Customer Reviews

The Cloud Sketcher: A Novel

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3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
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It's unfortunate to me that so far this book hasn't attracted the widespread audience it deserves. It begins in Finland with a boy named Esko Vaananen who becomes obsessed with the skyscraper, or pilvenpiirtaja as he knows it. Shortly after he meets a young girl who entrances him, and his destiny converges in his quest for love, and his desire to be a brilliant architect. Spanning nearly thirty years and crossing from the frozen Finland tundra to The jazz infused gang run clubs of New York City Rayner's intricately researched novel certainly brings to mind comparisons with Ayn Rands, "The Fountainhead". Yet for many this will be a much more accessible novel. The dramatic journey the character goes through makes this book an obvious choice for a feature adaptation. A satisfying and wonderfully woven book!

A man goes from harsh winters in rural Finland, to the fast-paced excitement of New York. A story I can relate to because it applies to my own father. It is also the story of Esko Vaananen, the central character of The Cloud Sketcher. Imagine my excitement at discovering a book that is set largely in the home of my ancestors! It's a grand tale too. Accurately telling the reader about Finland, it's Civil War, the Big Apple in the Jazz Age and the competitive world of architecture. The story also centers around the protagnist's undying love of a woman despite innumerable obstacles. Like many "epic" style novels, The Cloud Sketcher depends on repeated chance enounters and discoveries that stretch credulity. But what keeps this from being a great story and turns it into a flawed one, is the inexplicable actions of so many characters.

I think I love you after all. I suddenly don't love you. I don't really know you but I'll hire you. Get away from me, no, let's work together. I trust you, no, I want to destroy you.

Many characters are stick figures whose actions cannot be explained other than they help move the story along. I believe a good story is driven by characters, in The Cloud Sketcher, the characters exist to move along the the plot outline. Certain type of readers, such as myself, will still be unable to resist The Cloud Sketcher (architects, Finns, Jazz Age fans) but others will be quickly discouraged by characters acting out of... well, character.

I'm a big fan of Richard Rayner's work. I loved "The Blue Suit", "LA Without A Map", and "The Murder Book". "The Cloud Sketcher" is not only his most ambitious, but also his best book to date.

This book is a passionate love story that begins in the back woods of Northern Finland in the early 1900's and continues through the Finnish Civil War. It ends in New York during the twenties.

What intrigues me most about this book is that it captures a time and a place about which I knew very little. It's got everything: a wonderful love story, history, politics, architecture and murder and it's all interwoven in a very compelling way. I could not put this book down.

To me, "The Cloud Sketcher" delivers what I expect from great literature. I highly recommend it to all who appreciate beautiful writing, a riveting story, and a unique journey into an incredibly vivid world.

As a Finn I was really interested in reading a book about a Finnish man, written by a writer who has never lived in Finland himself. There are not many such books, since not many people are really interested in Finnish history. I got the book as a Christmas gift from my brother, so I didn't know what it was about. I was really surprised when I started reading it, because the point of view was quite fascinating, and I couldn't stop reading until I had finished it.

I loved the historical background, although the desrciption of Finnish culture in the beginning of the century was a little depressing (made me think wheter it really WAS like that in Finland back then...). However, I also enjoyed the latter part of the book that described life in NYC in the 20's, since I have spent a year in the States, and also visited New York City. The story told me a lot about American way of thinking, and the meaning of money in it. Life really was totally different in America than in Finland in the 20's.

The story itself was a little too much to be true, but I took it as a Story, not as a biography. Esko's passion for Katerina seemed like a stupid fixed idea, and it seemed like too much idealism, living one's life just to get a girl you fell in love as a kid. I thought, However, that it was a beautiful story, and Rayner had cought a lot of true Finnish character in it. The descriptions of the Finnish civil war seemed truthful, and I even recognized the places in Tampere, where the most bloody battles took place. The book revealed many things about the civil war that are not really spoken out loud in Finland, even nowadays.

I read the Finnish translated version of the book, and I think the translation was quite good. Finnish is a very poetic language, and the translator seemed to have used a lot of efforts making the text sound like good Finnish. And finally about the word "pilvenpiirtäjä" (cloud sketcher): As a child I had never seen a skyscraper (since there is none in Finland), and when I heard the word "cloud sketcher", I really thought that it ment a person who was sitting in an air plane with a massive paint brush and painting the clouds!

