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A review by lokroma
Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjis
4.0
"...the message they [clouds] offer: all structures are collapsible. Just look at their own existence, condemned to rootlessness and fragmentation. Each cloud faces death through loss of form, drifting towards its death, some faster than others, destined to self-destruct before it reaches the other end of the horizon."
In this mesmerizing dreamscape, metaphorical clouds illuminate and obscure. They stand for humans and they stand for history. Tatiana is an expat Mexican who comes to Berlin to escape her oppressive family. She works as a transcriber for a historian and hooks up with an astronomer as she wanders by foot and on tram through every corner of a city that constantly struggles with its past. In the book's alarming climax, Tatiana faces the cruelty of history; not only German history, but all human history. She is confused and disoriented, but is finally able to return to Mexico aware that the unpredictablities of the human imagination are universal.
In this mesmerizing dreamscape, metaphorical clouds illuminate and obscure. They stand for humans and they stand for history. Tatiana is an expat Mexican who comes to Berlin to escape her oppressive family. She works as a transcriber for a historian and hooks up with an astronomer as she wanders by foot and on tram through every corner of a city that constantly struggles with its past. In the book's alarming climax, Tatiana faces the cruelty of history; not only German history, but all human history. She is confused and disoriented, but is finally able to return to Mexico aware that the unpredictablities of the human imagination are universal.