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Swap the books you've read, for some you haven't!
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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
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  | Sceptre, 2005 Paperback, 544 pages edition: 1st US isbn: 0340822783value: 18 creditscondition: good | owner: shakyamanoj (new user)
a good one., | | | | Sceptre, 2005 Paperback, 544 pages edition: 1st US isbn: 0340822783value: 18 creditscondition: good | owner: gabs41 (new user)
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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Review: Doggedly read the first half assuming (hoping, anyway) that the stories would start to interweave in some kind of interesting and illuminating way. Doggedly read the second half thinking that not actually finishing the book would feel like even more of a waste of my time. Yes, the idea of souls, lives interconnecting across time is interesting, but the pure fact that the author of story b has read story a isn't enough. There doesn't seem to be much sense of reciprocity, that the stories/authors are shaping one another (as there would have been if this had been written by borges, for example). Does the fact that the events of one person's life end up being the subject of a film, which is then watched by another character, make those events PER SE interesting? No. The first story is supposedly written in the 19th century, and there's some attempt to write it in 19th century idiom ,which doesn't quite come off. A later character comments on this - is this clever, or just lazy? The futuristic bit set in the far east feels like every other post blade-runner thing set in the far east, and the plot device about birthmarks was old hat about 400 years ago. The whole thing feels like pastiche with a bit of window-dressing. One of those books that's very keen to show you the author's read a lot, but which never does anything imaginatively transformative with it.
Review: This book must be unique in its structure - a series of stories, starting in the past and working towards and into the future, around the theme of man's inhumanity to man, interwoven in a V pattern and with a thread that links each, however tenuously, to the next.
Having acquired the book as part of a six-book deal from a magazine, I'd left it till last, put off by its bulk and the relatively small-printed pages. But don't let that put you off! Once it gets going, this is a fascinating book and the stories, particularly the first three, are utterly absorbing. It's frustrating, though, having to wait so long to find out what happens, a consequence of the V-formation. This is especially so with the first two stories, as both are absorbing and, just as you really get into them, they break off and you are plunged into the next. But that is the brilliance of the book - and by the time you reach the end you realise that it works and couldn't have been done in any other way.
I found myself wishing that story of the young journalist's investigation into a nuclear plant was a full-length thriller. It was certainly a gripping tale. I was less keen on the two middle stories - the futuristic ones - and admit to skimming the story at the centre of the V as I found the dialect too annoying.
That's a minor quibble though. The book's well worth the read.
Review: while some people may get annoyed with this because at stages the book seems to be more about itself as a feat rather than any of the stories... I still think this is breath-taking. Same of the six stories are better than the others, but the way he plays the theme of savagery and wilderness off against each other through the centuries is awesome. You'll never read another book like it.
Review: This is a book comprising 6 interlocking stories that tell the tale of hopeless humanity and our inevitable brutality, greed and lust for power. The six stories (or novellas) start in the 1850's and continue all the way to post apocalyptic reality. The link is sometimes strong, and sometimes weak, but there is always a strand between them.
What I loved most about this book is that each of the stories pulls you in and when you become disappointed that the tale has ended the next story pulls you in again. I found each of them fascinating but found the Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing to be the weakest - all the others I think could have stood on their own as novels in their own right.
Overall, an excellent book that is well worth reading.
Review: It seems like all a book or movie has to do in order to be cool is to chop up the linear timeline and reassemble it. Sometimes, yes it has a purpose, (like that movie "Memento") but maybe sometimes it's an excuse for an author who obviously has no problem at all coming up with great prose to make a messy desk look chic.
Great ideas, good science fiction. What's up with the comet birthmark?
Review: "Cloud Atlas" is intensely exuberant and terrifying at the same time. The prose style riffs across genres, which might not suit everyone's tastes, but in the end this is an amazing, amusing, beautiful book. I hope Mr. Mitchell keeps writing for the rest of my life.
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