Cloud Atlas: A Novel

Cloud Atlas is not perfect by any means (I'll get to what I see as its main flaws in a minute) but credit must be given where credit is due: it is the most ambitious, thought-provoking, entertaining, and imaginative work I've read in a good while. To do a review of it justice, certain "spoilers" must be revealed below ... so let the reader beware. In my description above, I intentionally used the word "ambitious" first. When "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" is chopped off mid-sentence after just a couple dozen pages and we are transported abruptly to 1930s Belgium, the reader knows that he or she is in for a long, roller coaster of a ride. Each of the six stories begins in medias res, in fact, and in almost every case, the stories use dialect and are in a context foreign enough that it takes real concentration and focus on the part of the reader to follow along. Mitchell, after all, has something important to say, and in return for revealing his wisdom, he expects the reader to put some effort into reading his work. Each story, while a different genre, is remarkably rich in detail--one of Mitchell's strengths is the ability to so thoroughly and convincingly create a universe and characters that the reader feels as if he is strolling along the drafty corridors of Chateau Zedelghem with Robert Frobisher or at sea in the cramped "coffin" (cabin) of Adam Ewing. In fact, for the first half of the novel, one finds oneself acclimating to one world only to be transported to another just as soon as they have adjusted to the first. Certain sentences and passages are left untranslated or unexplained. One either finds his exhilarating or frustrating. As others have noted, this work is not for everyone--if you are looking for a "fun" read, or one that has only one level of meaning, look elsewhere. But for me, I found myself in the "exhilarated" camp. Diving into these rich, diverse worlds, trying to understand how they all fit together, gradually piecing together the puzzle of Mitchell's meaning ... Mitchell creates an adventure where the journey is as thrilling as the destination (each story, and the novel as a whole, tends to follow the pattern of a journey or quest). What is Mitchell's message? I'll let you read the book to find that out, but it is one that becomes clear as one reads the book ... and is even explicitly spelled out at several points (notably the last few pages of the Sloosha's Crossin' and Adam Ewing stories). Personally, having the message so explicitly written out was a bit heavy-handed and unnecessary for me--it was as if, having brought the reader along this far, Mitchell was afraid that the reader might leave without fully grasping what he was trying to say. Which, again, I felt was unnecessary given that the message was clear anyway--an author should not have to say "here's what it all means, folks!" if he has effectively conveyed the message through the story being told (which he has in this case, if the reader is attentive and committed to understanding the work). The message is indeed profound, and important. However, another annoyance is how overtly and self-consciously Mitchell trumpets just how profound and important his message is; apotheosis is reached with the Robert Frobisher character's creation of the Cloud Atlas Sextet, which seems to be only a thinly-veiled metaphor for Mitchell's own creation. There are a number of self-conscious and self-referent moments that feel like a jarring breach of the fourth wall in an otherwise elaborately staged production. At these times I just wanted Mitchell to let his work speak for itself and its brilliance to be judged by the reader. Other flaws: although I enjoyed each of the six stories, some worked better for me than others--I felt that while all started brilliantly, only some finished brilliantly. Despite my grumblings about the Mitchell-Frobisher links, I found the psychological intensity of the Frobisher character to be remarkable; once I penetrated the dialect, Sloosha's Crossin' was rewarding as the first step in really tying everything together (as the other bookend to the story, I enjoyed Adam Ewing for the same reason). To this day, the most haunting and memorable story for me was that of Sonmi-451. The interrogatory style, the brutal satire of democratic capitalism through the portrayal of "corpocracy" as a near-future vision of the path we are on, the deceptions within deceptions and chilling revelations ... I felt that in terms of the plot, characters, and message it was perhaps the best of the lot as a self-contained story in and of itself. Other stories I enjoyed, but did not find quite as moving: Luisa Rey was fun as a hardboiled crime/detective novel (and a nice setup for the corpocracy of Sonmi-451) but felt a bit forgettable otherwise; for me, at least, Timothy Cavendish struggled to find the right balance between humor and seriousness. Of course, others will find other stories more or less gripping than me, that is the nature of this kind of genre-bending work. Despite these complaints, I really did love Cloud Atlas despite its flaws. This was the first book of Mitchell's that I have read, but it has led me to seek out others. I greatly admire his ambition, his willingness to place expectations on the reader, his ability to create a rich world and complex characters to inhabit them, and his lack of fear in putting a message in his books and making his reader THINK. I would probably give this book 4 1/2 stars instead of 5 if I could, but I give no hesitation in my 5 star review: even if Mitchell occasionally falls short of his ambitions, bravo to him for writing real literature in an age where the bestseller lists are topped by the likes of Fifty Shades of Grey.

