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buddhafish 's review for:
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
107th book of 2021.
1.5. Firstly I'd like to say that despite not enjoying this novel, it's a bold and noble attempt by Mitchell and I'm glad others (many others) clearly enjoyed it. I often joke that no "interesting" literature comes out of England and this is certainly (or at least I hoped) interesting. I think most people know the plot or at least the idea that the novel is comprised of 6 separate parts in multiple timelines, some in the future, even, and they all somehow connect to one another. There are ideas of reincarnation and fate, souls, etc., all of which are ideas I love myself, particularly being interested in Buddhism. I don't want to rant for too long so all I'll say is that this novel was not how I imagined it. The writing was fairly weak in my opinion and often felt closer to a YA novel than literary fiction. After hearing that this was massively influenced by Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveller (which I read for the second time this year) I thought I would love it even more than I first thought. People apparently struggle with the first part which is written in a sort of Herman Melville like style, but I actually enjoyed the 1st and 2nd parts the most. The rest were horrible. Part 3 about Timothy Cavendish was the worst, perhaps. I skimmed parts of parts 5 and 6 because I thought they were so dull. The idea of having a different style per chapter was also interesting to me, and I imagined it like Ulysses, but again it's not at all. The styles are hardly styles, but different (mostly annoying) narrative voices. Part 6 is just decimated with apostrophes to make some strange dystopian-future dialect, but it didn't come across as skilful, only unnecessarily difficult. So none of the stories after the 2nd part interested me. Of course once you get to 6, the structure inverts itself and you read all the parts again but in a mirrored order. Finishing the novel with my favourite two chapters was a saving grace. The faux-Buddhist thing going on was completely underdeveloped; I'm not going to say Mitchell isn't a smart guy but I was expecting the connections to be profound, they're not: most of the connections between characters are fairly bland, diaries and films and other forms of media written or made in some parts are simply later found in different parts. There's something to do with a birthmark again that connects the characters and brings in the idea of the soul/reincarnation, but again that is mostly mentioned and then forgotten about. Had the writing blown me away this might have got 3 stars, but as that was as disappointing as the plot, I had no choice but to rate it fairly (by my own ratings) with a 1-star. Like I said though, I respect Mitchell for what he attempted to do, even if he failed in my opinion. Closing the back cover of this novel was a huge relief and sadly I had hoped to finish it yesterday but we had our friends over from France and I was downstairs drinking Norwegian spirits that my parents brought back from the country two years ago with B. (English but raised in France) and her French boyfriend till 2.30am. Not liking this book puts me in a tiny minority but B.'s mother saw I was reading it and said she had read it years ago and thought it was awful. Most of the reviews for this book remain stellar, though I cannot fathom why myself.
1.5. Firstly I'd like to say that despite not enjoying this novel, it's a bold and noble attempt by Mitchell and I'm glad others (many others) clearly enjoyed it. I often joke that no "interesting" literature comes out of England and this is certainly (or at least I hoped) interesting. I think most people know the plot or at least the idea that the novel is comprised of 6 separate parts in multiple timelines, some in the future, even, and they all somehow connect to one another. There are ideas of reincarnation and fate, souls, etc., all of which are ideas I love myself, particularly being interested in Buddhism. I don't want to rant for too long so all I'll say is that this novel was not how I imagined it. The writing was fairly weak in my opinion and often felt closer to a YA novel than literary fiction. After hearing that this was massively influenced by Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveller (which I read for the second time this year) I thought I would love it even more than I first thought. People apparently struggle with the first part which is written in a sort of Herman Melville like style, but I actually enjoyed the 1st and 2nd parts the most. The rest were horrible. Part 3 about Timothy Cavendish was the worst, perhaps. I skimmed parts of parts 5 and 6 because I thought they were so dull. The idea of having a different style per chapter was also interesting to me, and I imagined it like Ulysses, but again it's not at all. The styles are hardly styles, but different (mostly annoying) narrative voices. Part 6 is just decimated with apostrophes to make some strange dystopian-future dialect, but it didn't come across as skilful, only unnecessarily difficult. So none of the stories after the 2nd part interested me. Of course once you get to 6, the structure inverts itself and you read all the parts again but in a mirrored order. Finishing the novel with my favourite two chapters was a saving grace. The faux-Buddhist thing going on was completely underdeveloped; I'm not going to say Mitchell isn't a smart guy but I was expecting the connections to be profound, they're not: most of the connections between characters are fairly bland, diaries and films and other forms of media written or made in some parts are simply later found in different parts. There's something to do with a birthmark again that connects the characters and brings in the idea of the soul/reincarnation, but again that is mostly mentioned and then forgotten about. Had the writing blown me away this might have got 3 stars, but as that was as disappointing as the plot, I had no choice but to rate it fairly (by my own ratings) with a 1-star. Like I said though, I respect Mitchell for what he attempted to do, even if he failed in my opinion. Closing the back cover of this novel was a huge relief and sadly I had hoped to finish it yesterday but we had our friends over from France and I was downstairs drinking Norwegian spirits that my parents brought back from the country two years ago with B. (English but raised in France) and her French boyfriend till 2.30am. Not liking this book puts me in a tiny minority but B.'s mother saw I was reading it and said she had read it years ago and thought it was awful. Most of the reviews for this book remain stellar, though I cannot fathom why myself.