It's been a while since I reviewed a book but this one deserves such treatment, if for nothing else than the fact that it is truly epic in almost every sense of the word. David Mitchell's 2004 Booker Prize nomination (his second, including number9dream in 2001,) is a collection of six unique novelettes, split up and thrown together in weaving halves, to create a humorous, painful, joyous, light and indeed at times, dark boomerang through time and space, to present to us a magnificent opus, summing up everything good about the written word under the sun. Such plaudits from the press as "A magnificent feast" (The Times) and "An extraordinary narrative" (The Spectator) do not even begin to describe the diversity of Mitchell's stellar writing here, so much so that -as one reviewer pointed out in The New York Times, I think- there's just too much to talk about; but for what I hope will be your pleasure, I will try.
So where do we begin? Well first of all I'll break the story down into its separate chunks so that you can visualise the 'boomerang' of a narrative that takes us to the future and back again:
1- The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (set in the 1800s)
2- Letters from Zedelghem (set in the 1930s Belgium)
3- Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (set in the US 1975)
4- The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (set in contemporary England)
5- An Orison of Somni-451 (set in a Corpocracy in North Korea some time in the near future)
6- Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After (A far-future dying Earth narrative)
5- An Orison of Somni-451 (Conclusion)
4- The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (Conclusion)
3- Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (Conclusion)
2- Letters from Zedelghem (Conclusion)
1- The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (Conclusion)
And ss you can see, the narratives offer something of a variety in their titles alone, but within each is a rich language, crafted and broken apart by Mitchell's talented hand and it is in the tranquility of the Pacific that we begin this awesome journey. The story here focuses on a man of the not-so-long-ago-formed United States, a man of letters writing of his experiences living amongst the tribes constantly at war with one another. His voice in the diary -almost a series of letters sent to us- carries with it a truly encapsulating tone and idiolect that reflects the time period in which is was supposedly written, so much so, that Mitchell has managed to create a very authentic account that, if it were not a work of fiction, could find itself in a museum as a historical artefact. What makes this narrative portion particularly interesting is that whenever swearing is presented in reported speech, Mitchell cleverly makes use of dashes to convey the fictitious author's opposition to what was at the time seen as much greater taboo than is the case today, with this idiosyncrasy also present when reporting statements that take the Lord's name in vain, again reflecting the time period with a consistent and unrelenting skill. This is the first microcosm of what the novel attempts to convey, that firstly, man tries to gather too much power over others to the extent that it consumes him and secondly, that history is connected and will repeat itself again and again.
We see the first example of the latter moral of the tale in the second story, set in the 1930s Belgium. An aspiring musician from Cambridge by the name of Robert Frobisher is seeking to work with a famed composer in the chateau of Zedelghem. This story is similar to the last, written not as a series of journal entries but rather a series of letters sent to an enigma named simply as "Sixsmith." He tells us of his life and times within the family of the composer, the feud with his spoiled daughter of the aristocracy and his affair with her mother, trying to keep himself scarce as he struggles and triumphs over the music he is creating, while at the same time is requesting of Sixsmith (we never see his letters of response) a rare book of historical significance named The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. This story is one of conflict, feud, class, struggle and ultimately romance and it's effects on trust, which is again another cleverly-constructed example of how humanity is consumed by the power it seeks. An amazing feat that had already taken us forward in time and across the globe, we move on from the drama of Frobisher's musical life towards the political turmoil of nuclear power in the 1970s America.
This is the first real shift in the narrative where the writing is more orthodox, written like any other thriller, with short chapters and fast-paced scenes that rarely stop to give us a pretty picture of the world through the eyes of the protagonist, a journalist by the name of Luisa Rey. Half-Lives is probably one of my least-favourite sections of the novel, not because of any particular gripe but rather down to my personal taste for the other areas (my personal favourite being Zedelghem.) But nevertheless, the genre writing here is equally compelling as it had been previously, with the whole novel almost being written in quite short chapters, but those chapters taking different forms that make the whole work utterly unique, whether they be the short book-like chapters as seen here or letters sent to and from parties as seen previously. But above all else, this section is where the true meat of the end-game of the narrative, (chronologically ending mid-way through the work) comes into play: The rise to power of the corporation, which leads us to the next section of the novel where the cliff-hanger leaves us gasping for more as the air of suspense is whipped away from us at the last minute and instead is replaced by . . .
