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A review by sufyazi
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
5.0
I have picked up this book thrice, and the first 2 times I failed to read past The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, the first story within this beautiful onion of multi-yarns. This is an issue I have never faced before so this has surprised me and has somehow hurt my ego (a bit).
Why? Here's why. If you are an ESL speaker, like me, this could be a difficult read, particularly the opening story (The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing) because of the register of English used, which is not modern and peppered with various nautical terms, and the last story in the book (Sloosha's Crossin') because of Mitchell's writing it in a unique, post-apocalyptic English pidgin.
Now that that's out of the way, the whole experience of this book surpassed my expectations.
This novel is a brilliant saga of souls transcending time, lives and bodies. The book started off with a first-person account of an American travelling in a ship around 1800's during which human slavery was alive and breathing. This took the form of a journal. The second story continues with a series of letters addressed to a man named Rufus Sixsmith, from a prodigious, ostensibly bisexual musician, recounting his life being an amanuensis to a bedridden famous composer, and this took place a century after the first story (1930's). Then the novel picks up itself into the third story, and then fourth, and fifth and lastly the sixth.
I wouldn't waste time detailing the other stories (this isn't going to be a synopsis), but I would like to point out the interesting way Mitchell managed to segue into each of these stories into one long yarn that is exceptionally captivating, and unbroken, literally and figuratively. Each story is divided into two parts, with the first part ending on a climactic tone, before being cut off in an abrupt fashion but seamlessly segued into the second story, and so on and so forth, becoming one complete tale with stories nested within each other. This happens throughout the novel, until we reach the middle of the book where the final sixth story appears, before we pick up the part 2 of the fifth story, going down to the part 2 of the fourth story, and this goes on till we end up with the part 2 of the first story, The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. This nested structure isn't inherently novel but Mitchell found the sweet spot to make these yarns blended together into one coherent tale.
The theme of reincarnation is implicit in this novel. Cloud Atlas was explained as being the nature of the characters' souls in this book, altogether formless but with ever-changing form (never mind how paradoxical that may sound) like clouds, mapping out an atlas of lives across generations, interweaving into one big picture (or story). The stories, each in itself, is standalone and almost completely independent in terms of plot, but despite of this, the constant theme throughout the novel - being ardent against a powerful system/regime/conspiracy - is what coheres the main characters in each tale, and somewhat becomes the thing that hints on them being derived from the same reincarnated soul. Mitchell also marked these characters with an innocent comet-like birthmark to drive this point home.
This is not the best review I could churn out and there are many more points that I could expound on, but I would end this here with one note; I love how Mitchell was able to give the main characters in different stories with distinct characterisation and voice, reflected through the way he wrote the stories. I find this an impressive mastery of voicing through a skilful use of linguistics. For example, one main character in one of the stories, Timothy Cavendish, has an idiolectal proclivity to use 'ruddy' in place of 'bloody', the language in the fifth story's universe subtly substituted all instances of ex- into x ('explain' becomes 'xplain') to reflect the futuristic setting, and the sixth tale was delivered in a cleverly-mutated pidgin English to reflect a far post-apocalyptic society, so much so that readers could still understand the story after a few pages in despite the linguistic mutation just by simple linguistic deduction and context. As a linguistic enthusiast, this has been a sumptuous mental treat aside from the stories in the novel.
That having said, I would definitely recommend this book if you are not looking for a quick read, if you love taking your time on a book, or if you are interested in the linguistic details this book carries in it. 10/10 would read again if I could start over with an erased memory.
Why? Here's why. If you are an ESL speaker, like me, this could be a difficult read, particularly the opening story (The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing) because of the register of English used, which is not modern and peppered with various nautical terms, and the last story in the book (Sloosha's Crossin') because of Mitchell's writing it in a unique, post-apocalyptic English pidgin.
Now that that's out of the way, the whole experience of this book surpassed my expectations.
This novel is a brilliant saga of souls transcending time, lives and bodies. The book started off with a first-person account of an American travelling in a ship around 1800's during which human slavery was alive and breathing. This took the form of a journal. The second story continues with a series of letters addressed to a man named Rufus Sixsmith, from a prodigious, ostensibly bisexual musician, recounting his life being an amanuensis to a bedridden famous composer, and this took place a century after the first story (1930's). Then the novel picks up itself into the third story, and then fourth, and fifth and lastly the sixth.
I wouldn't waste time detailing the other stories (this isn't going to be a synopsis), but I would like to point out the interesting way Mitchell managed to segue into each of these stories into one long yarn that is exceptionally captivating, and unbroken, literally and figuratively. Each story is divided into two parts, with the first part ending on a climactic tone, before being cut off in an abrupt fashion but seamlessly segued into the second story, and so on and so forth, becoming one complete tale with stories nested within each other. This happens throughout the novel, until we reach the middle of the book where the final sixth story appears, before we pick up the part 2 of the fifth story, going down to the part 2 of the fourth story, and this goes on till we end up with the part 2 of the first story, The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. This nested structure isn't inherently novel but Mitchell found the sweet spot to make these yarns blended together into one coherent tale.
The theme of reincarnation is implicit in this novel. Cloud Atlas was explained as being the nature of the characters' souls in this book, altogether formless but with ever-changing form (never mind how paradoxical that may sound) like clouds, mapping out an atlas of lives across generations, interweaving into one big picture (or story). The stories, each in itself, is standalone and almost completely independent in terms of plot, but despite of this, the constant theme throughout the novel - being ardent against a powerful system/regime/conspiracy - is what coheres the main characters in each tale, and somewhat becomes the thing that hints on them being derived from the same reincarnated soul. Mitchell also marked these characters with an innocent comet-like birthmark to drive this point home.
This is not the best review I could churn out and there are many more points that I could expound on, but I would end this here with one note; I love how Mitchell was able to give the main characters in different stories with distinct characterisation and voice, reflected through the way he wrote the stories. I find this an impressive mastery of voicing through a skilful use of linguistics. For example, one main character in one of the stories, Timothy Cavendish, has an idiolectal proclivity to use 'ruddy' in place of 'bloody', the language in the fifth story's universe subtly substituted all instances of ex- into x ('explain' becomes 'xplain') to reflect the futuristic setting, and the sixth tale was delivered in a cleverly-mutated pidgin English to reflect a far post-apocalyptic society, so much so that readers could still understand the story after a few pages in despite the linguistic mutation just by simple linguistic deduction and context. As a linguistic enthusiast, this has been a sumptuous mental treat aside from the stories in the novel.
That having said, I would definitely recommend this book if you are not looking for a quick read, if you love taking your time on a book, or if you are interested in the linguistic details this book carries in it. 10/10 would read again if I could start over with an erased memory.