Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95675 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 529 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's hard not to become ensnared by words beginning with the letter B, when attempting to describe Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's third novel. It's a big book, for start, bold in scope and execution--a bravura literary performance, possibly. (Let's steer clear of breathtaking for now.) Then, of course, Mitchell was among Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and his second novel number9dreamwas shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Characters with birthmarks in the shape of comets are a motif; as are boats. Oh and one of the six narratives strands of the book--where coincidentally Robert Frobisher, a young composer, dreams up "a sextet for overlapping soloists" entitled Cloud Atlas--is set in Belgium, not far from Bruges. (See what I mean?)

Structured rather akin to a Chinese puzzle or a set of Matrioshka dolls, there are dazzling shifts in genre and voice and the stories leak into each other with incidents and people being passed on like batons in a relay race. The 19th-century journals of an American notary in the Pacific that open the novel are subsequently unearthed 80 years later on by Frobisher in the library of the ageing, syphilitic maestro he's trying to fleece. Frobisher's waspish letters to his old Cambridge crony, Rufus Sexsmith, in turn surface when Rufus, (by the 1970s a leading nuclear scientist) is murdered. A novelistic account of the journalist Luisa Rey's investigation into Rufus' death finds its way to Timothy Cavendish, a London vanity publisher with an author who has an ingenious method of silencing a snide reviewer. And in a near-dystopian Blade Runner-esque future, a genetically engineered fast food waitress sees a movie based on Cavendish's unfortunate internment in a Hull retirement home. (Cavendish himself wonders how a director called Lars might wish to tackle his plight). All this is less tricky than it sounds, only the lone "Zachary" chapter, told in Pacific Islander dialect (all "dingos'n'ravens", "brekker" and "f'llowin'"s) is an exercise in style too far. Not all the threads quite connect but nonetheless Mitchell binds them into a quite spellbinding rumination on human nature, power, oppression, race, colonialism and consumerism. --Travis Elborough

Review
'Remarkable and enjoyable book' -- Lytham St Annes Express 20050331 '(contains) extreme imaginative fluency' -- The Sunday Times 'David Mitchell has fast established himself as a novelist of considerable authority and power ... Anyone who read his remarkable debut, or its successor, NUMBER9DREAM, will instantly recognise the characteristic moves and bold gestures of this amazing extravaganza. His novels have a gleefully kelptomaniac air, moving from the most tawdry thrills to thunderous, visionary spectacle; they are unlike anything else, and you emerge from them dazed, amazed, unsure of the exact nature of the overwhelming experience ... a tremendous novel ... CLOUD ATLAS is one of the most shamelessly exciting books imaginable ... Mitchell is a novelist who knows exactly what he is doing, and one who is always one or two steps ahead of the reader; and at the end it seems to evaporate like the best dream you ever had.' -- Philip Hensher, Spectator 'His most accomplished achievement to date...a novel in the biggest, most exhilarating sense.' -- The Observer 'A complete narrative pleasure' -- The Guardian '(A) virtuoso performance...deeply impressive' -- The Daily Telegraph 'An intense, arcing colossus of a book whose narrative links, supplied by the voices of six main characters, are spun out into a unified theory of everything : history, human evolution, science, the will to power. The voices span epochs, continents, and genres...Mitchell has rightly commanded attention for the sheer breadth and energy of his compsition...i am moved by (his) talent.' -- Prospect, reviewed by Julian Evans

David Mitchell, already the acclaimed author of two unconventional books, Ghostwritten and number9dream, puts his readers through the emotional and intellectual wringer with his latest novel, his vast, sprawling epic, Cloud Atlas. Encompassing six interlocking stories and a range of genres spanning time and space, Cloud Atlas is a masterly work which defies coherent description, drawing the reader on into its labyrinthine interior in an attempt to unravel all the mysteries of this fascinating, complex work. It is 1850 and a young American notary crosses the Pacific, accompanied by Dr Henry Goose, surgeon to London's nobility. In 1931, Martin Frobisher, a brilliant young musician disinherited by his father, heads for Belgium where he inveigles his way into the home of famous composer, Vyvyan Ayrs, and becomes his amanuensis, composing his own work, Cloud Atlas Sextet, during his stay. Fast forward to the seventies, and a feisty young journalist uncovers a plot to suppress a document which exposes the radiation risks in a planned nuclear power station. Timothy Cavendish, vanity publisher, flees a gang of hoodlums and ends up incarcerated in Aurora House, a home for the elderly which resembles a prison rather than a nursing home. Genetically modified "fabricants" work in a fast food restaurant, gaining stars until they are sent off to "Xultation" and ultimate bliss - but one fabricant has escaped and can reveal the true horrors of what awaits the dedicated workers for Papa Song's of the golden arches. Zachary lives in a post-lapsarian tropical world ; but this is after a second fall, when science and technology have decayed, and civilisation has collapsed. Mitchell asks the impossible question ; what constitutes civilisation? His huge novel holds up a mirror to civilisation and its demise, but doesn't claim to have the answer. Like his novel, which turns in upon itself and ends up back where it started, perhaps the answer is that civilisation is whatever the current society considers it to be, and can only be judged by subsequent "civilisations". Cloud Atlas is a book that will arouse controversy and debate, but it is a book that simply cannot be ignored. Many books are described as unforgettable, but few of them deserve that description - Cloud Atlas is one of those few. (Kirkus UK)

The Times
'An impeccable dance of genres ... an elegiac, radiant festival of prescience, meditation and entertainment.'

Customer Reviews

just one of the best books ever.
ive read this book both ways..from beginning to end..and both parts of each one of the stories in a pyramid, and i think that it is clearly, one of the best works of fiction written. not only is it everything that you want a book to be..difficult, clever, intuative, connecting, mysterious and funny/sad, it also led me to so many other things. is the middle story based on a book called 'ridley walker', is louisa rey evocative of a book called 'the bridge of san louis rey', are these things intentional? or is that just me? and whatever the case..i suggest read both. this is a brilliant book, and i cant belive you havent read it yet!

Mediocre
This "novel" is actually a collection of short stories chopped straight down the middle.This has allowed the author to spin off a fair amount of formulaic writing but to excuse having done so on account of this unusual approach. This also lacks merit as a literary device because the often poor characterisation means that on reaching the later stages of the book a strong indifference arises regarding both the characters and plot developments. The metafictive attempts to interrelate the different short stories are clumsy, and the broadly Nietzschean / Foucaltian commentary on power that underpins the book is weak and unconvincing. On a more positive note this book is sometimes humorous, and Mitchell is at his best when he plays closest to home; the sarcastic English intellectuals of the Frobisher / Cavendash stories are quite amusing and well written. The Slooshin' Crossing story is also quite entertaining despite lifting heavily from the canon; in particular the Crysalids and the Handmaiden's Tale. By contrast the Sonmi story is a load of derivative tripe, and the Pacific Journal story is a joke. Too often the story descends into a windy bag of clichés, and the authors ironic self-criticism only serves to highlight rather than excuse its unoriginality. All in all this is not a serious work of fiction, nor should it be considered as such despite the praise it has received.

Interesting but not as good as people say
This book came recommended by a friend who thinks it's the best book ever written and who made her family and friends read it. Well, I cannot deny it was an interesting read. Mostly an exercise of style (reviewers who say that it is more a writer's book than a reader's book are right). However, I expected some sort of big reveal as I went along or even towards the end and it just did not happen. The stories are all related one way or the other but only superficially. The middle story (post apocalyptic world) was far too long and tedious to read. I started the book full of anticipation but ended up disappointed. A bit of an anti-climax.