A review by jencunn2024
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

4.0

A lengthy and beautifully written piece about a whole lot of nonsense and love for the earth and each other. At first when you start, you wonder, “What in the world am I reading?” The book is structured so that each chapter and part covers a little bit of five different lives in different timelines. As it goes on, you begin to see how those stories and characters develop and how the intricately woven threads between them are reveled. This was a monstrous literary undertaking and was beautifully created, assembled and written by Anthony Doerr. It’s a bit kooky but is I really loved the prose. I think most people will relate to one particular story and/or character or maybe two out of the bunch but I think that is part of the author’s ingenuity. The point is to recognize our connections across time and to try and understand and even empathize with strangers now and other eras, to feel and learn what they learned and to pass what we’ve learned on to future generations. My favorite character was Konstance, the little girl in the future outsmarting all of her elders and artificial intelligence alike. She begins to study the past earth she’s never know and makes discoveries through the library and Cloud Cuckoo Land, an ancient novel within a novel rediscovered and translate that serves as the main linkage between Doerr’s stories. I also adored Aethon within the novel who is considered the fool, made me repeatedly laugh out loud, and is the original character seeking the actual Cloud Cuckoo Land, a phrase I immediately grasped by title but had never previously known it to have a real literary basis. Doerr was extremely creative to borrow the concept and create this work based on the whole premise of it being an ancient novel completely made up for this book. I personally ended up liking this book a lot, but will sparingly recommend it, mainly because it is extremely long and not very exciting. But I would recommend under any of these circumstances: if you enjoy beautiful prose; unique storytelling and usage of literary devices; philosophical commentary on society, humanism, and nature; split timelines; or reading about human connections through place, time, and space. This book left me feeling a sense of hope and promise for the future.