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A review by jiibii
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
5.0
"Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool.
What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."
'Book' is too small a work to describe what this is; to have and to be able to read literature that transcends page and mind and soul and heart in this particular manner, it forces me to say it makes me happy to be alive. There is so much spinning through my head at this moment. Everything that this book tackles, it tackles to near-perfection, and in a gargantuan, epic and legendary attempt at truth and at humanity such as this, much could have gone wrong. Yet nothing did.
It unmakes, unweaves, and then proceeds to piece together the reader in the most devastatingly beautiful way. The journey that constitutes this book, it's hard to describe and to interiorize. But I have to try.
"As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself into the thorny swamp of dissent."
Much like everyone else who has experienced this book, I can't help but praise and reiterate the sheer genius that Mitchell has achieved in creating these 6, completely unique and captivatingly singular set of characters, writing them in a way and giving them a true and (un)divided voice, placing them in equally heart-wrenching situations, crafting 6 separate story arches that make your whole being ache for each one, and consequently ache for them as a whole... make no mistake, there are six books, by six different people and about six contrasting characters, managing to encapsulate 6 distinct genres inside the pages of this masterful tome. It is hard for any reader to grasp that this was penned by one person when there are 6 singular voices screaming raw, begging to be heard, to tell their story which is different but is one and the same, from deep within these pages.
"... & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!
Yet what are oceans if not a multitude of drops?"
The message, the emotional residue of each story and of the book, is so powerful it truly does make you sit back and reflect on the journey that you have just taken, and how you can make this residue something you can live with and use to make our reality a slightly better one.
It is beyond mesmerizing to follow the flow of these narratives and to see them blend so beautifully, so seamlessly, into each other, and it is equally breathtaking the way that he writes, in astounding prose and in carefully blissful unraveling, that which has been uttered since time immemorial:
History is circular. What has come, what is here, what is now, has been before and will be again. For eternity and all that lays after.
"You would think a place the size of England could easily hold all the happenings of a humble lifetime (...) - but no, we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks, like figure skaters."
The way he decided to explore themes that have been so beat and to bring them up repeatedly throughout the book, one would think it would be dragging, that it would get to a point where it'd be exhausting, to read about humanity and to have your own reality stare you back in the face like that. But no. I truly believe that at the end of all this, what really did upholster this book in my mind, was the way [a:David Mitchell|6538289|David Mitchell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409248688p2/6538289.jpg] has managed to throw this epic snowball of all that makes us human, the good and the bad, and has given us a silver lining. For what is more comforting than thinking that all your actions, everything you do, has been caused by a pebble, and in its turn causes an infinite ripple, something invisible and unfelt, but something there nonetheless; something real, placed into existence and upon the ocean of time and space by none other than you.
You.
I can say, and carry each word with the most utmost, sincerest meaning, that this book has changed my life.
"We are only what we know, and I wished to be more than I was, sorely."
What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."
'Book' is too small a work to describe what this is; to have and to be able to read literature that transcends page and mind and soul and heart in this particular manner, it forces me to say it makes me happy to be alive. There is so much spinning through my head at this moment. Everything that this book tackles, it tackles to near-perfection, and in a gargantuan, epic and legendary attempt at truth and at humanity such as this, much could have gone wrong. Yet nothing did.
It unmakes, unweaves, and then proceeds to piece together the reader in the most devastatingly beautiful way. The journey that constitutes this book, it's hard to describe and to interiorize. But I have to try.
"As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself into the thorny swamp of dissent."
Much like everyone else who has experienced this book, I can't help but praise and reiterate the sheer genius that Mitchell has achieved in creating these 6, completely unique and captivatingly singular set of characters, writing them in a way and giving them a true and (un)divided voice, placing them in equally heart-wrenching situations, crafting 6 separate story arches that make your whole being ache for each one, and consequently ache for them as a whole... make no mistake, there are six books, by six different people and about six contrasting characters, managing to encapsulate 6 distinct genres inside the pages of this masterful tome. It is hard for any reader to grasp that this was penned by one person when there are 6 singular voices screaming raw, begging to be heard, to tell their story which is different but is one and the same, from deep within these pages.
"... & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!
Yet what are oceans if not a multitude of drops?"
The message, the emotional residue of each story and of the book, is so powerful it truly does make you sit back and reflect on the journey that you have just taken, and how you can make this residue something you can live with and use to make our reality a slightly better one.
It is beyond mesmerizing to follow the flow of these narratives and to see them blend so beautifully, so seamlessly, into each other, and it is equally breathtaking the way that he writes, in astounding prose and in carefully blissful unraveling, that which has been uttered since time immemorial:
History is circular. What has come, what is here, what is now, has been before and will be again. For eternity and all that lays after.
"You would think a place the size of England could easily hold all the happenings of a humble lifetime (...) - but no, we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks, like figure skaters."
The way he decided to explore themes that have been so beat and to bring them up repeatedly throughout the book, one would think it would be dragging, that it would get to a point where it'd be exhausting, to read about humanity and to have your own reality stare you back in the face like that. But no. I truly believe that at the end of all this, what really did upholster this book in my mind, was the way [a:David Mitchell|6538289|David Mitchell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409248688p2/6538289.jpg] has managed to throw this epic snowball of all that makes us human, the good and the bad, and has given us a silver lining. For what is more comforting than thinking that all your actions, everything you do, has been caused by a pebble, and in its turn causes an infinite ripple, something invisible and unfelt, but something there nonetheless; something real, placed into existence and upon the ocean of time and space by none other than you.
You.
I can say, and carry each word with the most utmost, sincerest meaning, that this book has changed my life.
"We are only what we know, and I wished to be more than I was, sorely."