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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Literature // Nick // 30th June 2005

Cloud Atlas: Gushing, Runcorn

I think this was one of the books that radio four used in one of their more eclectic attempts to get the nation to read more, and see how far a random sequence of events could take an object that has no value other than in the epiphenominal world around the physical one. In summary, the book was given to a random reader, with the instruction to email auntie beeb with their thoughts, then to leave the book in some public place with the same instructions for a passerby to pick up and do the same. And so the chain would extend. I believe one copy got at least as far as Runcorn before it was used as bog paper.

Anyway, I digress, the reason why I bought it was an interview with the author along with a vox pop of readers, all of whom (including the erudite host) had nothing but praise for the genuinely humble writer, so I thought, worth a stab, got to be better than the latest Dan Brown.

How to describe this book though? It could be viewed as a collection of short stories or a bundle of interweaved novellas, or it could be viewed as some poncy modern deconstructive device that is too clever for its own good - only it isn't. It is very clever. There are a set of stories, starting with the journal of an 18th century American lawyer and his journeys through the South Pacific, moving to a set of letters from a musician-cum-composer in the 1930s, on to a reporter uncovering a scandal in the seventies, to a publisher in current times undergoing a 'One flew over the cuckcoos nest' type trial, then a pre-execution interview with a clone in the near future, on to story told by an old survivor in a post civilisation collapse. Each of these stories seems to end abruptly, even halfway through a sentence in one case, but has a seemingly casual link to the previous that makes you think, 'ah that's clever', but little more. The trick is the cycling back through the stories in the second half of the book.

As the book carries on, what was 'ah that's clever' becomes ever more tightly nit, and the seemingly casual links become the defining theme. Whether you take this as a mystical link of souls across ages or a beautiful allegory of the loose interconnections between lives over time is unimportant - the effect is thought provoking and that is what I think the author was intending.

All this may sound like exactly like something too clever for its own good. However the quality and variety of the writing is quite extraordinary;
The attention to period detail and language of the first set of journals reads as if someone has unearthed some papers from a dusty corner and copied them, yet at the same time has enought 'modern' feel to not be as dry as the writing of the time.
The letters of the second piece have the same period tone of PG Woodehouse, and are redolent of the era.
The reporter's story is a page turning thriller that could stand alone in its genre.
The publisher is exactly the sort of elderly enraged erudite and frustrated person you hope you would be in your dotage, and his trials just make you will him to succeed.
The clone's story is the type of dystopian view of a future dominated by the body corporate you might expect, yet has a lightness of touch and an alternate angle to most of this type.
The storyteller is possibly the most poignant - the language, that I couldn't help but read in a west country accent until I realised it was set in Hawaii, and the belief system it evokes both harks backwards to a more primitive culture but is a pointer that civilisation is a fleeting event.

Each story, which is in a genre of its own, could be expanded into a very good novel of its own. Through the quality of the characterisation you are engaged with protagonants, enraged when the story stops, quickly caught up in the next one, then thrilled when it returns. The book as a whole is even greater than the sum of its parts, and its parts are arranged like a set of Russian dolls being taken apart and put back together.

OK, I may be gushing a bit, but this is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Just give it a go.

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Book World Talks With David Mitchell

From The Washington Post web site

Like, a mini cloud atlas

Loads of different types of clouds, re-live those A level geography lessons.