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A review by missfantasyfiction
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
1.0
If, like me, you hated Cloud Atlas, supposedly a ‘modern classic’, then that just means you are stupid, you didn’t ‘get’ the ‘inner message’.
Whatever ‘inner message’ Cloud Atlas had, you’re right. I didn’t get it.
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing is a Defoe, Melville-esque adventure story of a British coloniser in New Zealand. Rife with racism, imperialism and anti-semitism.
Letters from Zeldeghem, written in an epistolary form from Robert Frobisher to his lover Sixsmith, was one of the two bearable novellas for me. It’s about a young man who, hard on cash, travels to Belgium to study with a renowned musician and ends up cuckolding him. It’s nothing special, but the absolute hideousness of the rest of the novellas makes this look like a masterpiece.
The First Luisa Rey Mystery is Mitchell’s attempt to delve into the crime genre. It’s a pretty mediocre novella in which Luisa Rey, a young journalist, attempts to infiltrate a nuclear plant where some pretty shady things are going on - you all know the drill.
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish is just a weird, weird story about a man who gets imprisoned in a care home? Yes. I know. It also features a writer quite literally throwing a bad reviewer out of a window.
An Orison of Somni-451 was where everything started to go really, really downhill. I just hate sci-fi. It doesn’t matter how good it is, I will still hate it. Mitchell creates a futuristic world full of robots and AI - again, you know the drill.
And then comes Slooshas Crossin’ and Ev’rythin’ After.
And this is where I just lost it. It’s written in this slang dialect which took me like 10 minutes to decipher a page. If you thought the Somni story was bad… this is worse. Let’s leave it at that.
And now, all that’s left for me to do is try to block out any memory of this book!
Whatever ‘inner message’ Cloud Atlas had, you’re right. I didn’t get it.
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing is a Defoe, Melville-esque adventure story of a British coloniser in New Zealand. Rife with racism, imperialism and anti-semitism.
Letters from Zeldeghem, written in an epistolary form from Robert Frobisher to his lover Sixsmith, was one of the two bearable novellas for me. It’s about a young man who, hard on cash, travels to Belgium to study with a renowned musician and ends up cuckolding him. It’s nothing special, but the absolute hideousness of the rest of the novellas makes this look like a masterpiece.
The First Luisa Rey Mystery is Mitchell’s attempt to delve into the crime genre. It’s a pretty mediocre novella in which Luisa Rey, a young journalist, attempts to infiltrate a nuclear plant where some pretty shady things are going on - you all know the drill.
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish is just a weird, weird story about a man who gets imprisoned in a care home? Yes. I know. It also features a writer quite literally throwing a bad reviewer out of a window.
An Orison of Somni-451 was where everything started to go really, really downhill. I just hate sci-fi. It doesn’t matter how good it is, I will still hate it. Mitchell creates a futuristic world full of robots and AI - again, you know the drill.
And then comes Slooshas Crossin’ and Ev’rythin’ After.
And this is where I just lost it. It’s written in this slang dialect which took me like 10 minutes to decipher a page. If you thought the Somni story was bad… this is worse. Let’s leave it at that.
And now, all that’s left for me to do is try to block out any memory of this book!