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sidharthan 's review for:
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
More like 2.5 stars probably!
* Lots of spoilers interspersed, and I am too lazy to hide each, so spoiler alert! *
There's an interesting central core of an idea here - one soul reincarnating over the ages and through that soul we see humanity's timeline. There are thematic arcs too mostly centred around what 'power' is. But mostly these are just six very different stories that are barely stitched together.
Each of the initial five stories stop in the middle and are continued in reverse order after the complete sixth story. The sudden changes in tone are jarring and disturb the flow of the book - just when you settle in to one character and tone, David Mitchell decides to switch it up. I would say that the book might have worked better if all stories appeared complete, but the one story that did - Sloosha's Crossin' - I found to be rather disappointing so I am not sure how the others would have worked either.
There is a lot of unnecessary "action" that add to the plot but do nothing to the story or to the thematic arc as such. Adam Ewing's journals are, I suppose, a revelation about slavery and the introduction to the tribal people of Maori and Moriari which tie back later to the Kona and Valleymen of Sloosha's Crossin'. But there are a lot of plot points - the "Arsenick" doctor, the sodomy and suicide and so much more that are completely irrelevant. They add to the action of the story and you want to read it to the end but they do not really contribute to the theme. There is a chase of sorts happening in almost each of the stories and they are nail-biting but end up being cheap thrills - they once again do not contribute in anyway to the holistic whole.
The stories also come with a lot of twists that engage the reader - I found the one on Sonmi-451 completely unexpected and I liked how it tied things up. Things seemed very convenient in that one - the presence of the Kona who educated this Somni, the Yoona before that, the very convenient scene on the bridge of a fabricant doll being thrown away. It was nice how Mitchell sort of anticipated these and brought a twist that made sense of these things. Some of the other twists are baffling - the Arsenick doctor from earlier or Meronym actually having an underlying plan. How Avatar-like was Sloosha's Crossin' huh? Just substitute some of the names and you'd have almost the same story! The other stories also have echoes. There is the sort of Cuckoo's nest in Timothy Cavendish - heavily diluted for the sake of comedy. (There is also a cleverly inserted reference to Cuckoo's nest itself which makes me wonder what exactly Mitchell was trying?!). Luisa Rey, the intrepid reporter who takes on a corporation is like Erin Brokovich and the Frobisher story is almost operatic.
There is also some philosophising thrown about. Most of these, instead of being ingrained into the story, are just spouted by one character or the other. They are explanatory pieces that just go to show what the intelligent story writer is doing with the entire novel as such - something I think one could have done without. If there had been more clarity in the idea and execution these explanations could've been skipped. The CEO in the Rey story goes on for a page or two about power and such and you know all capitals that this is the THEME of the story but this point perhaps could have been made subtler?
Overall, I think this is a good book that is corrupted by trying to be too much. I wish the author had had the courage to just stick with and explore things completely instead of being pulled into making the book a page-turning potboiler. If Adam Ewing had been just a lawyer on a voyage discovering slavery and the ills of the spreading Christiandom, or Meronym just a character in a post-apocalyptic world searching for meaning, maybe I would've enjoyed the book more. But the book as it is seems more tailored to be made into a movie (which I am looking forward to see). Or perhaps as the new trend is, a Netflix series would do more justice to its multiple threads.
* Lots of spoilers interspersed, and I am too lazy to hide each, so spoiler alert! *
There's an interesting central core of an idea here - one soul reincarnating over the ages and through that soul we see humanity's timeline. There are thematic arcs too mostly centred around what 'power' is. But mostly these are just six very different stories that are barely stitched together.
Each of the initial five stories stop in the middle and are continued in reverse order after the complete sixth story. The sudden changes in tone are jarring and disturb the flow of the book - just when you settle in to one character and tone, David Mitchell decides to switch it up. I would say that the book might have worked better if all stories appeared complete, but the one story that did - Sloosha's Crossin' - I found to be rather disappointing so I am not sure how the others would have worked either.
There is a lot of unnecessary "action" that add to the plot but do nothing to the story or to the thematic arc as such. Adam Ewing's journals are, I suppose, a revelation about slavery and the introduction to the tribal people of Maori and Moriari which tie back later to the Kona and Valleymen of Sloosha's Crossin'. But there are a lot of plot points - the "Arsenick" doctor, the sodomy and suicide and so much more that are completely irrelevant. They add to the action of the story and you want to read it to the end but they do not really contribute to the theme. There is a chase of sorts happening in almost each of the stories and they are nail-biting but end up being cheap thrills - they once again do not contribute in anyway to the holistic whole.
The stories also come with a lot of twists that engage the reader - I found the one on Sonmi-451 completely unexpected and I liked how it tied things up. Things seemed very convenient in that one - the presence of the Kona who educated this Somni, the Yoona before that, the very convenient scene on the bridge of a fabricant doll being thrown away. It was nice how Mitchell sort of anticipated these and brought a twist that made sense of these things. Some of the other twists are baffling - the Arsenick doctor from earlier or Meronym actually having an underlying plan. How Avatar-like was Sloosha's Crossin' huh? Just substitute some of the names and you'd have almost the same story! The other stories also have echoes. There is the sort of Cuckoo's nest in Timothy Cavendish - heavily diluted for the sake of comedy. (There is also a cleverly inserted reference to Cuckoo's nest itself which makes me wonder what exactly Mitchell was trying?!). Luisa Rey, the intrepid reporter who takes on a corporation is like Erin Brokovich and the Frobisher story is almost operatic.
There is also some philosophising thrown about. Most of these, instead of being ingrained into the story, are just spouted by one character or the other. They are explanatory pieces that just go to show what the intelligent story writer is doing with the entire novel as such - something I think one could have done without. If there had been more clarity in the idea and execution these explanations could've been skipped. The CEO in the Rey story goes on for a page or two about power and such and you know all capitals that this is the THEME of the story but this point perhaps could have been made subtler?
Overall, I think this is a good book that is corrupted by trying to be too much. I wish the author had had the courage to just stick with and explore things completely instead of being pulled into making the book a page-turning potboiler. If Adam Ewing had been just a lawyer on a voyage discovering slavery and the ills of the spreading Christiandom, or Meronym just a character in a post-apocalyptic world searching for meaning, maybe I would've enjoyed the book more. But the book as it is seems more tailored to be made into a movie (which I am looking forward to see). Or perhaps as the new trend is, a Netflix series would do more justice to its multiple threads.