Cloud Atlas in David Mitchell Appreciation

Sep 24, 2011 s.penkevich [mental health hiatus] rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-pulp, metafiction

UPDATE: looking back, this was the first “big” review I ever wrote when I first joined goodreads, and from discussing this book I met a lot of my first gr-Friends that I would go on to read a lot of excellent books with. I’ve always had a soft spot for this book and am thankful of it for being what introduced me to this wonderful book community, especially at a time when I had uprooted to a new place and was very lonely. This is a weird little corner of the internet and I love it, thanks to ever ...more

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May 30, 2008 Cecily rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi-future-speculative-fict, film-tv-version-not-good, miscellaneous-fiction, mitchell-uber-book, time-travel

This is definitely a book that is richer with rereading, but I still prefer his "Ghostwritten" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), which has significant echoes of this.

STRUCTURE

It’s often described as a matryoshka doll or a turducken, but that’s not the best analogy, imo.
Imagine six very different short books, each open at roughly the middle, then pile them up - and that is the structure of Cloud Atlas (story 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, 6, 5b, 4b, 3b, 2b, 1b). The structure is echoed in this c ...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviews-5-stars, exert-yourself, read-2012, reviews, mitchell

In Memory of Double Bills

I saw a lot of double bills in the heyday of independent cinemas.

They weren’t just two current release films that had been packaged to eke out some extra dollars for the exhibitor. They were carefully curated films that shared a theme and formed part of a whole season of similarly matched films.

Usually, the season was promoted by a poster that illustrated each film with a fifty word capsule review. For many years, I kept these posters in a folder, at least until I got ma ...more

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Nov 09, 2010 Steve rated it it was amazing

I had a friend when I was a kid who was a very talented pianist. One of the fun things he could do was take the Budweiser beer jingle and play it umpteen different ways. The first might sound like Bach; then he’d switch to Chopin. After that maybe it’d be a ragtime version, or blues, or bebop. His versatility went hand in hand with his virtuosity. After Cloud Atlas, I put David Mitchell in that same category. Nearly every review of this book talks about how innovative the structure is. The stori I had a friend when I was a kid who was a very talented pianist. One of the fun things he could do was take the Budweiser beer jingle and play it umpteen different ways. The first might sound like Bach; then he’d switch to Chopin. After that maybe it’d be a ragtime version, or blues, or bebop. His versatility went hand in hand with his virtuosity. After Cloud Atlas, I put David Mitchell in that same category. Nearly every review of this book talks about how innovative the structure is. The stories are told in different styles with different settings (including the future), first in chronological order, with each one referring to the one before it, then in reverse order until he’s back to the original tale. It’s long and sometimes dense, especially the future parts where it takes time to process the evolved (or devolved) dialogue, but it’s never boring.

And please don’t think of this book as only a gimmick. It has fresh ideas, recurring themes, and plenty of truths to tell. Plus, despite all the different voices and styles, the writing is always first rate. Unlike Christina Aguilera’s National Anthem, there were just the right number of notes. Literary merit often comes from not overdoing things, doesn’t it seem?

I suppose I run the risk of praising too effusively. To be honest, I liked some segments better than others. But I enjoyed them all. Even the sci-fi parts – typically not my thing – were done in an enlightening, entertaining way. It strikes me that most stories set in the future take vaguely disturbing trends from our own recent history and extrapolate them to unreasonable extremes. We’re then led on a rail to read into this what the cultural and moral implications are for this current path. Though you do get a bit of this in Cloud Atlas, it’s more subtle, and it touches on human issues that seem more foundational. It felt less manipulative, less deterministic.

He gave us another taste of genre fiction in the form of a rather standard crime thriller set in California in the 70’s. As a stand-alone, this would have been good but not exceptional. But as a riff, it was a great complement to the rest. I’m telling you, this Mitchell guy is dead clever; the consummate guide. There’s never a wasted word, much less a wasted story line.

This is only my second book of his. (Black Swan Green was my first and I really liked that one, too.) Now I want to read the whole set, plus any interviews he’s done that might shed further light on this new creative force in the world, harnessed for his growing fan base to enjoy.
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Feb 10, 2012 Traveller marked it as temporarily-stalled

Shelves: 1001-books

I enjoyed the film that was spawned by this book. I haven't had time to read the book, partly due to time constraints, and partly because I disliked the style in the first chapter.