First off, leave 'The Fountainhead' out of it. Ayn Rand's dense polemic, interesting as it may be, is an exercise in "How to Use the Novel to Convey an Idea Otherwise Distasteful In the Mouth of Your Average Reader," and as such, has no connection to the Real World; Howard Roark and his career, fascinating as it may be, is no match for the genuine pleasures and real lessons to be gleaned from Richard Rayner's 'The Cloud Sketcher.' This is a book for those who loved the intoxicating romance of Helprin's 'Winter's Tale,' the real-life difficulty of making tough decisions that will impact the lives of others found in the novels of John Irving, and the Big City rhythms that provide a strong backbeat for writers as disparate as William Kennedy, James Ellroy, and Michael Chabon. Compellingly readable (I knocked out the first 200 pages + at a midnight sprint), this tale of the life of Esko Vanaanen, and the geas laid upon him by Finland's first elevator, is the very definition of the "Traditional" Modern Novel. Modern in the sense that it takes into account the new approaches to the writing of fiction developed during this most literary of centuries; and modern in that it wrestles with the realities brought to life by the American domination of the 20th century. And traditional in its dedication to character, motivation, emotion, metaphor, narrative, STORYTELLING... Forget the latest ... by the 5th Avenue BOMC taste of the month; if you want to read the kind of book that Dickens, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck all would have loved, then read 'The Cloud Sketcher.' And then be sure to read 'The Blue Suit.' That one is as good, and funnier.

The book is a fascinating story with historical overtones covering the early 1920's in Finland and NYC. The theme of architecture is gloriously persued wrapped around a love quest. I was crazy about the writing style depicting the elements of creativity, personal drive and interesting character development of the hero architect. Rayner gives indepth visual depictions of people, places and scenes. Three of my family members have passed it around with high praise.

1920s. Esko fights the Bolsheviks in Finland before fleeing to the USA to be a skyscraper architect. 2 stories fused together with little to link them. Well sketched characters, except for the principal love interest. Historical color. Good pace. Easy to read.

Obsession, passions, and buildings all rise to their maximum intensity and height in the roaring 20's as depicted by Richard Rayner in his work, "The Cloud Sketcher". This is the first of his books that I have read, and while not among the best, I enjoyed it enough that I would read his next and possibly backtrack to some of his earlier work.

The story develops from two major events in the protagonist's young life. In the first he meets a young woman that becomes a life-long obsession, and the second is a vision of what he wants to accomplish with his life. The setting for the first part of the story is Finland as the Bolsheviks and their revolution damage it. By the time the fighting between the Whites and the Reds takes place, the protagonist has been horribly maimed in a childhood accident, he has lost his Mother, and then as a soldier he fights against the Reds which include his Father, and the Father knowingly like the son fights the other.

The consequences of the war bring about a set of contrary beliefs in outcomes of the war that continue to influence future events even if the most unlikely of stretched imagination must bring them to pass. One of these brings the central character that is now a young man, as well as an Architect to America in search not only of building his Skyscraper, but also of pursuing his obsession of a childhood love. His severing of his life and the people who inhabit it in Finland stretched my credulity in the story.

Once the story crosses the Atlantic the events continue to be implausibly convenient as well as improbable, and though he has left his Wife in Finland, events there continue to develop that will haunt him later in his life. When he saves the life of a man that will eventually preside over New York, virtually any obstacle can be overcome, and is routinely done so which detracts even further from the story's credibility.

As much as I complain about the contrived nature of the book's events it was an enjoyable, light, even if a less than fascinating read. Some books are meant to entertain, and this work lacked enough originality to demand close attention, and like the Skyscraper race for the tallest in the world, a given building, like the book's events, is surpassed by an improbably higher building just as events more implausible than there predecessor unfold.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and felt that despite its origins in fiction it was a picture in to the Finnish people, their history and the things that motivate them.
The infatuation of the main character with his only love seemed a bit much at times but it did thread its way in and out of many chapters of the book and without it the story would have seemed dull to readers who are not interested in learning about other cultures and countries.
I have recommended the book to many people and would recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction.

I enjoyed this novel, and while some aspects and characters were not as well developed as others, I found myself swept up in the building of sky scrapers as a metaphor for achievement.

The historical backdrop was interesting as well, and provided a window into a period and place that few of us know much about.

I recommend this novel.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith