. Страхът - омраза, а тя насилие. Насилието предизвиква ново насилие, докато единствен закон стане волята на най-силния."

Гледах и филма, според мен екранизацията е доста сполучлива и също си струва да се види.

P.S. Личен фаворит - приключението на Тимъти Кавендиш, пресъздадено брилиянтно във филма от Джим Броудбент!

I finished the book 10 days ago, and I still hesitate to start this review. The first reason is that I loved the book so much, I am left with a feeling of inadequacy :


The second reason is the nature of the story. I can't begin to explain why I think this is important to me without going into the message / the core of the narrative. All the stories assembled into this map of clouds/beliefs/attitudes are variations on a given theme, and the interrupted nature of the narrative is important in maintaining tension and in cloaking the philosophical foundation of the ensemble. So discussing the hidden message can be consider slightly spoilerish. My preference is to read the books first and come to the discussion forums after I formed my own opinion.

This said, the first comment is that very little in the Cloud Atlas is accidental or irrelevant. If the six stories appear initially random of pointless, I would counsel patience : it will all be made clear, eventually. I cannot claim credit for the following analogies - they are part of the text: the author uses the Matryoshka doll style of embedding one story into another in order to illustrate how the present encompasses the past and is in turn enveloped by the future, while the classical sextet composition explains how each of the six characters (piano, clarinet, cello, flute, oboe, and violin) picks up the main musical theme, give it the instrument's specific tonality and introduces variations and soloist cadenzas.

The books opens with The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - a narrative of the voyage of an American accountant in the Pacific, cca. 1850. A pious, timid and undemonstrative man, he witnesses the effects of modern civilization on the natives of the Polinesian islands and the harshness of life aboard a sailing ship. The precarity of his health turns him toward introspection in morality disertations in his journal, a journal that will be discovered by the protagonist of the second story ( a plot device that will be repeated with each new main character)

Letters from Zedelghem is set in Belgium in 1930 and follow the picaresque adventures of Robert Frobisher, a young rake spurned by his rich family and forced to abandon his musical studies and live outside the law. Penniless, he flees England and tries to find redemption in the sumptuous estate of a celebrated composer whose poor health may prompt him to accept an assistant (amanuensis - a new word I learned today) . As proof of Mitchell's talent in masking the true intent of this second installment, I didn't care much for Frobisher amoral attitude, despite his humorous snarky comments in the letters, but he became my favorite character of all six after reading the second half of his story.


Composers are merely 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.

For a cynic and a crook, Frobisher shows quite a lyrical streak once he encounters love:

Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance - beauty - yet here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart.


A character from these letters features in the third story : Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery . This one is set in California around 1975 and is another change in form. After an intimate journal and an epistolary exposition, the story is told as an eco thriller of one idealistic journalist fighting the big business bent on destroying the environment and putting thousands of lives at risk.

The unpublished manuscript of Luisa Rey reaches the hands of a contemporary London publisher in the fourth story : The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish . This is another thriller, with a strong flavor of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" . Cavendish is in his 60's, and forced here to admit his age and act accordingly, even if the pill is bitter:

We - by whom I mean anyone over sixty - commit two offenses just by existing. One is lack of Velocity: we drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny eyed denial if we are out of sight.

With the fifth story we arrive finally at the science-fiction part of the novel. An Orison of Sonmi~451 was my favorite initially, with its portrayal of a dystopian society dominated by consummerism and at the mercy of super-corporations that use genetically altered human clones (fabricants) as indentured laborers while the purebloods enjoy unlimited merchandise and entertainment. As a funny commentary of how fast things change in the world economy, the author mentions among the corporations of the future Sony and Kodak, both of which are in dire straits in 2012, only a couple of years after the novel was written.
The story of Somni reminded me strongly of The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, among other classics of SF literature.  and it got a lower rating in my preferences because it was too similar in the end to Soylent Green and Stranger in a Strange Land.

The dystopian tale of Somni is followed by the sixth and final installment Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After a post-apocalyptic story of the survivors of a global holocaust trying to survive among the Hawaiian islands. This is the core, the innermost Russian doll, and the ambitious plans of the author begin to be revealed. The form of this final tale is the one that gave me some slight problems because the apocalypse brought not only the collapse of the economy, but also the degradation of language. The format is the oldest form of storytelling, orally around a campfire. One aspect of the story that initially bothered me was the inclusion of the supernatural in the form of prophecy (I'm developing an allergy to it as a plot device in most of my fantasy books) , but I believe it is quite a smart move of Mitchell used to illustrate the circular nature of history.

