Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3412 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 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

Evening Standard
'A masterful feast'

Review
'A remarkable book ... there won't be a bigger, bolder novel this year.' (Guardian )

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

'His wildest ride yet ... a singular achievement, from an author of extraordinary ambition and skill' (Matt Thorne, Independent on Sunday )

'David Mitchell entices his readers onto a rollercoaster, and at first they wonder if they want to get off. Then - at least in my case - they can't bear the journey to end.' (AS Byatt, Guardian )

'Mitchell's storytelling in CLOUD ATLAS is of the best. I was, appropriately, captivated.' (Lawrence Norfolk, Independent )

'The best novel of the year so far ... a thrilling ride of a story' (Philip Hensher, Summer Reading, Observer )

'Impeccably structured novel of ideas in many voices by a talent to watch.' (Literary Editor's Best Books, Observer )

Customer Reviews

Cumulative Nimbleness
Everything about Cloud Atlas - the elegant and allusive title, the heft of this 540-page hardback (which as well as providing food for thought, doubles as a good cardiovascular workout), the quotes and prize-tips it comes garlanded with, even the bold cover (so idiosyncratically contemporary it should achieve kitsch status within a couple of years) - says: This is a significant book.

And so it is. As you begin to read it, first your opinion rises to meet your expectations, and then continues from there. What Mitchell has done is return to the form of his first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), with a linked set of stories, but with a twist this time. The narrative is less a Russian doll than an onionskin: we get one story which is interrupted by another, and that by another, and so on as we drill through the flesh of the book. At the centre is a whole story, then we return to resume the story it interrupted, then the story *it* interrupted, and so on until the book ends with the conclusion of the story which began it.

And also! As well as having the earlier stories enclosing the later ones, within the structure of the book, Mitchell also has - fictionally and chronologically - the later stories enclosing the earlier ones. By this I mean within each story, the protagonist is aware of the story which has just been interrupted. So we have first, the journal of a Pacific explorer in 1850; then the letters home of a bankrupt young composer who is blagging his way through 1930s Europe (and who is reading the Victorian explorer's journal in its published form); then a cinematic thriller in 1970s California, a nuclear conspiracy with a hairpin or switchback on every page (in which the female lead has been reading the letters of the composer in Europe); a vanity publisher in contemporary England who is being chased by the gangland associates of a client (and who is reading the nuclear thriller as a manuscript submitted to him); then to the 22nd century where we get the death-row testimony of a fabricant in a corporate dystopia (who watches a film based on the vanity publisher's story); and finally, the central section, a far-future narrative in a Riddley-Walker-style post-civilisation age, told in pidgin English, whose narrator finds the holographic testimony from the executed fabricant, who in his world has become a prophet.

Phew. Okay. So there is much to admire here, not only in Mitchell's vast imagination - any lesser writer would have jealously hoarded these ideas to make up six novels and not splurged them all on one; clearly he has no fear of the ideas drying up, but then Iain Banks (of whose generously imaginative early work I was reminded) probably thought that too - but also in his execution of the stories. Each one is perfectly detailed and flawlessly ventriloquised. He successfully completes all of them (which was his stated intention, to reflect the frustration he felt on reading Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, where the many sub-stories all die hanging in the air). The stories have a unifying theme too, of subjugation and rebellion, deepening their superficial appeal, and also of course, we benefit from the dramatic irony of knowing the future for the human race that each character has such great hopes for in their own individual times.

I could end it there and leave you happy in the knowledge that Cloud Atlas was one of the greatest novels of our time. But that would be misleading, because much as I hate to carp on such a monumental achievement - I feel like a vandal scratching at Uluru with a pen-knife - the book is firmly flawed. As the stories break into one another, the sole connection - that each narrator is reading the story in the previous chapter - starts to seem a bit thin and gimmicky. There are attempts to bring deeper connections - two of the characters recur in successive stories, which is a good start - but they fall flat when all Mitchell manages otherwise is to have the protagonists share the same birthmark, to suggest, glibly, that they are related or reincarnated. And I thought Mitchell took a risk in starting and ending the novel (with the explorer story) and centring it (with the post-apocalyptic society: "a young Pacific Islander witnesses the nightfall of science and civilisation" - wow! Sounds fantastic, but isn't) with his least interesting and readable narratives.