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. Tim's story focuses on a more lighthearted narrative that pokes quite tame fun at the grumpy old man stereotype, whilst taking us through a surreal story of a very strange kind of prison, which I will not spoil for you. The interesting thing about this is that -like how we met the character of Sixsmith in Half-Lives as an old man, we see the story of Luisa Rey in manuscript format, as our character thinks about it lying around amongst his possessions, casting a critical eye over the writing, wondering whether or not he should publish it. The character of Cavendish is revealed within his speech, with his dialect crisp and attitudes life-like, which makes him a marked contrast to Luisa and the characters before her, which begin to make this growing ensemble an interesting lot indeed. But the main selling point within this story is the humour. Humour at the stereotype conforming and then dismantling, humour at the predicaments of the characters and humour at the characters he meets on his journey, which came under fire by some critics with some arguing from a perspective of inconsistency. Me, well, I think personally the story was helped a great deal by this portion, because nobody wants to read a novel with such bleakness throughout every passage, which is why the comic relief was almost a signpost for me, an encouraging spark of light at the end of the tunnel, which forced me to carry on and in doing so I wound up in-
An Orison of Somni-451. While I feel as though I should point out that there is no connection other than the number to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit-451, there is indeed a genre overlap. The story is the first of two to be set in the future, a place known as 'Nea So Corpos' where clones are used in fast-food restaurants to serve the ignorant 'pureblood' populace. The story is told via a series of interview questions about a revolution asked by an archivist and directed at Somni herself, who was shown the light and as a result became sentient. This story is very interesting due to its use of almost Orwellian prose, with brand names becoming nouns for the very things in which they are dominant -an extreme form of brand eponyms: Brands used include fords (cars,) nikes (shoes) and exxon (oil or fuel,) which really heightens the sense of where power lies within this society, with suggestive cues such as describing the logo of the fast-food restaurant (known as 'Papa Sans') as golden arches, an obvious jab at the ubiquity of McDonalds. As a marketer this particular story was interesting for those reasons, though as a piece of the puzzle, the story interestingly relates to Cavendish's story via Somni seeing a film of his predicament, which takes us (mid-way through the interview and a sentence being formed!) to a land in the unfathomable future, where the world has descended into barbarism and primitivism: Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After.
This final story is the only one not to be broken mid-way through and focuses on a tribe of mountain-folk. The story is told in retrospect and is written in the dialect of the speaker both in his own reported speech and in the narrator's voice, occasionally broken when he asks for a drink of water etc., making everything seem so much more real. This is where the novel became somewhat tedious however, since the dialect of our narrator here speaks akin to Cletus from The Simpsons, his speech littered with apostrophes marking the purged letters and rendering this read a little difficult. However, I urge you to press on, because the story leads us through to Somni again, and through her, we arrive at Tim, carrying us back further to Luisa who throws us back even further until we wind up back at where the sentence was broken mid-way in the first story, that of Adam, who tells us of his final exploits and while at the end of each of our characters' lives, we come across death, humour and despair in equal measure, Cloud Atlas leaves us not with a burdened heart, or bored mind, but with hopeful eyes for the future. With Adam's final ponderings laid bare in his cataclysmic diary, contemplating the bright future that mankind might have, he sums up the great need for solidarity so that we learn to trust in our fellow companions through life, no matter what their denomination of us, making this time-spanning journey all the more beautiful; in all a brilliant read that contains something for everyone, and even more for those who can clearly see that the whole of this Atlas, is a book that is much greater than the mere sum of its pages. As the Times' review said, the book is a masterful feast, a banquet of literary cuisine and all I can say is that I'm sorry for arriving late.
