Cloud Atlas

Full review at sff book review

Six intertwined stories that range in time, setting and narrator as well as style and theme. I can't say I loved all of the stories but I did love how cleverly they were connected, how some stories connected back to the previous two tales and how each story concludes. Overall, this was an enjoyable book even though I would have hoped for a more glorious, big ending.
The most fun I got out of this was looking for all the little hints and clues as to how exactly every story connects to the one before and after. My favorite stories were Sonmi-451's and the Luisa Rey mystery. I did like most of Timothy Cavendish's story but with reservations. The other tales were harder to get through, either because David Mitchell chose a particularly difficult style (I'm not an English native speaker) or because I simply didn't care about the characters.

Overall, I'd recommend this to people who like fix-up novels and don't mind committing to a larger tale. It was utterly gratifying every time another connection was revealed and while the ending disappointed me a little, I'm very curious to see this incredibly creative novel as a film adaptation.

Maybe I'm not smart enough for this book.

I wanted to like this book. But I didn't care about any of the characters or the plot. When I got to the 5th story, it seemed way too much science fiction to me. I was reading and reading, but only to get it over with. When I decided to quit there was a ton of relief.

This was difficult to follow out of the gate and a bit all over the place throughout, but it does get easier to get through once you understand the story structure - it also felt more like a collection of short stories over time that had one very small and insignificant connection amongst them. And while the writing has a deep/significant way of putting things (even with a few quotables), the way narrative was laid out meant that it had to consistently produce new and varying tones, genres, and characters that, unfortunately, didn't always land or advance the narrative.

Loosely connected short stories that wrap around or are “nested.” (Matryoshka dolls are specifically called out in one of the stories.)

Some of them are more fun to read than others; “Letters from Zedelghem,” “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery,” and “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” were the most entertaining. The first one because of the self delusional and self-destructive nature of the character and the other two because they were just great stories in their own way. The central story, “Sloosha's Crossin' an' Evrythin' After,' ‘ was a challenge because of the dialect.

Mitchell is certainly talented. He wrote each story in their respective style and voice convincingly.

If you're really into books where a fancy, non-traditional structure is used, I can recommend The Islanders by Christopher Priest, Gnomon by Nick Harkaway, and 4-3-2-1 by Paul Auster.

The last section, “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,” got a little preachy at the end when Adam wrote out the message in his journal, basically that humans have to believe we can rise above the predatory and selfish. If you'd been reading the book this far, you probably already got that point as it is present in some way or other in each story with varying degrees of subtlety.

An excellent and well-crafted piece of fiction. Cloud Atlas isn't always the easiest to read, especially in its first and last chapter, but it's certainly worth reading. It's really hard to discuss this book without somehow spoiling something, especially given that pretty unique story structure, but I enjoyed ruminating about its themes on an unending recurrence of not just life but humanity, civilization, morality, and also the call to action of being a less selfish species. Of the different protagonists in this book, perhaps the one that really stuck with me the most is Sonmi, even though I had at first found her perspective hard to read. She's perhaps the most detached of the narrators, but because she is part of but othered at the same time, Sonmi gives some of the most astute and cutting insights into humanity's insatiable drive to consume at the expense of just about everything else, least of all one's conscience and morality.

This is a troublesome book to rate. It definitely proved to me that I really like Mitchell's writing, in particular when he goes “insufferable Frobisher”, but unlike Bone Clocks where i felt the whole was better with the parts I was not convinced of the same after finishing this book. I actually enjoyed the movie which i watched a week after finishing the book and it did clarify many points for me.

I'll keep it spoiler-free at the risk of being vague.

I recommend going into Cloud Atlas without knowing too much about Cloud Atlas. If you're already familiar with the novel's structure, then Mitchell's repeated, explicit attempts to bash the concept into your skull will be tedious. Nonetheless, there is a beauty to some of the more subtle and nuanced connections between the stories. I don't mean to bash the book with my two-star rating, as I do genuinely believe, in accordance with Goodreads rating guidelines, that “it was ok.”

There is a lot to chew on in Cloud Atlas: religion, immortality, oppression, discrimination, capitalism, metaphysics, and more. (Mitchell has some genuinely interesting ideas about some of these topics.) Plato, Nietzsche, Freud, and Solzhenitsyn are all there too, in addition to other thinkers whose influence I am perhaps too ignorant to notice. It's debatable whether the heavy thematic concepts are a good match for the pulpy or comedic tones of certain sections, but that might be a matter of personal preference. (In different ways Mitchell seems to paradoxically take his concept both too seriously and not seriously enough.) In contrast with my desire for greater subtlety in other aspects of the work, I wish that some examples of prejudice within Cloud Atlas had received more explicit challenges. While the characters' racism is generally addressed, some men in the story express a misogynistic sentiment that in my view Mitchell doesn't adequately explore, in my opinion.

A flawed work for sure, but at least a thought-provoking one. If this “genre” of interconnected storytelling had more time to mature, I wager that it could be a vehicle for some genuine masterworks, but the pool of writers capable of writing in such different styles as Mitchell does is probably rather small. Frustrating in some respects, and not a life-changing work of literature (at least not for me). Perhaps my expectations were too high, but it's a book that has stuck in my mind, and that has to count for something.

Nice collection of stories, expected a bigger connection at the end.

The inspiration for my favorite movie, and as a result hard for me to objectively assess. Still, I absolutely adored it.

I started reading this a couple of years ago and remember putting it down, unable to finish. I managed to reread and complete reading it this year. It wasn't the book... perhaps it wasn't meant to be read then. Or perhaps, it just wasn't my cup of tea. The intricacies and the uniquely shaped story-line require you to be engrossed within the world that's created. However, that wasn't the case for me as I didn't find myself engrossed enough for the pages to turn themselves. I appreciated the thought-process put into creating this book. All the shorter stories each had their own stylistic approach which was interesting, given that it was written by the same author, within the same book. Traveling through time, the interlocking lives... I found it to be a pretty unique concept.

