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Cloud Atlas Paperback – August 17, 2004
| David Mitchell (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in twenty-first-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.
But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.
As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.
- Print length509 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House Trade Paperbacks
- Publication dateAugust 17, 2004
- Dimensions5.51 x 1.1 x 8.47 inches
- ISBN-109780375507250
- ISBN-13978-0375507250
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
From Bookmarks Magazine
This skillthe technical expertise that allows Mitchell to adopt a different genre for each of his six storylinesgets him into a little trouble. The New York Times Book Review complains that Mitchells writing too often seems android, that his chameleon-like shifts render his work coldly impressive rather than fallibly human. However, most reviewers found Mitchells unorthodox structure captivating. After an initial period of confusion, Cloud Atlas becomes a challenging puzzle most were eager to solve. When the storylines finally coalesce, the result is a novel that stands above its peers in both emotional impact and philosophical import. As the Los Angeles Times notes, Cloud Atlas offers too many powerful insights to be dismissed as a mere exercise in style. By all accounts, Mitchell has produced in Cloud Atlas a wholly original work. For most, it is also wholly satisfying.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
Review
“One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is—and should be—read by any student of contemporary literature.”—Dave Eggers
“Wildly entertaining . . . a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative.”—People
“The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet—not just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I’m grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds.”—Michael Chabon
“Cloud Atlas ought to make [Mitchell] famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer whose fearlessness is matched by his talent.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Thrilling . . . One of the biggest joys in Cloud Atlas is watching Mitchell sashay from genre to genre without a hitch in his dance step.”—Boston Sunday Globe
“Grand and elaborate . . . [Mitchell] creates a world and language at once foreign and strange, yet strikingly familiar and intimate.”—Los Angeles Times
About the Author
From The Washington Post
Novels whose plots hinge on intricate puzzles -- e.g., The Da Vinci Code and The Rule of Four -- are all the rage these days, but the puzzle of Cloud Atlas isn't in the book, it is the book. What appears at first glance to be a novel is in fact six novellas whose interrelatedness is only hinted at during the book's first half, then revealed fully and splendidly after the book's middle, which is really the book's end. Confused? You're supposed to be, at least for a little while: It's from this starting point of dislocation that Mitchell begins a virtuosic round trip through the strata of history and causality, exploring the permanence of man's inhumanity to man and the impermanence of what we have come to call civilization.
Mitchell begins his chronology of our fall from grace with a character named Adam, naturally. "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" presents us with the diary of a seafaring 1850s American notary, killing time on the Chatham Islands off New Zealand as he waits for his homeward ship to set sail. Engaging in the amateur anthropology of the visitor, the morally upright Ewing struggles to square his belief in the civilizing, beneficent aspects of colonialism with what he sees before him, "that casual brutality lighter races show the darker." He also befriends an English doctor who diagnoses Ewing with a rare, brain-destroying disease, and who begins treating the American immediately with a cocktail of powerful drugs.
Then, in mid-sentence, Mitchell whisks us away from the scene, and suddenly we are reading the letters of one Robert Frobisher, a charmingly louche, happily bisexual British composer of the 1930s whose tendency to skip out on hotel bills has finally caught up with him. As he recounts his ambitious plan to evade creditors and gain hitherto elusive fame by exploiting an elderly maestro, we merrily follow his rake's progress and almost forget the plight of poor Adam Ewing -- until, that is, Frobisher mentions in passing that he has serendipitously found and read one-half of a bound copy of Ewing's journal. (The second half is damnably missing.) Shortly thereafter, we take our leave of Frobisher just as abruptly as we were introduced to him, and Mitchell drops us down in 1970s California, at the opening chapter of a crime-fiction potboiler whose heroine, a plucky magazine journalist named Luisa Rey, is on the verge of uncovering a nefarious conspiracy.
And so it goes, again and again: a cycle of starts and stops that vectors through past, present and future, linked by buried clues and the twin refrains of deceit and exploitation. What all these stories have in common is that each draws its lifeblood from the same heart of darkness. Cloud Atlas is a work of fiction, ultimately, about the myriad misuses of fiction: the seductive lies told by grifters, CEOs, politicians and others in the service of expanding empires and maintaining power. Soon we meet Timothy Cavendish, the curmudgeonly editor of a London vanity press, who is tricked into incarceration by his vengeful brother. We meet a wise, world-weary clone from 22nd-century Korea, where hypercapitalism and biotechnology have fused into absolute tyranny. And finally, in post-apocalypse Hawaii, we meet a storyteller who enthralls his listeners with the tale of a suspicious visitor from a far-off land, echoing the account of Adam Ewing that opens the book.
