CLOUD ATLAS

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Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell, Random House, 2004, 509 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

My Review:

Here is the final installment in my year end David Mitchell readathon. It was my second reading of Cloud Atlas and three factors made it more enjoyable than the first.

   

1) I have since seen the movie. This is a case where the movie, for me, was better than the book. Suddenly I understood what Mitchell was attempting to do with this novel. Also for me, who make mental pictures as I read, it gave me better visuals than my own. The casting is brilliant, especially Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, who were ever present in my mind as I reread.

2) Because I have now read Mitchell's two earlier novels (Ghostwritten and Number9Dream), I have a grip on the author's themes and writing style. When I read Cloud Atlas the first time I was frankly unprepared to appreciate it.

3) I never used to pay much attention to structure when reading fiction but in the three years since my first reading, I have learned to notice how different authors put their stories together. The movie reworked the structure into a more linear tale; the book is anything but.

So this time I saw why some sections end mid-incident (or even mid-sentence in one case) and take up in a later section right where it left off earlier. It was a though I had a map. Therefore I was able to appreciate the several different styles and voices in which Mitchell wrote, a true tour de force!

I enjoyed my reading this time whereas I mostly felt lost before. Having read Ghostwritten I was prepared for the author's worldview of interconnectedness and of how events of the present trace back to occurrences in the past and foreshadow the future. I liked the aspect of a big novel of ideas encompassing both the human comedy and the tragedies of human foibles.

I assume that Cloud Atlas is both Mitchell's breakout novel and his most well-known. I'm not even halfway through his seven novels but I predict this is not going to be my best-loved one. So far, Ghostwritten  holds that honor. I am in a fever of anticipation for the next four novels and when I finished this one I wanted to pick up the next one immediately. Alas, the holiday week was over and I had to move on, but I am determined to read them all by the end of the year.


(Cloud Atlas is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)