After this point, the author ramps up the philosophical discussion and turned most of my expectation on their head. Every page written turns out to be a debate on the Meaning of Life: the nature of civilization, the human nature and the survival of mankind. According to David Mitchell, the battle between good and evil, right and wrong, is fought not in the war rooms of superpowers or in the secret hideouts of secretive organizations bent on world domination, but inside each and every one of us, choosing to give in in the face of aggression or to stand up and affirm the belief in a better option. Starting with the central story, and going back to the first, here are what I consider the relevant quotes:

So, is it better to be savage'n to be Civlized?
What's the naked meanin bhind them two words?
Deeper'n that its this. The savage satfies his needs now. Hes hungry, hell eat. Hes angry, hell knuckly. Hes swellin, hell shoot up a woman. His master is his will, an if his will say-soes, Kill! hell kill. Like fangy animals. [...]
Now the Civlized got the same needs too, but he sees further. Hell eat half his food now, yay, but plant half so he wont go hungry morrow. Hes angry, hell stop'n think why so he wont get angry next time. Hes swellin, well, hes got sisses an daughters what need respectin so hell respect his bros sisses an daughters. His will is his slave, an if his will say-soes, Don't! he wont, nay.
So, I asked gain, is it better to be savage'n to be Civlized?
Listn, savages and Civlized aint divvied by tribes or bliefs or mountain ranges, nay, evry human is both, yay.

-------

Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. [...] In a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of 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.

-------

What sparks war? The Will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, the actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence.

------

the weak are meat, the strong do eat.

------

Scholars discern motions in history and formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises and falls of civilizations.
My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes.
What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts and virtuous acts.
What precipitates acts? Belief.
Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world.
[...]
Why fight the natural (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? 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.

------

I will end my review with a commentary on the title. I see Cloud Atlas as the antithesis of Atlas Shrugged , probably not intentional on Mitchell's part, but this here is the ultimate argument against selfishness. One of the six characters, looks back at his younger days and muses on the volatility of happyness and meaning:

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.

My recommendation - read this and don't give up before the final page because, like Robert Frobisher says, A half-read book is a half-finished love affair

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

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

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

I think people sometimes toss around the idea that something they've read or seen or heard has "changed" them. I almost never come away from something feeling changed, at least not in any way that I can immediately sense. But after I'd finished Cloud Atlas, I had this bizarre, unshakable feeling of being more connected than I was before I'd read it, not just to the people around me, but to those who'd gone before me, and those who will come after me as well.

In my opinion, this is a work of pure genius. There's certainly a clever gimmick to the novel's structure, but it isn't just cleverness for the sake of cleverness. While it can be fascinating and pleasurable to discover the ways in which Mitchell's novel fits together, the structure is also crucial to the novel's thematic concerns and to its emotional power. Of course, given the diversity of voices in the novel, readers will almost invariably come away enjoying some more than others. I enjoyed all but one of them to greater or lesser degrees--one character I started out detesting was, by the end, my favorite, and there was one story that I never cared for and felt I just had to get through it to get back to the good stuff.

There's so much going on in this book that no little review I might throw together and toss up on a website is going to do it justice, so I'm not even going to try. Primarily, it's about different types of storytelling--oral tradition, pulp fiction, journal writing and so on--and how stories can both empower us and hold power over us. (In one of the stories, missionaries on an island in the Pacific in the 1850s intertwine Christianity with the use of tobacco, addicting the native people and giving the missionaries added control.) But more than just being incredibly stimulating on an intellectual level, the novel is extremely engaging emotionally. Like the virtuosic piece of music that plays such a crucial role in the narrative, like the clouds from which both the piece and the novel take their names, the narrative, and the emotions it creates, are constantly changing shape. And like I said, by the time I was done travelling through this novel, I genuinely felt like I'd been changed, too.

(I went into this book knowing quite little, and I think it made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable, so I'd strongly advise anyone who is considering reading it to avoid looking at summaries or reviews that go into much detail about the plot or structure of the book.)

Actual Rating: 4.5 Stars

This is the kind of book you want to pick up when you're ready to be totally absorbed in story. I mean, you need strap yourself in before you pick this up.

This is not a carefree or light read. My advice is to approach this when you're looking for something complicated & engaging where every little detail has the potential to mean something later on.

The book is comprised of the stories of 6 different characters, all of which are related to each other in ways that may not be obvious from the get go.

I must mention that I had a really rough go of reading the opening section titled The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, but I implore you to keep reading if you happen to share in having that same experience.

The book picks up, I promise.

After it gets going, boy it gets going!

Each character has a beautifully distinctive presence in the novel. Mitchell expertly fashions each of them together into a final portrait that is mind-bending to say the least. I feel as though I need to reread this novel immediately just to try and pick up on all the things I'm sure I missed.

You'd have to be some kind of superhuman to notice every little thing this book has to offer the first time around. I'm sure there are impressive people somewhere who could achieve that, but I ain't one of them.

I would love to be inside the minds of folks who come up with stories like these. How much work does it take to craft something so subtle & intricate while maintaining a consistent idea throughout?

This book is an utter masterpiece.

Past that, it wouldn't be wise for me to go deeper into why this creative little book is so wonderful. That's how easy it would be to potentially spoil something, and this isn't a book you want to be spoiled for.

Just go in knowing that everything is important. Pay extra close attention for the best experience, and you will be rewarded!

This review and other reviews of mine can be found on Book Nest!

Buddy read this with my lovely bff Colette!