At this point the novel's action rapidly reverses course, going back through time and picking up the abandoned narrative threads, weaving them together to craft a fascinating meditation on civilization's insatiable appetites. Even Mitchell's characters seem to voice uncertainty about their creator's grand plan. "Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished," admits Frobisher of his own "Cloud Sextet," a musical composition whose ambitious six-part structure mirrors the novel's. And Cavendish, the editor from the old school, has his qualms, too: "I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory," he harrumphs.
But sometimes novels filled with big ideas require equally big mechanisms for relaying them, and it's hard to imagine an idea bigger than the one Mitchell is tackling here: how the will to power that compels the strong to subjugate the weak is replayed perpetually in a cycle of eternal recurrence. Rarely has the all-encompassing prefix of "metafiction" seemed so apposite. Here is not only the academic pessimism of Marx, Hobbes and Nietzsche but also the frightening portents of Aldous Huxley and the linguistic daring of Anthony Burgess. Here, too, are Melville's maritime tableaux, the mordant satire of Kingsley Amis and, in the voice of Robert Frobisher -- Mitchell's most poignant and fully realized character -- the unmistakable ghost of Paul Bowles. Here is a veritable film festival of unembarrassed cinematic references and inspirations, from "Soylent Green" to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to "The Graduate" to the postwar comedies of England's Ealing Studios. Here is an obviously sincere affection for the oft-maligned genres of mystery, science fiction and fantasy.
All of these influences, and countless others, gel into a work that nevertheless manages to be completely original. More significantly, the various pieces of David Mitchell's mysterious puzzle combine to form a haunting image that stays with the reader long after the book has been closed. Cloud Atlas ought to make him famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer whose fearlessness is matched by his talent.
Reviewed by Jeff Turrentine
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints. Through rotting kelp, sea cocoa-nuts & bamboo, the tracks led me to their maker, a White man, his trowzers & Pea-jacket rolled up, sporting a kempt beard & an outsized Beaver, shoveling & sifting the cindery sand with a teaspoon so intently that he noticed me only after I had hailed him from ten yards away. Thus it was, I made the acquaintance of Dr. Henry Goose, surgeon to the London nobility. His nationality was no surprise. If there be any eyrie so desolate, or isle so remote, that one may there resort unchallenged by an Englishman, ’tis not down on any map I ever saw.
Had the doctor misplaced anything on that dismal shore? Could I render assistance? Dr. Goose shook his head, knotted loose his ’kerchief & displayed its contents with clear pride. “Teeth, sir, are the enameled grails of the quest in hand. In days gone by this Arcadian strand was a cannibals’ banqueting hall, yes, where the strong engorged themselves on the weak. The teeth, they spat out, as you or I would expel cherry stones. But these base molars, sir, shall be transmuted to gold & how? An artisan of Piccadilly who fashions denture sets for the nobility pays handsomely for human gnashers. Do you know the price a quarter pound will earn, sir?”
I confessed I did not.
“Nor shall I enlighten you, sir, for ’tis a professional secret!” He tapped his nose. “Mr. Ewing, are you acquainted with Marchioness Grace of Mayfair? No? The better for you, for she is a corpse in petticoats. Five years have passed since this harridan besmirched my name, yes, with imputations that resulted in my being blackballed from Society.” Dr. Goose looked out to sea. “My peregrinations began in that dark hour.”
I expressed sympathy with the doctor’s plight.
“I thank you, sir, I thank you, but these ivories”—he shook his ’kerchief—“are my angels of redemption. Permit me to elucidate. The Marchioness wears dental fixtures fashioned by the afore- mentioned doctor. Next yuletide, just as that scented She-Donkey is addressing her Ambassadors’ Ball, I, Henry Goose, yes, I shall arise & declare to one & all that our hostess masticates with cannibals’ gnashers! Sir Hubert will challenge me, predictably, ‘Furnish your evidence,’ that boor shall roar, ‘or grant me satisfaction!’ I shall declare, ‘Evidence, Sir Hubert? Why, I gathered your mother’s teeth myself from the spittoon of the South Pacific! Here, sir, here are some of their fellows!’ & fling these very teeth into her tortoiseshell soup tureen & that, sir, that will grant me my satisfaction! The twittering wits will scald the icy Marchioness in their news sheets & by next season she shall be fortunate to receive an invitation to a Poorhouse Ball!”