Something worries me more than the divisiveness of this particular book, though. It is the idea that some people seem to have here on Goodreads, that they have the last say on what is "allowed" to be said about a book, and that, if we are Goodreads friends, we have to all agree about how we feel about a particular book ...more

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May 30, 2008 Madeleine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: our-libeary, 2012, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, my-kingdom-for-a-desert-island, reread-and-reread-and-reread, maybe-it-s-time-to-live

Like I said, I have serious doubts about translating my love of this book from its native incomprehensible paroxysms of adoration into, like, words.

So what do we do when words fail us? We ~~drink heavily!~~ defer to photos:

...more

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Jul 11, 2008 Terry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: post-apocalypse, favorites, historical-fiction, sci-fi

This book kicks my ass. I love it. David Mitchell is that guy who is able to take all of that airy-fairy po-mo jargon and marry it with actual story to produce something worthwhile. The premise behind the book sounds pretentious as all heck, but, to me at least, it isn’t that at all. Mitchell just tells six, count ‘em six, great stories with real panache. This makes _Cloud Atlas_ sound more like a short story collection than a true novel, but Mitchell pulls off making this both by having all of This book kicks my ass. I love it. David Mitchell is that guy who is able to take all of that airy-fairy po-mo jargon and marry it with actual story to produce something worthwhile. The premise behind the book sounds pretentious as all heck, but, to me at least, it isn’t that at all. Mitchell just tells six, count ‘em six, great stories with real panache. This makes _Cloud Atlas_ sound more like a short story collection than a true novel, but Mitchell pulls off making this both by having all of the stories nested within each other, both structurally and temporally, with backwards and forwards references to each other throughout. It really is an impressive achievement.

On top of that is the fact that there is something here for just about everyone, the novel starts off with a couple of stories that could be classed as historical fiction, moves into a murder mystery, changes to tragic farce, and then ventures into pre and post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Some stories are better than others, but they are all well worth reading. Despite the differences between each of the stories there is an overall thematic arc of how horrible people can be to each other mingled with the hope we are still able to experience in the midst of this that Mitchell is playing with and he manages to find a wide variety of ways in which to explore it. He is able to pack the novel with tragedy, action, humour and thoughtfulness.

Details on the stories follow. I'm not sure how much these descriptions might give away important details to new readers, so I've marked them as spoilers just in case. (view spoiler)

Each tale, except for the central/final one, is cut in half only to continue where it left off in the latter part of the book. It’s an impressive structural achievement that is made more impressive by the thematic and narrative hooks that link all of these tales together. All in all I highly recommend this book. It manages to be both entertaining and enlightening in just about equal measure and never loses its sense of story in the name of literary tricks regardless of the obvious care with which it was designed.
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Aug 03, 2011 Casey rated it it was amazing

I can't believe one writer wrote this. The voices are so complex and original, it feels like a team of master writers forged this novel. David Mitchell is an incredible writer. I knew that he was a master story teller after reading "Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" but Cloud Atlas's complexity while retaining a singular vision of life's complexity over time marvels the reader (being me). I loved it! ...more

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Jul 01, 2010 Agnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, brit

A complex work of fiction with many characters carrying at its core a very basic but strong message of courage, connection, and doing good by each other.

Highly recommended for readers who focus on how a novel is constructed; here the author takes the reader into 6 different time periods each in a separate chapter, to then work back in a second set of 5 chapters revisiting those time periods in a reverse order. The book makes a circular journey because the first chapter as well as the last are f ...more

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Nov 11, 2011 EditorialEyes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-i-re-read, all-time-favourites, literary-fiction, reviewed-on-my-blog, autographed

Join the Cloud Atlas Readalong!

The Cloud Atlas Readalong at EditorialEyes Book Reviews.

~*~

Introduction to the readalong

Part 1, "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" (first half): Cannibals and colonialism, oh my!

Part 2, "Letters from Zedelghem" (first half): The rakish, bisexual (or just opportunistic?), musically gifted and financially strapped Robert Frobisher writes his story in letters.

Part 3, "Half-lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery" (first half): After a chance encounter with an aging scien ...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Jeff rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books

Cloud Atlas has been my favorite book since the first time I read it in 2005. I just finished it for the second time, since I wanted to refresh my memory of it before the film comes out in October. I was curious to see if it would still have the same effect on me. I'm happy to discover that this book is even better the second time around. It's hands-down the best thing I've ever read in my life. Absolutely love it. ...more

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