Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
I know where I have gone wrong with my reading. When I start too many books at once, I end up not finishing them. Therefore, it is back to disciplining myself – one book at a time. That was how I got Cloud Atlas finished at last, and I was very pleased that I did.
Cloud Atlas is a book within a book within a book…within another book, within another two books. Confused? I was at first, until I started discovering little allusions, links and similarities between the stories and began to get the same kind of pleasure from it as children do from exploring a “Where’s Wally?” picture book. The story apparently begins in the 1800s as we begin with the diary of Adam Ewing. It suddenly stops, literally mid-sentence and then we are introduced to a series of letters to Sixsmith from his gay lover who has escaped from famiy disowning to Belgium in search of an old composer. Another jump and we are in the 1970s, then in present day, then in a technological future where the world is peopled by humans as well as fabricants – genetically produced humanoids designed for specific tasks, such as serving in a fast food restaurant. Finally as we reach the centre of the book, this technological world has virtually imploded, and all that is left are primitive tribes with short life spans, very little learning and superstitions which seem to have brought the whole cycle full circle…
Then the stories cascade back again…
The six stories are all about power, heirarchy and survival. The protagonists of each story are all so fundamentally different as personalities and yet all seem to be the same soul – linked by the comet-shaped birthmark on each of their shoulders. Each of them is caught in the circumstance of their time, but somehow they each get through to the natural ending of their particular chapter of history – whether tragic or wonderful.
The links certainly don’t end there. I discovered little references everywhere which strenthened the bond between each moment in time. But each later character was aware of the previous, whether through them reading the letters, or the diary, or the book, or seeing the film, or listening to the recording. In reality, the ‘actual’ story was of Zachary the goatherder from primitive future. He watched the story of Somni, who viewed the story of Timothy Cavendish as a film, who read the story of Luisa Rey, who read the letters of Robert Frobisher, who read the diary of Adam Ewing. So where did you, as the reader come in? Where you overseeing it all as a god-like observer, or were you reading the story of Zachary, and through him tunnelled back in time to the previous five stories?
Cloud Atlas is most certainly a book to make you think and it is a book of many layers far beyond the most obvious ones. I think this comes from an intricate and creative mind and is a triumph of imagination.
Rating: 8/10
ISBN: 0-340-82278-3
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Year: 2004
Pages: 529
Date Finished: 23rd September 2008
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I’m a monogamous reader myself. I don’t know how people manage to read five or ten books at once!
I’ve not yet read Cloud Atlas, but enjoyed David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green so will one of these days.
If you’re interested in books whcih contain stories within stories, i’d recommend If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino (assuming you haven’t already read it).
Hi Sarah – no I haven’t already read it, although I studied several other Italo Calvino books when I was finishing my degree so I will give it a try.
I get caught up in reading too many books at once because I get so excited about starting a new book. But I think I reach a critical number – 2 or 3 I can read and get finished, any more and I come grinding to a halt.