In haste, I bade Henry Goose a good day. I fancy he is a Bedlamite.
Friday, 8th November—
In the rude shipyard beneath my window, work progresses on the jibboom, under Mr. Sykes’s directorship. Mr. Walker, Ocean Bay’s sole taverner, is also its principal timber merchant & he brags of his years as a master shipbuilder in Liverpool. (I am now versed enough in Antipodese etiquette to let such unlikely truths lie.) Mr. Sykes told me an entire week is needed to render the Prophet- ess “Bristol fashion.” Seven days holed up in the Musket seems a grim sentence, yet I recall the fangs of the banshee tempest & the mariners lost o’erboard & my present misfortune feels less acute.
I met Dr. Goose on the stairs this morning & we took breakfast together. He has lodged at the Musket since middle October after voyaging hither on a Brazilian merchantman, Namorados, from Feejee, where he practiced his arts in a mission. Now the doctor awaits a long-overdue Australian sealer, the Nellie, to convey him to Sydney. From the colony he will seek a position aboard a passenger ship for his native London.
My judgment of Dr. Goose was unjust & premature. One must be cynical as Diogenes to prosper in my profession, but cynicism can blind one to subtler virtues. The doctor has his eccentricities & recounts them gladly for a dram of Portuguese pisco (never to excess), but I vouchsafe he is the only other gentleman on this latitude east of Sydney & west of Valparaiso. I may even compose for him a letter of introduction for the Partridges in Sydney, for Dr. Goose & dear Fred are of the same cloth.
Poor weather precluding my morning outing, we yarned by the peat fire & the hours sped by like minutes. I spoke at length of Tilda & Jackson & also my fears of “gold fever” in San Francisco. Our conversation then voyaged from my hometown to my recent notarial duties in New South Wales, thence to Gibbon, Malthus & Godwin via Leeches & Locomotives. Attentive conversation is an emollient I lack sorely aboard the Prophetess & the doctor is a veritable polymath. Moreover, he possesses a handsome army of scrimshandered chessmen whom we shall keep busy until either the Prophetess’s departure or the Nellie’s arrival.
Saturday, 9th November—
Sunrise bright as a silver dollar. Our schooner still looks a woeful picture out in the Bay. An Indian war canoe is being careened on the shore. Henry & I struck out for “Banqueter’ s Beach” in holy-day mood, blithely saluting the maid who labors for Mr. Walker. The sullen miss was hanging laundry on a shrub & ignored us. She has a tinge of black blood & I fancy her mother is not far removed from the jungle breed.
As we passed below the Indian hamlet, a “humming” aroused our curiosity & we resolved to locate its source. The settlement is circumvallated by a stake fence, so decayed that one may gain ingress at a dozen places. A hairless bitch raised her head, but she was toothless & dying & did not bark. An outer ring of ponga huts (fashioned from branches, earthen walls & matted ceilings) groveled in the lees of “grandee” dwellings, wooden structures with carved lintel pieces & rudimentary porches. In the hub of this village, a public flogging was under way. Henry & I were the only two Whites present, but three castes of spectating Indians were demarked. The chieftain occupied his throne, in a feathered cloak, while the tattooed gentry & their womenfolk & children stood in attendance, numbering some thirty in total. The slaves, duskier & sootier than their nut-brown masters & less than half their number, squatted in the mud. Such inbred, bovine torpor! Pockmarked & pustular with haki-haki, these wretches watched the punishment, making no response but that bizarre, beelike “hum.” Empathy or condemnation, we knew not what the noise signified. The whip master was a Goliath whose physique would daunt any frontier prizefighter. Lizards mighty & small were tattooed over every inch of the savage’s musculature:—his pelt would fetch a fine price, though I should not be the man assigned to relieve him of it for all the pearls of O-hawaii! The piteous prisoner, hoarfrosted with many harsh years, was bound naked to an A-frame. His body shuddered with each excoriating lash, his back was a vellum of bloody runes, but his insensible face bespoke the serenity of a martyr already in the care of the Lord.