I also had grave doubts about the thriller story - not that it is not very well done and highly entertaining. The problem is that, as noted before, the thriller is (it turns out) a manuscript which has been submitted to the vanity publisher: a pure fiction within the fiction of the novel. But this throws the preceding chapters - which are all, presumably, supposed to be "real" within the fiction of the novel - into chaos. If the character in the fictional thriller is reading the letters from the composer, does that make him just a subsidiary character within the thriller? And indeed the explorer whose journals he is reading? Does this even make sense? At least David Mitchell can be satisfied that, if you want to understand what on earth I am talking about when I make these criticisms, you will have to buy the book and read it to find out.

So despite its surface attractions and achievements - and they are many, and many people will devour the book joyfully and without complaint, and good luck to them - I am left with the feeling that, despite Mitchell's cumulative nimbleness, Cloud Atlas is more a trick than a book, to be returned to in parts (the composer's letters and the vanity publisher's "ghastly ordeal" were my favourite parts, both tragicomic and superb first person narratives), but not in whole, not to be lived in and loved over and over until either it falls apart or I do - which is what we want from all our books, after all.

Perseverance is the key
I have just finished this book and although I wasn't sure about it at the start I have thoroughly enjoyed the journey it takes you on. I feel that in some places the repetition of the central story - essentially a battle of the one against the many in power - became the priority and that the singular stories in their own right would have been rewarding enough with out this theme. However, that was one of the links connecting each section and in it's way it works well.
I, like others, found the centre section - 'Sloosha's Crossin...' quite taxing. It took me just as long to read this section, as it did to read the rest of the book. But please, if you read this book and too discover this bit to be hard going, persevere - it is worth it. I was tempted to skip on, but felt when finished, Sloosha's Crossin... to be one of my favourite sections, and I feel that it completes the message that the author is quite plainly stating - abuse of power will bring civilisation as we know it to an end.
In summary a fantastic and thought provoking novel - highly recommended.

An Amazing and Entertaining Work
It's hard to know where to start with this book, so I'll do so by saying that of the 130 or so works of fiction I've read so far this year, this is easily among the best. I suppose that's because Mitchell effortlessly blends a number of fictional genres I happen to like, including historical, science, neo-noir, dytopia, farce, and comic. This is done by structuring the book as six separate novellas, each of which is cut in half. The first half of the book presents the first half of each story, in chronological order. Then, the middle of the book is the "bridge" story, set in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii, after which, the second of half of the five other stories unravel in reverse chronological order. To a certain extent this is merely a gimmicky way of presenting six novellas (one character, a composer who is arranging a six-part piece with the same title and structure as the book even admits as much, "Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished."), but the recurring themes of the mankind's capacity for evil and the man's inhumanity to man and the transience of civilization are what bind it all together.

The first story is "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", and appears as the journal of a San Francisco lawyer in the 1850s who has been traveling in search of a legatee and is now en route home. A stop in the Chatham Islands (near New Zealand), opens his eyes to the both innate cruelty of both native peoples and the colonial system which professes to be saving them. His account, with clear echoes of Melville and Conrad, is found in the library of an aging composer living in Belgium in the 1930s -- which is where the second story takes place. Its unearther is bisexual composer Robert Frobisher, who has insinuated himself into the luxurious home of the decaying blind genius in order to hide out from his numerous creditors. His trials and tribulations are recounted via hilarious scathing letters to an old Cambridge friend which then turn up in the third storyline.

This takes the form of a '70s pulp thriller starring a Latina investigative journalist looking into malfeasance at a California nuclear plant. This "Luisa Rey Investigation" is a very capable thriller which turns up as a manuscript in the offices of a contemporary London vanity publisher. The publisher's story is Kafkaesque farce, as he is incarcerated by person or persons unknown in a retirement home/prison. His attempts to learn who put him there and to escape appear as a film watched by a genetically engineered McDonald's waitress in a dystopic futuristic Korea. This is a very well-realized story worthy of any sci-fi anthology, with overt nods to films ranging from "Blade Runner" to "Soylent Green."

The central bridging story, a far-future tale of a boy's post-apocalyptic survival on a Hawaiian island is definitely the weakest, requiring the most heavy lifting on the reader's part due to the constructed slang. In it, a peaceable farmer/herder community are continually at risk from warlike neighbors. An envoy arrives from a technologically advanced group, potentially upsetting the delicate balance of power. This storyline clearly binds it to "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" in Mitchell's attempt to show how human behavior simply cycles back around to established modes. If this all sounds bafflingly complex, it really isn't. What it is is a set of completely immersive stories with distinctive settings, characters, and styles, but common themes. Mitchell is at ease across genre, time, space, gender, race, you name it. The stories can be read for individual enjoyment or one can track the progression of various recurring cues and behaviors as an exploration of the corrupting and dehumanizing nature of power. Either way, this is an amazing -- and entertaining -- work.