Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Book Review: A good read worth checking out
Summary: 4 Stars
Not to start off on a separate topic but I actually found this book on Amazon by reading reviews. I don't know if I am the only one doing this but since I don't really have any friends that read regularly I had a shortage of recommendations. I started reading reviews of books that I liked and then read the peoples other reviews that rated the books I like similarly and I stumbled across Cloud Atlas.
I came across this book at a good time. I have been reading fantasy so long and have been disappointed with a lot that I had read lately, so a genre change was in order. No point in repeating what everyone else has already said, 6 stories all connected etc. etc. etc.... What I will say is the book was pretty enjoyable.
The good: The stories were all very well written. The different characters from each were very distinguished. The stories were cleverly interwoven with one another and all break off at the key time to make you want to hurry up and get back too them. I also enjoyed the fact that all of the stories are not written in typical story format. One of the stories is the character's journal; one of them is 16 letters sent from one of the characters to his friend. Another one is an interview about events that had already past. This change up in style made it interesting.
The Bad: Not really much. The last story felt like it drug a little. You might have to break out your dictionary a time or two, though that may not actually be bad.
I definitely recommend this book though, worth picking up and reading.
Book Review: A good way to spend a weekend
Summary: 3 Stars
At the end, I'm still sorting out what I think of this book. In one sense, I feel let down by it. Common elements and images appeared in each story that built suspense throughout the novel, which gave me the expectation that as the book came to its conclusion something would fall like a lynchpin and completely alter the significance and context of each of the stories, uniting them into a coherent whole. This was not to be.
Each story was it's own, with only vague connections to the other stories. The relationship between the stories enriched them somewhat, but less than I had hoped. I found myself devouring the book just to get to the end and find out why these stories mattered so much to each other and when I got there, I didn't find it.
The moral--the common thread--seems little more than a platitude, and for that I'm disappointed.
Finally, the characters in one story seemed contrived and shallow to me, specifically, the female reporter and her boss were, to me, caricatures of Lois Lane and Perry White, and I found myself distracted from the story by the cliched dialogue. In another substory, I think setting it in Korea made an interesting story out of what would otherwise have been yet another dystopian cliche, and I don't know whether to admire the choice of setting or condemn that it may otherwise have been unimaginative.
BUT. . .
Cloud Atlas still gets 3 stars from me. I didn't love it, but it had many redeeming features.
First and foremost, the mood of the book was achieved remarkably, and I was particularly impressed at how the author selected such different writing styles to achieve different tone and mood from one story to the next.
The prose, tempo, and flow of the writing was fantastic. The book really pulled me into the characters' worlds (except for the noted exceptions), and I couldn't set it down.
I enjoyed the read, and I enjoyed how engaging the book was, but some of it had a bit of a pulpy and sentimental cast, and after I finished, I had a feeling like I'd been reading too much fiction and needed to dig into something more significant.
Book Review: A great journey
Summary: 5 Stars
I am afraid to write a review for this novel because I fear I will not do it justice. Therefore, I'm going to avoid rehashing the plot because it has been so well described by other readers already.
This novel ranks among the top two contemporary novels I've read in the past five years. It is fearless in its epic scope that travels across time with great audacity and perhaps, a smack of well-deserved arrogance. I mention 'arrogance' because Mitchell displays a flexibility and stylistic quality across the genres that I've never witnessed in a writer. What is quite astounding is that Mitchell does not lose sight of the novel's defining core whilst showing-off his skills (I say this with great affection). The six stories in Cloud Atlas are united fundamentally by its exploration of what civilisation entails and the humanity that is lost in its pursuit. Each of the six stories contain a character that is exploited and a character that is the abuser - Mitchell raises the question of who the 'victim' may be as we hurdle through time in the quest for a more 'civilised' society. Perhaps, Mitchell suggest, it is the abuser as well as the exploited.
I apologise for not going into detail regarding each character and the sextuplet of stories - I am terribly sorry for being vague. But I truly believe that this novel has to be discovered by the individual reader. Each section is amazingly well-written, split and book-ended on either side of Zachry's story, which is the only section that begins and ends in a single unit. Zachry's story is placed in the middle of the novel because it is central to the novel's theme, and perhaps the most explicit when conveying the issues raised. I know many readers have said that this is their least favourite section but it was certainly my favourite for its profundity, and for Mitchell finally getting serious - the violence and exploitation seen in the sections prior to Zachry's story were largely light-hearted or so embedded in the genre (e.g. Louisa Rey's detective-thriller story) that the characters seemed almost like caricatures. Zachry's story is the turning point for all the sections. You begin to care about these characters, and start to take their lives and the world in which they live in seriously.
So read it - because it is entertaining, because it makes you question your beliefs about humanity, because you will learn something new about novel-writing, and about how you view history. Moreover, it's a novel that I hope, you will want to share with everyone and discuss it - that is certainly what a good novel should make you do. I would share it but I can't bear to part with it for now. :)
Book Review: A great, great book
Summary: 5 Stars
Watch, in these two propositions from the book, as I give away everything, but give away nothing:
1) One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each present encased inside a nest of previous presents and presents yet to be;
2) Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, and though a cloud's shape, hue, and size, all change, it's still a cloud, and so is a soul. Who can say who the soul will be tomorrow? Only the wind and the atlas of clouds.
In these two comments lies the heart of Mitchell's third novel, a moving, sprawling adventure tale of desperation, hope, yearning, and dreams, matched against the root of all evil, which, in its illustration of the depths and heights of what human spirit can accomplish, makes the love of money, which so often seems ascendant, instead appear somehow almost trite and childish.
That Mitchell can cast such realistic, empathetic characters amid such a vivid, believable, and encompassing scope is his greatest strength as a writer. No matter how seemingly incredible the challenges his characters face, always, because of the richness of his characterizations, those challenges seem within the scope of the possible, the real.
Cloud Atlas, in its structure, actually is far more similar to that of Ghostwritten than of Number9Dream, and, because of that, in Mitchell's threading of the twine of the spirit amid so many of his characters in each book, in my view he becomes the most successful writer of magic realism in English.
I realize I may not be making much sense here, but I'm not trying to place the book within a pantheon like some literary twit; I'm just trying to respond emotionally, rationally, and as articulately as possible to a great, involving, emotionally compelling and intimate book. Whether it stands the test of time to illustrate just what kind of people we were at the beginning of the 21st century, well, I'll leave that to that matryoshka doll, but for now it's a great, rich, and humongously satisfying exposition of the complexities of humanity across the ages.
Book Review: A literary tour de force
Summary: 5 Stars
Over 30 years ago, John Fowles broke the fourth wall of literature, beginning Chapter 13 of The French Lieutenant's Woman by answering the question his omniscient narrator had posed at the end of Chapter 12 with, "I do not know." David Mitchell does much the same thing in Cloud Atlas, but without once having to smack the reader in the face with literary technique. Instead, he breaks off each of the first five of his disconnected but interwoven narratives at the right point, and then lets you in on the secret of the plot, the interconnections of his themes and his final summing up gently and with great care.
I read this book slowly, savoring each page and each thought Mitchell provided. The book it most reminded me of was Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec, also a set of interwoven tales where the connection between them was left to the reader instead of being provided directly by the author. Each made me wonder both at the genius of the author and the depth of the issues we confront in our daily life. At the end of Cloud Atlas, you should be questioning the very choices you have made in your life, the things you have taken for granted and the wrongs you have left uncorrected. That this can be done in a novel that is at once amusing, infuriating and superbly written says a lot.