I confess, I swooned under each fall of the lash. Then a peculiar thing occurred. The beaten savage raised his slumped head, found my eye & shone me a look of uncanny, amicable knowing! As if a theatrical performer saw a long-lost friend in the Royal Box and, undetected by the audience, communicated his recognition. A tattooed “blackfella” approached us & flicked his nephrite dagger to indicate that we were unwelcome. I inquired after the nature of the prisoner’s crime. Henry put his arm around me. “Come, Adam, a wise man does not step betwixt the beast & his meat.”
Sunday, 10th November—
Mr. Boerhaave sat amidst his cabal of trusted ruffians like Lord Anaconda & his garter snakes. Their Sabbath “celebrations” downstairs had begun ere I had risen. I went in search of shaving water & found the tavern swilling with Tars awaiting their turn with those poor Indian girls whom Walker has ensnared in an impromptu bordello. (Rafael was not in the debauchers’ number.)
I do not break my Sabbath fast in a whorehouse. Henry’s sense of repulsion equaled to my own, so we forfeited breakfast (the maid was doubtless being pressed into alternative service) & set out for the chapel to worship with our fasts unbroken.
We had not gone two hundred yards when, to my consternation, I remembered this journal, lying on the table in my room at the Musket, visible to any drunken sailor who might break in. Fearful for its safety (& my own, were Mr. Boerhaave to get his hands on it), I retraced my steps to conceal it more artfully. Broad smirks greeted my return & I assumed I was “the devil being spoken of,” but I learned the true reason when I opened my door:—to wit, Mr. Boerhaave’s ursine buttocks astraddle his Blackamoor Goldilocks in my bed in flagrante delicto! Did that devil Dutchman apologize? Far from it! He judged himself the injured party & roared, “Get ye hence, Mr. Quillcock! or by God’s B——d, I shall snap your tricksy Yankee nib in two!”
I snatched my diary & clattered downstairs to a riotocracy of merriment & ridicule from the White savages there gathered. I remonstrated to Walker that I was paying for a private room & I expected it to remain private even during my absence, but that scoundrel merely offered a one-third discount on “a quarter-hour’s gallop on the comeliest filly in my stable!” Disgusted, I retorted that I was a husband & a father! & that I should rather die than abase my dignity & decency with any of his poxed whores! Walker swore to “decorate my eyes” if I called his own dear daughters “whores” again. One toothless garter snake jeered that if possessing a wife & a child was a single virtue, “Why, Mr. Ewing, I be ten times more virtuous than you be!” & an unseen hand emptied a tankard of sheog over my person. I withdrew ere the liquid was swapped for a more obdurate missile.
The chapel bell was summoning the God-fearing of Ocean Bay & I hurried thitherwards, where Henry waited, trying to forget the recent foulnesses witnessed at my lodgings. The chapel creaked like an old tub & its congregation numbered little more than the digits of two hands, but no traveler ever quenched his thirst at a desert oasis more thankfully than Henry & I gave worship this morning. The Lutheran founder has lain at rest in his chapel’s cemetery these ten winters past & no ordained successor has yet ventured to claim captaincy of the altar. Its denomination, therefore, is a “rattle bag” of Christian creeds. Biblical passages were read by that half of the congregation who know their let- ters & we joined in a hymn or two nominated by rota. The “steward” of this demotic flock, one Mr. D’Arnoq, stood beneath the modest cruciform & besought Henry & me to participate in likewise manner. Mindful of my own salvation from last week’s tempest, I nominated Luke ch. 8, “And they came to him, & awoke him, saying, Master, master, we perish. Then he arose, & rebuked the wind & the raging of the water: & they ceased, & there was a calm.”
Henry recited from Psalm the Eighth, in a voice as sonorous as any schooled dramatist: “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou has put all things under his feet: all sheep & oxen, yea & the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air & the fish of the sea & whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.”
No organist played a Magnificat but the wind in the flue chimney, no choir sang a Nunc Dimittis but the wuthering gulls, yet I fancy the Creator was not displeazed. We resembled more the Early Christians of Rome than any later Church encrusted with arcana & gemstones. Communal prayer followed. Parishioners prayed ad lib for the eradication of potato blight, mercy on a dead infant’s soul, blessing upon a new fishing boat, &c. Henry gave thanks for the hospitality shown us visitors by the Christians of Chatham Isle. I echoed these sentiments & sent a prayer for Tilda, Jackson & my father-in-law during my extended absence.