This is the first real shift in the narrative where the writing is more orthodox, written like any other thriller, with short chapters and fast-paced scenes that rarely stop to give us a pretty picture of the world through the eyes of the protagonist, a journalist by the name of Luisa Rey. Half-Lives is probably one of my least-favourite sections of the novel, not because of any particular gripe but rather down to my personal taste for the other areas (my personal favourite being Zedelghem.) But nevertheless, the genre writing here is equally compelling as it had been previously, with the whole novel almost being written in quite short chapters, but those chapters taking different forms that make the whole work utterly unique, whether they be the short book-like chapters as seen here or letters sent to and from parties as seen previously. But above all else, this section is where the true meat of the end-game of the narrative, (chronologically ending mid-way through the work) comes into play: The rise to power of the corporation, which leads us to the next section of the novel where the cliff-hanger leaves us gasping for more as the air of suspense is whipped away from us at the last minute and instead is replaced by . . .
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. Tim's story focuses on a more lighthearted narrative that pokes quite tame fun at the grumpy old man stereotype, whilst taking us through a surreal story of a very strange kind of prison, which I will not spoil for you. The interesting thing about this is that -like how we met the character of Sixsmith in Half-Lives as an old man, we see the story of Luisa Rey in manuscript format, as our character thinks about it lying around amongst his possessions, casting a critical eye over the writing, wondering whether or not he should publish it. The character of Cavendish is revealed within his speech, with his dialect crisp and attitudes life-like, which makes him a marked contrast to Luisa and the characters before her, which begin to make this growing ensemble an interesting lot indeed. But the main selling point within this story is the humour. Humour at the stereotype conforming and then dismantling, humour at the predicaments of the characters and humour at the characters he meets on his journey, which came under fire by some critics with some arguing from a perspective of inconsistency. Me, well, I think personally the story was helped a great deal by this portion, because nobody wants to read a novel with such bleakness throughout every passage, which is why the comic relief was almost a signpost for me, an encouraging spark of light at the end of the tunnel, which forced me to carry on and in doing so I wound up in-
An Orison of Somni-451. While I feel as though I should point out that there is no connection other than the number to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit-451, there is indeed a genre overlap. The story is the first of two to be set in the future, a place known as 'Nea So Corpos' where clones are used in fast-food restaurants to serve the ignorant 'pureblood' populace. The story is told via a series of interview questions about a revolution asked by an archivist and directed at Somni herself, who was shown the light and as a result became sentient. This story is very interesting due to its use of almost Orwellian prose, with brand names becoming nouns for the very things in which they are dominant -an extreme form of brand eponyms: Brands used include fords (cars,) nikes (shoes) and exxon (oil or fuel,) which really heightens the sense of where power lies within this society, with suggestive cues such as describing the logo of the fast-food restaurant (known as 'Papa Sans') as golden arches, an obvious jab at the ubiquity of McDonalds. As a marketer this particular story was interesting for those reasons, though as a piece of the puzzle, the story interestingly relates to Cavendish's story via Somni seeing a film of his predicament, which takes us (mid-way through the interview and a sentence being formed!) to a land in the unfathomable future, where the world has descended into barbarism and primitivism: Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After.
This final story is the only one not to be broken mid-way through and focuses on a tribe of mountain-folk. The story is told in retrospect and is written in the dialect of the speaker both in his own reported speech and in the narrator's voice, occasionally broken when he asks for a drink of water etc., making everything seem so much more real. This is where the novel became somewhat tedious however, since the dialect of our narrator here speaks akin to Cletus from The Simpsons, his speech littered with apostrophes marking the purged letters and rendering this read a little difficult. However, I urge you to press on, because the story leads us through to Somni again, and through her, we arrive at Tim, carrying us back further to Luisa who throws us back even further until we wind up back at where the sentence was broken mid-way in the first story, that of Adam, who tells us of his final exploits and while at the end of each of our characters' lives, we come across death, humour and despair in equal measure, Cloud Atlas leaves us not with a burdened heart, or bored mind, but with hopeful eyes for the future. With Adam's final ponderings laid bare in his cataclysmic diary, contemplating the bright future that mankind might have, he sums up the great need for solidarity so that we learn to trust in our fellow companions through life, no matter what their denomination of us, making this time-spanning journey all the more beautiful; in all a brilliant read that contains something for everyone, and even more for those who can clearly see that the whole of this Atlas, is a book that is much greater than the mere sum of its pages. As the Times' review said, the book is a masterful feast, a banquet of literary cuisine and all I can say is that I'm sorry for arriving late.
Cloud Atlas (First Edition)
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