I hadn't heard about this book until I saw the initial 6 minute long trailer for the movie. It immediately grabbed my attention. It appeared to be everything a movie could be. After doing some research into the novel this movie was being adapted from, I decided I had to check it out. This book is different from every book I have ever read. There are six seperate, yet somewhat linked stories. You get the first half of the first five stories, then you get the whole sixth story. From there, you get the conclusions of each story starting with the fifth and going back to the first. So, the book starts and ends with the same story. Each of the stories are written in completely different styles. Mitchell is an amazing writer because he did this so well. The language in each section appears very true to each time period from the late 1800s to modern day and to the future. Mitchell invents his own style of language and grammar for the future stories. One is told in the near future and the sixth story takes place in a post apocalyptic world. Mitchell is an excellent storyteller. Although the language may be difficult to get into, once you have entered the world you won't want to finish each section. Leaving a story halfway through, usually at a climax or even midsentence makes you want to continue reading the next story even more so you can get to the second half. But then, you get engulfed by the story of the new story. The experience of reading this book is so unique. While reading the second half of the book, you feel like you are finishing a whole book every forty pages or so. Not only is each story told in its own style, language, and timframe, but each is a different genre. You will definitely have a favorite story when reading this book. It may be the geriatric comedy, the post apocalyptic epic, the young musician's tragic life, the lawyer's journey on the high seas, or the journalist's 70's mystery. My favorite was the genetic engineered fast food server's tale of self discovery. Mitchell does an excellent job weaving in ideas of self and philosophical questions. It is up to you to interpret you these six stories fit together. I give this novel a 4/5. It is an excellent read, but the concept of it is so much to wrap your head around. I suggest this to anyone who loves to read all different kinds of books.

A staggering achievement, as vast and ever-changing as the seas in but one of its many interlocked stories. I have just finished, and I hardly know yet what to think. The cover describes it as "nested dolls," which is true. The various tales occur across many times and places, from the Pacific seas to the far future. There are moments providing alluring ties; this diary ends up in the hands of someone many years later. The crazed evening of a deranged author has become a future legend. At the bookends, a man sailing home to San Francisco sees mankind at its most hellish; he prays that the world will inevitably become a better and more just place. The various elements in the story sadly belie this tenet, as we see unspeakable acts of enslavement and violence, all so that some will be richer than they already are. These are dark underpinnings to what is, in fact, an enthralling read. Mitchell's mastery of scene, character, and place beggars the imagination. From section to section, he nimbly skips from seafaring adventure to science fiction to noir thriller. In every genre, his skillful writing dazzles. It's a true magnum opus, over 500 pages that demand your attention. It was frankly a tough slog for me, given the holidays, health issues, and outside demands. But a virtuoso novel, one that will surely be among my year's best, even though we're only in the second week of January. Thrilling.

Le livre est une merveille, d'autres l'ont analysé mieux que je ne pourrais le faire, Mais ... que dire de la traduction ? J'irai jusqu'à dire qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une traduction à proprement parler mais d'une "adaptation" . J'avais envie de tester l'apparente performance du traducteur, c'est pourquoi j'ai acheté la version originale, et bien m'en a pris . Le traducteur a la légèreté d'un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine . Il supprime des paragraphes entiers, invente des mots en bouleversant les paragraphes pour pouvoir les y insérer, et encore je n'ai pas terminé ma lecture car la langue est difficile mais le livre vaut la peine de faire l 'effort . On a d'autres exemples dans la littérature, Baudelaire traduisant Edgar Poe par exemple, mais n'est pas Baudelaire qui veut ...

I first read this book when it came out in the early noughties, and was blown away by both the inventive structure and compelling storytelling. I recently saw the film (a great adaptation, incidentally), which inspired me to do a cover to cover reread and it lived up to my memories. I'm a big believer in not drawing too distinct a line between "genre fiction" (fantasy, paranormal, sci-fi etc) and more high-brow, literary novels. This book is one of the best examples of the idea that it's possible to write a novel that both tells a fantastical story and does amazing things with prose, structure and narrative. The fact that it was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the X prize tells its own story. The book is almost a collection of seven short stories. With the exception of the one in the middle, which runs straight through, each gets to a halfway point and is then interrupted by the next story, which follows a character who is reading the text the reader has just read. Halfway through the book, it then starts working it's way back through the stories, completing each of them in turn. Throughout, there are hints that all of the stories' main characters may be reincarnations of each other (most obviously, they all have the same comet shaped birthmark, but there seem to be some overlap of memories and fears), but the author doesn't make it simple - the timeline doesn't quite seem to allow it, and some characters seem to be fictional within other character's universes. It's the intricate way that the stories fit together that I really love about this book, especially the little clues and the self-references, whether its a piece of music composed by one character that has the same structure, a character dreaming about something that happens to another protagonist centuries in the future, or a character wondering whether the journal he is reading (which readers have also just read) is a forgery, on the basis that some of what is said seems to convenient. This is definitely a book that benefits from a re-read and some close scrutiny of the text. That said, it's not just structure over substance. Each of the individual stories are beautifully plotted and written. The brilliant thing is that they are not only set in wildly different time periods (the earliest is in the 1800s, the latest in a far distant post-apocalyptic future) and geographical locations, they are also very different genres and written in a corresponding style. So the first story is meant to be the journal of a nineteenth lawyer on a sea voyage - it's written in diary format, and in the very mannered, formal language of the time, while a 1970s thriller is written like a pulpy novel, and so on. Mitchell masters all of these styles beautifully and has a bit of fun playing around with them. Most fundamentally, however, when all the stylistic cleverness and post-modern twistiness is stripped away, there are still seven good, strong stories. Inevitably, in this sort of book, each reader, even if they love the whole thing, is going to find themselves enjoying some sections more than others. For me, a story (told in the form of letters) of a debauched 1930s musician and another focussing on a rebel clone in a futuristic Korea are up their with my favourite stories in their own right. In particular, I found the latter story reminded my of Never Let Me Go, which came out at more or less the same time, but I actually found the Cloud Atlas chapter to be better, even though it was only one small part of a much bigger whole. The seventies thriller and the modern day tale of a hapless literary agent were also genuinely enjoyable reads. Despite my love of the book, I have to admit that I found the sea journal and in particular, the post-apocalyptic tale (told as an oral history, in a made up pseudo-English reminiscent of that in A Clockwork Orange) to be rather heavy-going. In those cases, while I still admired the author's talent and the contribution they made to the whole, I struggled to actively enjoy them. Interestingly, I've seen other people who feel exactly the opposite way about which stories do and don't work - they are all extremely well written and imaginative, beyond that, it's really a matter of personal taste. I would, however, suggest that if the first story doesn't grab you, you still push on and see whether you enjoy the others more. Finally, not content with both the stories and the metaphysics, the book as a whole has a lot of quite deep things to say about human nature, especially the destructive will to dominate others. As one characters puts it, "the weak are meat, the strong do eat." Various other interesting themes also flow through the book, enriching it without it ever starting to feel like a lecture. It's by no means the easiest read. You'll have to work a little just to get through it, and to get the most out of it and make all the connections, it's worth going slowly and/or re-reading. There are also likely to be some sections that readers don't enjoy as much as others. Nonetheless, I'd hugely recommend this to anyone who wants to try something different, to have their mind twisted, and ultimately, to enjoy a good story and some seriously impressive writing.

1931 Robert Frobisher (the hero of the novel’s second narrative) composes the Cloud Atlas Sextet in and near Bruges (which is in Belgium BTW – no pun intended). It consists of six solos interrupting each other at a crucial point in the composition only to come full circle and end at the beginning – “Violin note, misplayed, hideously -” (Kindle version p.461)… This pretty much wraps up the novel Cloud Atlas as well – six individual, interrupted narratives covering a time span from early 19th century into a far post-apocalyptic future, like a Rorschach test in almost bilateral symmetry split in the middle by an uninterrupted narration of the farthest future to pick up the previous threads in inverted order – ending at the beginning. What makes this book so special and so different? I can only speak from my personal experience and can say it was probably the most fascinating and most frustrating book I have ever read. Fascinating because the author manages to weave a net around me, drawing me in, leaving clues for me to connect all the dots only to find myself let down in the end because all my best laid plans and theories are worth zilch. Frustrating because the author won’t connect all the dots for me and will leave questions unanswered. So here I am, about 24h hours after having finished the first reading of this truly extraordinary book and I can’t seem to wrap my mind around anything else but thinking about what I actually think the book is trying to tell me. Is mankind circling the drain? Are we ever going to learn, or are the plans laid down by the architects of human life everlastingly flawed and we make the same mistakes over and over and over again – possibly just getting more sophisticated in our ways to oppress/ kill / enslave the weak. Can one person make a difference – so, is there hope? Is there a character – a spirit – a soul – so precious it’ll last through the centuries, maybe reincarnated to remind us of something? Or are we all responsible of the effects of our small actions in the grander scheme of things? …or am I just losing it? Quote from Kindle Version page 508 “… only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop a limitless ocean!” “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

Surely a remarkable writing endeavour - albeit too baroque at times… … unfinished, unfortunately. What’s an intriguing, elusive build up of a complex plot, deflate disappointingly in the last couple of pages, with the author just giving his vision for a better world. This book delivers on many levels… … the ending is not there.

Brings the magic of reincarnation to life in a great world changing story.