Product details
- ASIN : 0375507256
- Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks (August 17, 2004)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 509 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780375507250
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375507250
- Item Weight : 15.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.51 x 1.1 x 8.47 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #25,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #20 in Historical British & Irish Literature
- #184 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #1,457 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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About the author

Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he taught English in Japan, where he wrote his first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN. Published in 1999, it was awarded the Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, NUMBER9DREAM, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. His third novel, CLOUD ATLAS, was shortlisted for six awards including the Man Booker Prize, and adapted for film in 2012. It was followed by BLACK SWAN GREEN, shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, which was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller, and THE BONE CLOCKS which won the World Fantasy Best Novel Award. All three were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. David Mitchell’s seventh novel is SLADE HOUSE (Sceptre, 2015).
In 2013, THE REASON I JUMP: ONE BOY'S VOICE FROM THE SILENCE OF AUTISM by Naoki Higashida was published by Sceptre in a translation from the Japanese by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida and became a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. Its successor, FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES, GET UP EIGHT: A YOUNG MAN’S VOICE FROM THE SILENCE OF AUTISM, was published in 2017, and was also a Sunday Times bestseller.
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I should also begin by admitting that even for an unreserved, omnivorous reader like me, making headway into this novel as was bit tough. But ONLY because the first chapter is written in diary form, and in the 18th century style of English (at times, it reminded me quite a lot of Herman Melville's seafaring novels, so accurate was the mimicry. And after getting comfortable with that style, it was easy to finish the final chapter (the end of that narrative) when I got to it.
Mitchell's Fourth novel, CLOUD ATLAS (perhaps his masterpiece), is - like his first - a collection of the different stories which are all inter-connected. In this case, Mitchell has used Italo Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER and THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder as, respectively, the foundation and inspiration for his fourth novel.
"The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", the first narrative - set in and around the Pacific Rim, during the mid 1800s - follows the fate of Adam Ewing. He witnesses a variety of cruelties visited upon darker skinned people, most of whom are enslaved in one way or another, but does nothing to intervene, believing this is the natural order of things. But his voyage back home - to California, and his young wife -- finds him growing mysteriously ill. He is seen to by Dr. Henry Goose, another traveler of Ewing's acquaintance. But the good doctor's ministrations don't seem to be helping, and a stowaway - a black islander, who turns out to be a crack sailor, whom Adam kindly helps out - helps save Adam Ewing's life, thus opening his eyes and heart.
"Letters From Zedelghem", the second narrative, set during the early 1900s, in Belgium, follows bon vivant and aspiring musician, Robert Frobisher, who has taken on the job of being an apprentice to a renowned, but mostly retired, classical musician. Frobisher's tale is told in epistolary form: letters from the young bisexual to his long-time lover, Rupert Sixsmith, recount the story of his days with Composer Ayrs, and his sexually frustrated wife. There follows a tale of frustration (Ayrs thinks Frobisher is neophyte with no skills) lust (Ayrs's wife seeks out Frobisher for sexual fulfillment - and her daughter is chasing him as well), wonder (Frobisher begins writing his "Cloud Atlas" sextet) and longing (Frobisher continues to express his undying love for Sixsmith). In this narrative of creative wonderment and romantic longing, it is revealed that Frobisher was born with a distinctive birthmark: one that looks like a comet; and he also mentions his frustration at having stumbled across an old journal - written by one Adam Ewing - which is only half there.
"Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery" is the third narrative. It's told in third person, and set in the 1970s in California, featuring Luisa Rey, daughter of a famous investigative journalist of the 1960s, follows the basic tenets of a mystery novel or story - because it is just that. Luisa (who sports a birthmark shaped like a comet. During the course of writing an article for a tabloid type magazine, Luisa finds herself I the company of a man named Rupert Sixsmith. The older man happens to be scientist in the employ of a company which is committing corporate and ecological crimes. When Sixsmith tries to open up to Luisa, he is targeted for termination - and when Luisa learns the secrets Sixsmith was keeping, she finds herself in the sights of the companies hired killers as well.
"TheGhastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", the fourth narrative - a boisterous, comedic farce, recounted in first person - takes place in England and centers around vanity publisher and knight errant, Timothy Cavendish. Set during the present - with tongue firmly in cheek - it weaves the hilarious tale of Cavendish's fortunes after one of his customers - an ex-con in London who writes a badly-written tell-all entitled, "Knuckle Sandwich" - is arrested for murdering a critic who loathed his book. Cavendish reaps the financial benefits when the book becomes a bestseller. But the brother of his (now favorite) writer come calling, looking for their own "piece o' the pie"), demanding thousands of dollars, which leads Cavendish - the knight errant - to take it on the lam, resulting in quite a few laugh-out-loud scenes.