Wow! Can I start with a Wow!? Can I add another Wow!?

Do I need to bother to use superlatives as to how good I thought this book was?

And what can I add to the gushing reviews that has not been said before?

Not much so I had better make this short then hadn't I.

The last pages of this book are philosophical and tie up the ideas that permeate this melange of six stories that cover the very gamut of mankind's nature from the past and into the future.

Genius!

Read a book that was turned into a movie you have seen

Rounded up from 4.5 stars

Six stories that thinly link together. I started this one in 2014, got about 30% into it and put it down for almost 3 years - as I thought it was fine, but really wasn't hooked. Picked it back up recently as it still simmered on my ‘currently reading' shelf and figured I'd best get on with it. I ended up listening to the last 70% via Audible (the recording is well done, btw). Parts of it I thought were fine, other parts I really liked. I would not have been able to get through Zachry's tale but for the fact that I was listening to the thing. Favorite bit was Timothy C tale - very funny once it gets rolling. I also really enjoyed the clone saga. Each segment is told in a very different voice. The linkage is thin - but interesting to see how each bit ties to the next and each story wraps up.

Six loosely-intertwined stories, arranged like a Matryoshka doll, and spanning a period of centuries. The gimmick (which Mitchell has one of his characters call out as gimmicky!) is admittedly clever, but the complete lack of interesting, relatable characters or engaging plot starts to drag after the first few chapters.

I enjoyed this a lot. The structure is fascinating, and the stories too. My favourite story was probably Sonmi-451. The Sloosha's Crossing one was a bit of a challenge to read, linguistically.

At first I thought this book was really confusing and I really wasn't sure what the whole point was. The first character used language that was difficult for me to understand and comprehend entirely what was happening. However, my curiosity and how well written the book was kept me going.

Mitchell does an amazing job at giving each character a very specific voice. They are each unique in the way they speak and their personalities, which makes it easy to keep each character's story separate.

I also really like the points that the book is trying to convey and how each character comes to realize it in their own way, which may sometimes be through one of the other characters.

All in all, it's a great book and I recommend it for sure.

Some storylines were more exciting than others, but overall, it is such an elaborate book that the few lengths weren't ruining it at all.

I began losing interest about halfway through, because this book has an interesting but simple premise. Six overlapping narratives, each being cut off by the next, tell the story of a single soul throughout its many lives. I was about to give up on it because of the extra effort the book required of me to translate the entirely original language of Sloosha's Crossing, but towards the end something wonderful happens. As each story ends, the characters join us on the readers' side of the fourth wall and engage the previous narrative, resulting in an avalanche of ideas thrusting us back into the past in the most natural way possible. The thought behind this book is amazing, and many of the ideas hinted at in Mitchell's previous works are made (perhaps too) obvious here. Each narrative's big idea seems to fit perfectly inside the next one, so the seemingly schlocky structure works ridiculously well. This novel is a catapult cranked back to the past, ready to shoot you to the future, and the best part is the trip back. I highly recommend it.

I so wanted to love that book since I enjoyed the movie. I was waiting for more connections between the stories, to better understand what I did not in the movie... but no! It didn't happen. But what happened was I enjoyed a couple of storylines and had to find ways to keep me awake during others.

If Mitchell wanted to show that people are linked and that more things change more they are the same, he could have done it in way less than 500 pages!

Uniquely written in a pyramidal chronology where the beginning is also the end(?), this book, while unusual, builds unique characters with unique style and keeps you engaged throughout. One of my favorites, to be sure.

This is a very unusual book.

It is made up of several separate stories, each utterly different in style and setting, that each end halfway through their narrative, only to be concluded in reverse order.

The opening story is written as the journal of a 19th century gentleman travelling through the Pacific Islands. This story breaks halfway through and we are presented with a series of letters from an aspiring composer in 1920s Belgium, who discovers and reads the Pacific Journal. The sequence of letters is broken off and we find the opening to a 1970 crime drama-novel in which we follow an intrepid reporter who, among other things finds, among the affects of a murder victim, the 1920s letters. This sequence continues, each story shedding light on the one that went before. There really is something for everyone here.

You may have heard a movie was made of this book. My advice – watch the trailer as it really gives the feel for the book...then go read the book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnAqFyaQ5s

While you can just sit back and enjoy the humour, action and romance, there is a point to it all. This book really makes you think. Here is a section from the 19th Century Pacific Journal that I really loved because it is so beautiful and so true - I've edited it to remove plot/character sensitive stuff (ie. it's spoiler-free).

“ If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a Colosseum of confrontation, exploitation and bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being...You and I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage and our legacy? Why fight the “natural” (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?

Why? Because of this:- one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

Is this the entropy written within our nature?

If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe divers races and creeds can share this world...if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable and the riches of the Earth and it's Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make come to pass. Tortuous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.

A life spent shaping a world I want my child to inherit, not one I fear my child shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth living...

I can hear my father-in-law's response... “He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain and his family must pay it with him! Only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!”

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

Wow! I adore the structure of this novel, and it deserves 5 stars just for that, however my complete love of it was sealed after reading the final entry in Ewing's journal. Chills.

This review is not a fair review. I thought I was going to like it, love it, maybe, but I didn't. And the reason I didn't like it has nothing to do with the beautiful writing or the big themes or the fascinating characters in this book; it had all of that and more. It's a four-star book.

I blame myself. I forced myself to read this book this summer. I assigned it to myself for summer reading.

So don't bother reading this review. Try someone else's review. I read it when I wasn't ready for it and that ruined the experience for me.