Cloud Atlas

"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell is an overwhelming book. It plays upon all your senses, using its interrelated stories to tell a large story of human society and existence that is creative, witty, and engaging on multiple levels.

One of the most challenging aspects of writing a review for this book is to say what it is about. The novel presents six interrelated stories in six different styles (a journal, a series of letters, a pulpy mystery novel, a stream-of-consciousness memoir, testimony of a condemned prisoner, and an oral story). The stories have common elements that are sometimes obvious but sometimes hidden and only become clear as the stories unfold. Each story is a virtuoso performance and read like different creative works all together.

The central theme of the stories (if there is one) is that "human hunger creates civilization, but it also destroys it." It is fascinating to see this theme play out in different time periods and with different individuals in different locations, testifying to the idea that no matter how much our contexts change, the human experience remains the same.

I've added this book to the top of my favorites list for a few reasons. First, its sheer creativity and its narrative power. Second, reading such diverse and divergent stories was a sensory experience that engaged my mind in unexpected ways. Third, it is a book that I found myself noting memorable and well-written quotes and passages. Fourth, it is a book that I plan on returning to again in the near future (well worth multiple reads). But finally, it is now one of my favorite books because it has much to say about our society and what it means to be human. You will not look at time, history, culture, and society in the same way after you read this book.

NOTE: I have seen the 2012 film of the novel and I also recommend it as well. The novel is more detailed and more finely drawn but the film will, I believe, become a landmark in the development of cinema. And like a good film adaptation, it does not attempt to copy the book word for word but provide an "impressionist" view of the narrative, making the film its own creature.

Slavery comes in many forms. Cloud Atlas takes a harsh look at some of the ways we humans have found to dominate others: physical subjugation is the most well-known, but there are many present-day aspects we don't see…. or like to pretend we don't see.

Hard to get into, but once it grabbed me (~100 pages in) I couldn't put it down. Many of my hot-button issues: bullies, treachery, corporatism, freedom. Homages to [b:Flowers for Algernon|18373|Flowers for Algernon|Daniel Keyes|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327870353s/18373.jpg|3337594] and [b:One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest|332613|One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest|Ken Kesey|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1348083651s/332613.jpg|2100252] and perhaps even the [b:Aeneid|12914|The Aeneid|Virgil|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1349032842s/12914.jpg|288738]. Multiple works in one, disparate voices woven together in a sometimes-jarring but overall satisfying way.

I read Cloud Atlas before watching the trailer. I'm glad I did: Hollywood appears to have latched onto the interconnectedness theme, the (literal) story arc, a gimmick I found effective but merely as a storytelling device. Not as a focus. And the reincarnation hoohaw, well, I took that as a wink to the reader; the trailer makes it more prominent than I think it deserves. I hope the film producers aren't missing the point. Or perhaps I'm the one who didn't get it? Maybe it is a story of reincarnation and spaceships and explosions and chases? Am I seeing shapes where there are none? Maybe I should sip some McWine and stop thinking so much.

“Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my
year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano,
clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language
of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted
by its successor; in the second, each interruption is
recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't
know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.” (445)

This was a clever and enjoyable meditation on the nature of identity and subjecthood (cultural, economic, physical, emotional, political). One could even get really "meta" and discuss narrative's role in formulating subjects across the page for the reader. The characters in this novel are all rooted, not in reality, but on the foundations of past narrative. One of the opinions the novel has (working against Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence") is that we might retell our own stories, and thus, reappropriate power over our very own subjecthood:

"If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass." (508)

Were moments a little schmaltzy? A few, but overall the novel pulls off it's uniqueness and surpasses mere gimmick. I recommend the book. I imagine a lot of the philosophical themes and emotional effects will not translate well to the film version, though I'm hopeful.

I was expecting a bit more of this. While each of the individual stories was really nice, and not too heavy on the morality (although some had more than others), the structure of the book caused me to forget what was happening in the more disconnected sections. If there was some over-arching theme, I think I may have missed it. The birthmark carried by the characters, as well as the fact that the title was dropped into each section at least once did not seem to be enough to tie everything together.

However, with one really heavy handed exception, the stories were well plotted, and exciting to read. More of a action adventure sci-fi book then any master work of postmodern fiction (I don't know where I got the idea that it would be that).

-- edit...

On reading other reviews, it seems that there were a number of details that I missed in the meta narrative, however I am not sure that even those tie the work into an expression of anything beyond some tricky literary devices. I think that the thing that left me feeling flat was that whatever idea or core these devices were meant to hold up felt bare bones. This is perhaps due to the fact that the author focused on blockbuster style tricks to create drama, and big silly reveals to shock, rather than growing the tension naturally.

One thing that I did notice in the structure is that the nesting naturally created an extremely hard to deal with build, as each cliffhanger moved to a setup on the way into the book. On the way out of the book, because it was resolution after resolution, it was an extremely easy read. I wonder if he borrowed this structure from television, one week you watch all the "to be continued..." and the next week you watch all the "last time on...".

Cloud Atlas is an ambitious book. It tells six stories spanning what is probably close to four centuries across almost as many continents and vastly differing narrative styles. On top of this, each successive story is contained within the previous one, and you start all six before you finish any of them, and then finish them each in reverse order. It is certainly a complex, intriguing way to tell stories.



But ambition must be matched by achievement, and my four-word review of Cloud Atlas has been "Good, but not great." And that's what it is - it's a good read, and certainly enjoyable. But it aimed for a lot, and I didn't feel like it quite made it there. The six stories were loosely tied together, but they seldom felt unified or really connected, and more often felt like Mitchell realized in the last few pages that he hadn't mentioned the previous story yet. One of the most maddening things about this book is that Mitchell frequently hints at some larger connection, some overarching, supernatural, supertemporal link between the protagonists, where "hinting" occasionally borders on flashing neon signs, but fails to actually do anything about it. At the end of the book, one is left wondering what the point of stringing all these stories together was, other than being able to put six books together in a mammoth 500-page tome and call it an ambitions, puzzley book.



It also feels like the point may have been just that. The stories, in and of themselves, are hit-and-miss as to whether they could stand up on their own. Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery was an engrossing, if not terribly innovative, thriller/mystery, and An Orison of Somni-451 was a well-crafted, if not terribly insightful, sci-fi/dystopia tale. And that's the problem with these stories - some of them could be much better on their own, without being forced to share a book with five other stories and have tenuous connections drawn between them. And I could almost take them as five separate stories of incidentally related figures throughout this history that isn't quite our own, except that Mitchell tries so hard to make it something more than that, and fails to actually do anything with it.



One strength Mitchell does have is in his voicing - writing six books set across four centuries and having them remain distinct and appropriate in speaker and tone is no small feat, but Mitchell does so skillfully. He deftly changes dialect and vocabulary as his subject demands, from a common 1800's accountant to a freethinking member of a psuedo-human android-ish future slave race. This skill, however, is too often marginalized by the overambition of trying to stuff too much story into not enough book, and the obligation of tying them closely together when really, some of them would be better of standing on their own.



Overall, it is a good book - the links Mitchell does draw between the stories are often interesting and make for a good story, but they would be better if he either tried harder to make them something more, or as I think I would prefer, just left them as incidental and not tried to make them more than they were - which is six lives in six different generations that overlapped each other, but only because Mitchell chose to tell his next story about someone that was affected by the protagonist in the current one. If one could ignore the overtures of something bigger happening, and not be too excited about the novelty of the story-in-story dynamic, this is an enjoyable series of short books, that tell often-interesting stories, but don't do much else, because they're too busy trying to be something more.



And in the interest of full disclosure, this review wasn't helped by the fact that I just finished [b:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|4588|Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165446871s/4588.jpg|1940137], which is a book that masterfully weaves together disparate storylines about interrelated generations across wide swaths of time (albeit not quite four centuries). Foer's narratives, instead of getting distracted by their interrelatedness and losing their purpose to it, instead are strengthened and illuminated by each other, and the interaction and relation of his stories creates a meaning much greater than the sum of the whole, instead of losing its meaning in an attempt to be something innovative. It doesn't have the sci-fi elements, and is certainly a very different book, but it and his previous book [b:Everything Is Illuminated|256566|Everything Is Illuminated|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298482115s/256566.jpg|886727] are examples of disparate storylines that lend to and strengthen each other, and feel very purposeful and needed, instead of forced and put-on.



Cloud Atlas is an enjoyable read, but feels like it goes a little bit long. I'm not sure if it's totally worth the investment of 500 pages of time when there are much shorter books that achieve their goals better, but I don't think it's a waste of your time or energy. And I am certainly interested to see the upcoming movie - I think that much of it, at least, could lend itself well to film.

Cloud Atlas is an ambitious book. It tells six stories spanning what is probably close to four centuries across almost as many continents and vastly differing narrative styles. On top of this, each successive story is contained within the previous one, and you start all six before you finish any of them, and then finish them each in reverse order. It is certainly a complex, intriguing way to tell stories.

But ambition must be matched by achievement, and my four-word review of Cloud Atlas has been "Good, but not great." And that's what it is - it's a good read, and certainly enjoyable. But it aimed for a lot, and I didn't feel like it quite made it there. The six stories were loosely tied together, but they seldom felt unified or really connected, and more often felt like Mitchell realized in the last few pages that he hadn't mentioned the previous story yet. One of the most maddening things about this book is that Mitchell frequently hints at some larger connection, some overarching, supernatural, supertemporal link between the protagonists, where "hinting" occasionally borders on flashing neon signs, but fails to actually do anything about it. At the end of the book, one is left wondering what the point of stringing all these stories together was, other than being able to put six books together in a mammoth 500-page tome and call it an ambitions, puzzley book.

It also feels like the point may have been just that. The stories, in and of themselves, are hit-and-miss as to whether they could stand up on their own. Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery was an engrossing, if not terribly innovative, thriller/mystery, and An Orison of Somni-451 was a well-crafted, if not terribly insightful, sci-fi/dystopia tale. And that's the problem with these stories - some of them could be much better on their own, without being forced to share a book with five other stories and have tenuous connections drawn between them. And I could almost take them as five separate stories of incidentally related figures throughout this history that isn't quite our own, except that Mitchell tries so hard to make it something more than that, and fails to actually do anything with it.

One strength Mitchell does have is in his voicing - writing six books set across four centuries and having them remain distinct and appropriate in speaker and tone is no small feat, but Mitchell does so skillfully. He deftly changes dialect and vocabulary as his subject demands, from a common 1800's accountant to a freethinking member of a psuedo-human android-ish future slave race. This skill, however, is too often marginalized by the overambition of trying to stuff too much story into not enough book, and the obligation of tying them closely together when really, some of them would be better of standing on their own.

Overall, it is a good book - the links Mitchell does draw between the stories are often interesting and make for a good story, but they would be better if he either tried harder to make them something more, or as I think I would prefer, just left them as incidental and not tried to make them more than they were - which is six lives in six different generations that overlapped each other, but only because Mitchell chose to tell his next story about someone that was affected by the protagonist in the current one. If one could ignore the overtures of something bigger happening, and not be too excited about the novelty of the story-in-story dynamic, this is an enjoyable series of short books, that tell often-interesting stories, but don't do much else, because they're too busy trying to be something more.

And in the interest of full disclosure, this review wasn't helped by the fact that I just finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which is a book that masterfully weaves together disparate storylines about interrelated generations across wide swaths of time (albeit not quite four centuries). Foer's narratives, instead of getting distracted by their interrelatedness and losing their purpose to it, instead are strengthened and illuminated by each other, and the interaction and relation of his stories creates a meaning much greater than the sum of the whole, instead of losing its meaning in an attempt to be something innovative. It doesn't have the sci-fi elements, and is certainly a very different book, but it and his previous book Everything Is Illuminated are examples of disparate storylines that lend to and strengthen each other, and feel very purposeful and needed, instead of forced and put-on.