"An Orison of Somni-451", the Fifth narrative, recounted as transcripts of an interview, is set around the mid-part of the 21st (or perhaps 22nd) century, in Korea. A fabricant - basically a clone created to live in servitude - is on trial for participating in illegal activities which are considered crimes against the state. Her story - of revelation, escape, and rebellion - eventually becomes the stuff of legend and myth.
"Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After", the Sixth narrative, is set in Hawaii after an apocalyptic event. It is another first person narrative - told in a style of "broken English" which recalls the old SF classic, RIDDLEY WALKER) - recounting what happens when Zachary - a decidedly non-heroic, but basically good-hearted man - encounters (along with the surviving members of his tribal village) a certain prescient (a human who still has the power of advanced intellect and technology) who is in search of something that will affect the future of all humankind. But first he and the prescient, named Meronym, must survive a gauntlet that will take them past packs of murderous Kona savages (war-like cannibals).
After the narrative of the sixth section is complete, each of the previous narratives - which all stop at a sort of cliffhanger type ending - begin again, in descending order: narrative 5, then 4, then 3, and so on. It's a narrative conceit that both keeps the reader in suspense and works to further illustrate how each seemingly separate narrative is joined with the others (in the same manner that seemingly separate lives are either joined together or affected by one another).
This narrative technique works resoundingly well, and only adds to the depth, drama and wonder of author David Mitchell's variously moving, and variously entertaining, stories, as well as the over-arching, overall theme: that every human being, no matter how seemingly insignificant, contributes to the future and (in the end) the success or failure of his family, community and species. And each of the narratives affects the others. For instance, Adam Ewing's journal is read by Robert Frobisher. Robert Frobisher's lover, Sixsmith, helps Luisa Rey (and she shares a distinctive birthmark with Sixmith's long-dead lover). At one point, vanity publisher Cavendish is reading the manuscript of a mystery novel entitled, HALF-LIVES: THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERY, written by someone named Hilary V. Hush. Fabricant Somni-451 gets to watch part of an old "Disney" (as future beings refer to films) that recounts the comedic misadventures of an old man named Timothy Cavendish. And Zachary and all of the surviving far-future humans pray to a goddess named Somni. Thus reiterating the idea that no matter how small, or how big, a being, their life affects the rest of the world in ways one can't imagine.
As Adam Ewing observes: "...what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"
His characters (credible?--passably; likable?--two or three; where not--revelatory of gritty humanity) reflect each other across eras: 1850s, 1930s, 1970s, 1990s, and a science-fiction-era: Year 2144--in which cloning has led to an evolved yet enslaved sentient class) so it seems Mitchell is reincarnating his creations; also, there's this 'comet' tattoo of his that keeps popping up, tail n all (ooooh, so spooooky--nah, not really: the author neglects to drill this body-ink motif sufficiently to get it through my thick skull; never did say: "Ah, I get it!" As for Twilight Zone's theme wafting o're me whenever a story-connecting etude blew in, such woo-woos of his just did not resonate; but no matter, there's much to ponder:
The characters' South Pacific, Belgian, China-cum-Korean and Hawaiian motifs kept my nose to the grindstone [page after page, small type] till I hit THE END. Why?--A COMPELLING QUALITY OF WRITING; each character, speaking in an era's dialect, did share (or came to share) a resigned cynicism (hey, there's little reason for optimism) yet also appear inclined to engage in and enhance life--no matter his or her limitations, or til life's tenebrous aspects overwhelm them, or that relentless killer shows up. CLOUD ATLAS is far more interesting than gloomy; it's just that life's deflating; did I mention mortal? Sad how oblivious Adam Ewing is to his own demise.
A reader obstacle---for me, a nuisance---interpreting Mitchell's language style in `Sloosha's Crossin'--a 70-page segment that draws on Hawaiian folklore.
[Warning: spoiler alert; the novel's line-up follows]
#1) Adam Ewing, notary---33-year old's journal entries in 1850s English are posted during a South Pacific three-masted sailing; Adam reports roguish behavior. (Hint: an avowed physician and a Christian missionary have much to answer for, but don't) Adam ends up owing his life to Autua, a freed slave, and becomes an abolitionist, determined to have a life worth living by helping to shape a world that he wants his son to inherit, and NOT one that he fears that his son will.
