21st Century Literature discussion

Please comment as you wish,staying within first 5 chapters of Cloud Atlas. Thank you.

I'm im the middle of An Orison of Sonmi-451 (Chapter 5) and I am finding it to be very interesting so far. I'm curious how Sonmi-451's story will connect with Timothy Cavendish. It is sad what happened to Yoona-939 too.

Maybe I'm just soft,finding myself caring about supposed non-sentient beings.

I found this chapter to be really interesting. It kind of had an I Robot feel to it with the evolution of man's creation, but the biological nature made it even more controversial. It was the fastest moving of the chapters for me thus far.

Kevin wrote: "I found this chapter to be really interesting. It kind of had an I Robot feel to it with the evolution of man's creation, but the biological nature made it even more controversial. It was the faste..."

Definitely the fastest moving for me as well. I felt quite involved while reading this chapter. I wanted more, until it became frightening.

This chapter is so interesting in the way in which it is so different from the previous chapters. I was quite surprised by the sudden introduction of this Sci-Fi story.

One of the things I first noticed is the way in which it seemed reflective of the first chapter of the Diary of Adam Ewing in considering of the slavery topic, and the way in which they speak of abolition within this chapter. It is like an evaluation of the past and yet they see themselves as being more advanced than those times.

But as the story of Timothy Cavandish was mentioned above, it does also make me think of the way in which Cavandish was also imprisoned against his will, and his own behavior perhaps can be seen as reflective of that of Yoona-939.

And we have the reoccurrence of the commit birthmark.

Interesting comments. I was as thrilled by this chapter as others. There were elements of it that I liked but I was kind of looking forward to moving on. (I don't read sci-fi so maybe that's partly why, though it felt more dystopian than sci-fi per se.) I found several elements of style in this chapter distracting.

I was quite intrigued by the last page though.

Chris wrote: "Interesting comments. I was as thrilled by this chapter as others. There were elements of it that I liked but I was kind of looking forward to moving on. (I don't read sci-fi so maybe that's partly..."

Yes it does have a very dytopic feel to it which happens to be one of my favorite genres.

I thought it was interesting how this narrative took the approach of interview form. It is interesting seeing how many different forms of narrative technique the author can fit into one book.

I did find at times find it a bit difficult being dropped right into the middle of this story, as there were a few things of which I would have liked to have more background information on, though perhaps such will be revealed as it continues.

I was engaged in the story of chapter 5, and would have liked to see it developed further. On the other hand, it was one more reminder of how this book is mostly populated by types. What I like in a book is ideas, and this book has ideas. However, when no characters are fleshed out in a fully human way, it can be frustrating.

Chapter 4 gave us the pot smoking dangerous rasta with an ever-present spliff, and the dangerous London underworld thugs.

Chapter 5 gave us the pan-asian conflation of Chinese and Japanese stereotypes given Korean names (sometimes), in a false Korean setting, but showing no understanding whatsoever of Korea.

The author obviously anticipated this potential criticism, so he throws in some intentional absurdity and avoids any attempt at genuinely portraying a culture, but in a way it's a cheap dodge.

I saw the Chapter 4 comment on the Half-life Hollywoodism as another example of anticipating critics and attempting to cut them off at the pass. But it doesn't invalidate the criticism, as much as simply acknowledge the truth of it. Of course the author also indulges the fantasy of throwing critics off a roof to their deaths, so I guess I should consider myself warned.