Cloud Atlas is an enjoyable read, but feels like it goes a little bit long. I'm not sure if it's totally worth the investment of 500 pages of time when there are much shorter books that achieve their goals better, but I don't think it's a waste of your time or energy. And I am certainly interested to see the upcoming movie - I think that much of it, at least, could lend itself well to film.

Cloud Atlas is an ambitious book. It tells six stories spanning what is probably close to four centuries across almost as many continents and vastly differing narrative styles. On top of this, each successive story is contained within the previous one, and you start all six before you finish any of them, and then finish them each in reverse order. It is certainly a complex, intriguing way to tell stories.



But ambition must be matched by achievement, and my four-word review of Cloud Atlas has been "Good, but not great." And that's what it is - it's a good read, and certainly enjoyable. But it aimed for a lot, and I didn't feel like it quite made it there. The six stories were loosely tied together, but they seldom felt unified or really connected, and more often felt like Mitchell realized in the last few pages that he hadn't mentioned the previous story yet. One of the most maddening things about this book is that Mitchell frequently hints at some larger connection, some overarching, supernatural, supertemporal link between the protagonists, where "hinting" occasionally borders on flashing neon signs, but fails to actually do anything about it. At the end of the book, one is left wondering what the point of stringing all these stories together was, other than being able to put six books together in a mammoth 500-page tome and call it an ambitions, puzzley book.



It also feels like the point may have been just that. The stories, in and of themselves, are hit-and-miss as to whether they could stand up on their own. Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery was an engrossing, if not terribly innovative, thriller/mystery, and An Orison of Somni-451 was a well-crafted, if not terribly insightful, sci-fi/dystopia tale. And that's the problem with these stories - some of them could be much better on their own, without being forced to share a book with five other stories and have tenuous connections drawn between them. And I could almost take them as five separate stories of incidentally related figures throughout this history that isn't quite our own, except that Mitchell tries so hard to make it something more than that, and fails to actually do anything with it.



One strength Mitchell does have is in his voicing - writing six books set across four centuries and having them remain distinct and appropriate in speaker and tone is no small feat, but Mitchell does so skillfully. He deftly changes dialect and vocabulary as his subject demands, from a common 1800's accountant to a freethinking member of a psuedo-human android-ish future slave race. This skill, however, is too often marginalized by the overambition of trying to stuff too much story into not enough book, and the obligation of tying them closely together when really, some of them would be better of standing on their own.



Overall, it is a good book - the links Mitchell does draw between the stories are often interesting and make for a good story, but they would be better if he either tried harder to make them something more, or as I think I would prefer, just left them as incidental and not tried to make them more than they were - which is six lives in six different generations that overlapped each other, but only because Mitchell chose to tell his next story about someone that was affected by the protagonist in the current one. If one could ignore the overtures of something bigger happening, and not be too excited about the novelty of the story-in-story dynamic, this is an enjoyable series of short books, that tell often-interesting stories, but don't do much else, because they're too busy trying to be something more.



And in the interest of full disclosure, this review wasn't helped by the fact that I just finished [b:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|4588|Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165446871s/4588.jpg|1940137], which is a book that masterfully weaves together disparate storylines about interrelated generations across wide swaths of time (albeit not quite four centuries). Foer's narratives, instead of getting distracted by their interrelatedness and losing their purpose to it, instead are strengthened and illuminated by each other, and the interaction and relation of his stories creates a meaning much greater than the sum of the whole, instead of losing its meaning in an attempt to be something innovative. It doesn't have the sci-fi elements, and is certainly a very different book, but it and his previous book [b:Everything Is Illuminated|256566|Everything Is Illuminated|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298482115s/256566.jpg|886727] are examples of disparate storylines that lend to and strengthen each other, and feel very purposeful and needed, instead of forced and put-on.



Cloud Atlas is an enjoyable read, but feels like it goes a little bit long. I'm not sure if it's totally worth the investment of 500 pages of time when there are much shorter books that achieve their goals better, but I don't think it's a waste of your time or energy. And I am certainly interested to see the upcoming movie - I think that much of it, at least, could lend itself well to film.