#2) Letters from Zedelghem: Musician/composer/amanuensis Robert Frobisher pursues an ex-pat Englander in failing health--a cantankerous composer: Vivyan Ayers; he stalks Ayers to a Belgian castle-hideaway on the outskirts of 1931 Bruges; Frobisher gains employment and lodging from the nearly-blind genius, and is seduced by Ayer's 50-ish wife, whose daughter Eva he ultimately lusts for (The Graduate? Nope. Things don't work out so well for Robert, as for Dustin); the talented young Englishman (Frobisher) seems compelled to unburden his woe-is-me rural existence in a series of letters to a mysterious `Sixsmith' -Frobisher's occasional benefactor, and, it comes to light, his once-upon-a-time lover. In the close, Frobisher has planned his suicide well; even so, he is doubtful that he will escape himself even in death; he believes "We do not stay dead long." However, he employs the Luger, to see perhaps if his belief will stand up.
#3) Rufus Sixsmith unmasked: in this 1970s noir segment he is 66 and an energy-consultant/nuclear scientist/whistle-blower in `Half-lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery.' Its atomic-powered rending has a Three-Mile Island flavor; Mitchell ushers in murder-for-hire, corporate malfeasance, p.r.-intrigue, investigative journalism---whisking in comeuppances for all dem kats in the his cat n mouse fray. At one point the reader is left hanging, like when Luisa gets launched over a bridge-railing into a sure-watery death by hit-man Bill Smoke. But heroine Luisa survives such repeated close-calls, exposes corporate wrongdoing, and Smoke gets smoked.
#4) The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish was by far my favorite of the six tales: the protagonist (poor buggah suffers a stroke in Aurora House) is a n'er-do-well publisher/book-agent, also 66; he gets trapped in an assisted-living facility; his farcical attempt to escape the wretched place (and the clutches of Nurse Noakes--One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest sprang to mind) is humorous as all get out, if only he can get out; Looking at old-age homes: "You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you...this slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible...only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence... and you will stand before a mirror, and think, E.T. locked in a ruddy cupboard." More: "Oh, once you've been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn't want you back." For laughs, re-read pages 360-361. There's also the not-so-funny: "Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty"--consider the right-wing dominated U.S. House of Representatives. It does turn out well for Mr. Cavendish; he relocates to a northern England village, his ordeal and middle-age left behind.
#5) AN ORISON OF SONMI, 451 -deposition of a cloned (fabricated) human, conducted by an archivist; her name: Sonmi; her production #: 451--assigned off the wombtank assembly line: a `perfect organic machinery' in a futuristic Nea So Copros regime. Having snuck herself an education, and uncovering a murderous government conspiracy, she's a major threat to establishment enforcers. She's awaiting execution, sees herself a martyr, and tells the skeptical archivist about show trials, and over-population solutions. Sonmi thus gives evidence of a grim 22nd century world: which is life under Papa Song--he may be the equivalent of The Great and Powerful Oz--a sham tyrant, made in this instance of bytes n bits. Two groups at odds: 1) Unanimity, whose Purebloods hold n wield power in a suffocating, corpocratic state, and 2) Union Abolitionists, whose aim it is to wrest power from Unanimity, and put an end to fabricant slavery. The setting? Northeast China, near a Korean peninsula. Sonmi tells the archivist that highly-ascended Purebloods (think Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, or the Koch bros.) intend to exterminate downscale Purebloods (anyone at all literate) in order to replace them with docile, readily controllable clones (say, ones beholden to Grover Norquist.)
#6) Sloosha's Crossin: Zachry--this tale's illiterate narrator--and Meronym, an island guest, traverse the Big Isle of Hawaii together. Meronym (back from the future) stops in at Kona, ostensibly to study Island Life and to document how Hilo natives placate (toss in a few slaves every so often) their awesome god Mauna Kea; either He is a humongous volcano or He inhabits it. Who the slaves are depends on who's exercising dominance. This segment was my least favorite, its vernacular hard to fathom. Mitchell's witticisms, however, are numerous: "The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. Another war is always coming. War is one of humanity's two eternal companions."
