Cloud Atlas: A Novel

David Mitchell

Dec 2008 · Sold by Random House

About this ebook

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks | Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

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.

Ratings and reviews

A very unique book with multiple writing styles, I really like the different settings but I feel like the characters and plot could have been better handled and expanded upon, it feels like a book more about it's style than it's substance, though it's substance isn't necessarily bad either.

At the end, I'm still sorting out what I think of this book. In one sense, I feel let down by it. Common elements and images appeared in each story that built suspense throughout the novel, which gave me the expectation that as the book came to its conclusion something would fall like a lynchpin and completely alter the significance and context of each of the stories, uniting them into a coherent whole. This was not to be. Each story was it's own, with only vague connections to the other stories. The relationship between the stories enriched them somewhat, but less than I had hoped. I found myself devouring the book just to get to the end and find out why these stories mattered so much to each other and when I got there, I didn't find it. The moral--the common thread--seems little more than a platitude, and for that I'm disappointed. Finally, the characters in one story seemed contrived and shallow to me, specifically, the female reporter and her boss were, to me, caricatures of Lois Lane and Perry White, and I found myself distracted from the story by the cliched dialogue. In another substory, I think setting it in Korea made an interesting story out of what would otherwise have been yet another dystopian cliche, and I don't know whether to admire the choice of setting or condemn that it may otherwise have been unimaginative. BUT. . . Cloud Atlas still gets 3 stars from me. I didn't love it, but it had many redeeming features. First and foremost, the mood of the book was achieved remarkably, and I was particularly impressed at how the author selected such different writing styles to achieve different tone and mood from one story to the next. The prose, tempo, and flow of the writing was fantastic. The book really pulled me into the characters' worlds (except for the noted exceptions), and I couldn't set it down. I enjoyed the read, and I enjoyed how engaging the book was, but some of it had a bit of a pulpy and sentimental cast, and after I finished, I had a feeling like I'd been reading too much fiction and needed to dig into something more significant.

The series of vignettes make for an enjoyable read, although I found myself frustrated by the time the 6th story began. The technique bore fruit in the last 1/2 of the novel, where character references to the effects of the present on the future become obviously prophetic. The connections between the characters seemed a little forced at times (the recurring "comet-shaped birthmark) and the Orison-451 story was a far too familiar science fiction that borders on cliche. It was worth the read - and the frustration of restarting a story for the 6th time at midpoint is rewarded through the last 1/2 as a special insight for the reader into the actual (rather than potential) effects of each characters actions. I wish there was a more direct correlation, but an interesting technique nonetheless.

About the author

David Mitchell is the award-winning and bestselling author of The Bone Clocks, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, and Ghostwritten. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2007. With KA Yoshida, Mitchell translated from the Japanese the internationally bestselling memoir The Reason I Jump. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.