Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Book Review: No fancy title; just - Wow!
Summary: 5 Stars
In David Mitchell's third novel, he gives us six very different variations on the theme of (in his own words) "predacity: people preying on each other, groups on the individual, corporations on the state". What takes my breath away is how he has used this inevitably dark material to produce a book which quite simply has it all: a structurally fascinating postmodernist hall-of-mirrors; a morality tale; a terrifyingly dystopian glimpse of two possible futures; and yet, for all its narrative tricksiness, a big, solid page-turner of a novel which packs a tremendous emotional punch. Remarkably for a book which depicts (among other things) the final death-throes of our technological civilisation, it even offers a glimmer of hope in its surprisingly luminous closing pages.The book is a massive arch structure: a series of six nested narratives, each of which unexpectedly breaks off in mid-flow and jumps fifty or sixty years into the future. Following the book's dark heart, in which a young Hawaiian tribesman witnesses the final disintegration of civilisation itself, the book goes into reverse gear: each tale picks up where it left off, so that the reader eventually ends up back where s/he started. First up is Adam Young, a na?ve American notary who, in the course of a reluctant Pacific adventure, becomes the unwitting victim of a quack doctor. Next is a series of letters from Twenties composer Robert Frobisher, an apparent sponger and wastrel who is taking advantage of an elderly, blind fellow-composer in war-ravaged Belgium - but will he himself perhaps turn out to be the one who is being used? The book then jumps to a conspiracy-theory thriller, set in Seventies California and concerning corporate nastiness in the nuclear industry. Some necessary comic relief is provided by the cautionary tale of Timothy Cavendish, an ageing vanity publisher who does indeed undergo a "ghastly ordeal" in the English countryside. In the novel's most chilling and heart-rending section, we then get the final testament of Sonmi~451, a cloned fast-food operative who is on Death Row in a future Korea turned technocratic hell. Then it's off to Hawaii for the end of the world as we know it. And then, while strictly maintaining the book's narrative logic (the characters experience strange echoes of each other's voices down the corridors of history, and each encounters the previous one's narrative - as a manuscript, film or whatever), Mitchell presses the Rewind button to bring us back to where we started.
Inevitably for such a massively ambitious and experimental novel, it does have its weaknesses. The "Luisa Rey" corporate thriller section, in particular, struck me as just a tad contrived and formulaic. All the same, in the context of the book as a whole it does - just - come off. The central "Sloosha's Crossin' and Evrythin' After" section also seems to have a love-it-or-loathe-it quality judging by other readers' responses, though personally I was totally convinced.
The novel's unusual structure allows Mitchell to pull off a very neat trick. It works a bit like Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" - the reader is taken step by step from historic colonial injustices, through a surprisingly scary vision of the present, into technological and post-technological nightmare futures. But in his "Ghost of Christmas Future" guise, Mitchell can then take pity on us and bring us back home again, chastened and perhaps wiser. The narrator of the book's closing pages certainly has the same expansiveness and desire to live a better life as the reformed Scrooge in Dickens' tale. And - unlikely though it may seem - the book's very final sentence if probably its most memorable. This is a book with a strong "message".
It is a huge book in all senses, and has the feel of a major literary event. If its weaker (though still very enjoyable) predecessor "number9dream" got a Booker nomination, then surely
this book should be in line for a big award of some sort.
Book Review: Over Hype
Summary: 2 Stars
I really wanted to like this book. Glowing reviews, the Booker Prize, everything reccommended it, not least David Mitchell's other works - which were wonderful, but I found a lot of Cloud Atlas dull, more style than substance. Some of the stories were terrific, but ultimately, I found it tiresome. I don't know what the broadsheets read that I missed...but I couldn't find the magic in this book.Book Review: the book of the year!
Summary: 5 Stars
david mitchell's cloud atlas is a dizzying tour-de-force of language, ideas and the essence of humanity. in a novel spread across six chapters set in varied times and places, the essence of what makes us human echoes distantly carrying the voices of these lost people through the clouds. mitchell employs startlingly different narrative styles to capture the flavour, mood and spirit of each of these times and places.
The story starts off in mid nineteenth century with an encounter of a distant pacific tribe and a ship from the civilised western world that lands there and moves forward to a shallow composer who aspires for greatness, and in the process composes his rather weird cloud atlas sextet, which echoes in the life of a brave journalist in the mid 1970s who is trying to expose a heinous corporate crime against humanity, whose story is now the obsession of a slightly off-the-hinge fringe publisher aspiring for greatness himself, and his madness strangely providing a genetically modified slave in the near unspecified future, who aspires to break free from the chains that have held her back, with a sublime moment of unexpected freedom and this slave spins further forward in time to be the savior in a post-apocalytic distant future where language, ideas and concepts of freedom and humanity are totally re-evaluated.
mitchell cocoons these stories within each other, so the structure starts with the first plot, leaves it half-way goes to the next leaves it half-way and so on, till it goes to the sixth and completes and takes up the thread in reverse order to finish off the plots ending with the pacific explorer again. while this might sound like a gimmick, mitchells sincerety and talent makes it work sublimely.
these six seemingly disparate plots come together in a startlingly coherent book that is a genuine thrill and delight to read, and not least because of mitchells phenomenal talent for words. although at times, he does tend to carried away with his incredible talent, any reader who follows him down the lane is bound to be rewarded handsomely. this novel does what very few works of fiction can, make you feel better about yourself and leaves you with a golden sliver of hope to hang on to for the future.
Book Review: Too long and mainly dull
Summary: 2 Stars
I was willing to enjoy this one, as I'd heard such good things of this author, but I was disappointed, I'm afraid. The difficulty lies partly in the fact that the many and different voices heard in the "novel" simply don't mesh together at all either in tone or purpose, and partly in the fact that it needed a far stricter editor. I think a good third of this could be lost without anyone noticing the difference.That said, there are the enjoyable sections, which included the Luisa Rey mysteries - Luisa and Isaac were the only two characters I really liked, and I'm sorry they never get a proper conclusion - and also the Robert Frobisher story. The rest I tended to skip and the Somni and Sloosha ones I gave up on altogether. And the writing, of course, has energy, which is why I've marked it a 2 star.
Not one I'd recommend. But maybe I just didn't "get" it??
Book Review: A writer of magnificent quality
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this book after reading other reviews here, because it sounded fascinating. I wasn't disappointed. I was glad I'd read the reviews because the first chapter ended mid-sentence; even then, the change of narrator threw me at first.I gave up with the middle chapter, although I appreciated its quality and the writer's skill. Every chapter was well crafted and reminded me of other examples of type - for example the first chapter reminded me of the excellent "English Passengers" (Matthew Kneale) while the Somni chapters reminded me of William Gibson and what I read of the Sloosha chapter, to some extent, reminded me of the True History of the Kelly Gang. My favourite chapters were the Robert Frobisher letters and the Timothy Cavendish story (was it me, or did this have something of Roald Dahl about it?).
The dexterity with which the author controls the interleaving stories, and the way each narrative voice seizes attention was very convincing. A magnficent book and talent.