Wrote this review in Feb 2011. Then in Oct 2012 I saw CLOUD ATLAS, the movie---dumbstruck the film project would even be tackled. Anyone who has NOT read the book, it's my belief, will be lost in this film, and likely frustrated. For the book's readers, the movie will be entertaining. (Yet come to think of it, now that you've read my review, you may profit from the movie after all) I was particularly engaged in the film's ORISON OF SONMI 451 sci-fi segments. Jim Broadbent is terrific; Tom Hanks and Halle Berry are fine; the one casting miscue: Susan Sarandon.
Top reviews from other countries
No doubt this author can write - each story in this book is beautifully constructed and written. However his use of exaggerated writing styles, culminating in the middle section of the book of a nearly indecipherable pidgin English, destroys any flow which makes for an unsatisfactory read.
The author seems more interested in displaying his cleverness than in telling a good story. A disappointing book from an author I've enjoyed reading previously.
One critic pronounced, apparently, that no other writer could get away with such a combination of main characters, which really makes me wonder how widely that critic has read. The author himself has said he just wondered what would happen if he added more and more ideas to the same book, so he did, and imo that's how it reads. A bit random. Apparently that's enough to make people swoon these days.
I was waiting for a big epiphany / reveal at some point, but there isn't one. There's a quick attempt at profundity at the end, but it, too, is very underwhelming: if I had to sum it up in word, that word would be "forgettable".
That said, it is a beautifully and sensitively written book, even if the author's prognostications about the future and human nature are somewhat cynical and gloomy. I like how the writing style changes from 19th century floral to present day functionalism, which not only allows the author to more fully exploit the joys of the English language, but gives a chronological identity to each of the stories.
The book came as a surprise to me, as I was expecting something quite different; it was quite hard to get into, but well worth the effort.
An absolutely fantastic, well written, creative masterpiece? That will have to do!
For me I cannot talk about the book without first mentioning the film based on it. It was through the movie that I cam to the book. Cloud Atlas was not received that well, and despite looking superb and boasting a stellar cast was considered average by most people who saw it. In this day and age of spectacle and action it was not surprising really. It is a film that you have to sit and watch, to concentrate on and perhaps watch a couple of time to really appreciate the complexities it holds.
I loved it, it seemed to be suited to the way my brain works and it was enough to make me want to read the source material.
The author has likened the book to matryoshka or Russian nesting dolls, each time you remove an outer layer there is another beneath. I can see what he means. Each shell reveals another until you reach the middle then put the whole thing back together again. You could equally claim it is like climbing a step pyramid. Each step takes you to the summit, before descending the other side, ultimately ending where you began.
What seems like a series of individual stories slowly becomes something more as you make your way through the words. Starting with Adam Ewing, a notary sent out into the Pacific to deliver legal documents in the (I guess) 1800's, each story moves through time, to the 1930's, the 1970's, Modern day, the near(ish) future and the post apocalyptic Earth of a distant time.
Each part is told in a different style, be it letters, Journal Entries, a recorded interview. The language changes with the time and the character, to something that is readable but has evolved from our own.
Each character is just that a character, a personality that leaps off the page, while the different stories flit within different genres keeping the pages turning with a life of their own.
Not only is each individual story gripping in their own right, the more you read the more obvious it becomes that they are linked in a multitude of different ways. From a recurring birthmark, to the use of the words Cloud Atlas, to character quirks that might be related to previous stories, and the way each story is enfolded in the next. I could list them all, but to avoid spoilers I'll just mention the first. In the second story, main character Robert Frobisher discovers a batter book, torn in two. It is the Journal of Adam Ewing from the opening part of the book.
There are also little tells, I'm aware of picking up two, but there are countless more, I'm sure waiting to be seen on second, third or fourth readings. (One I spotted is Frobisher has a seeming irrational hatred of doctors, by the time you finish the book it makes sense.)
It is a remarkable achievement of style and the imagination, well written, inventive and not in a manner that might alienate a reader. It is a story of wonder, mundane, of adventure and life, a story of what was and what might be, of lives intersecting, moving apart and coming together again through the generations, it is a story of loss and redemption, over generations. It is a book that looks seriously at the subject of reincarnation, and never once drops the ball.
For me, at least, a modern masterpiece and one of the best books I have ever read.
I think I understand why some might might find it gloomy or pretentious but to use a hackneyed expression, it blew me away.
I am always fascinated to read the 1 star reviews after I really love a book and in a significant proportion of those reviews here, the reader did not get past the 1st section of the book, well you all missed an absolute treat.













