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Bookish Quotes
"Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are."
Cloud Atlas
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Cloud Atlas
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3 journalers for this copy...
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I bought this at Vancouver International Airport yesterday -- I was excited to find it, since its the odds-on favourite for the 2004 Booker Prize. I'll probably lend it to several friends and family members before passing it along through BookCrossing.David Mitchell was one of Granta’s 2003 Best of Young British Novelists (along with Monica Ali, Zadie Smith, Nicola Barker, Rachel Seiffert and others). His first novel, Ghostwritten, won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second, number9dream, was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker. |
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The structure of Cloud Atlas is described indirectly by the character of Robert Frobisher (see below), a 1930s composer of a musical piece by the same name. Referring to his own piece -- a "sextet for overlapping soloists" -- Frobisher could just as easily be describing the six interlinked novellas that comprise Mitchell's novel: "...each in its own language of key, scale and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished. ..." The six stories told in Cloud Atlas span the period from approximately 1850 through a time hundreds of years in the future. Here's a quick description of the protagonists who make up the "sextet":
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Well, it's certainly one heck of a read. I expected it to be heavy going but everything else in my life went on hold and I wolfed it down in three days. That in itself is a remarkable achievement because the book doesn't immediately shout "mass appeal" - it challenges the reader to hold six very different stories in her/his consciousness and retain emotional commitment to each one, whilst accepting dizzying changes in viewpoint and some very weighty philosophical themes. Any book this clever runs the risk of becoming intoxicated with its own structural brilliance and allowing character and motivation to take second place. Most of the time Mitchell avoids this triumphantly.I'm going to resist the temptation to go on about Easter Eggs, although it does make an interesting intellectual game. And I'll try not to get too involved in postmodernism and the role of the narrator. I have a profound distaste for authors who play those kind of games with the reader - I'm an old fashioned gal who feels cheated when told that I've invested several precious hours of my time in an elaborate con trick (It ruined "Atonement" for me). But (with the exception of one outrageously unnconvincing truth-inversion which rendered a very significant character morally bankrupt for me) I'll add a caveat to this prejudice. Cloud Atlas is a story about stories and their importance to the human race. Whether told around a campfire or recorded on a solar-powered holographic egg, stories define our humanity and separate us from the beasts. They are a definition of civilization, probably the first and last hope of the human race. And, like Yann Martel in "Life of Pi", Mitchell argues convincingly that the veracity of the tale (the "real past" as one perceptive character puts it), is less important than the emotional and spiritual sustenance drawn from the tale's retelling by future generations. Art deals in metaphor and imagery, as does religion. What is religion, anyway, except the conscious choice to regard certain stories as life-changing? Mitchell knows the power of a haunting image, and there are many in this book, reverberating across wildly different times and situations. A ring, for example, can be a wedding ring broken by a friend turned betrayer, it can be an artificial barcode implanted under the skin recording our financial transactions for scrutiny by a corporate ruler, or it can be the simple framing of a receding landscape between two bent human fingers. Or the ancient mythic image of a Hydra resonates so that, whether applied to a clone-factory or a nuclear reactor, it conveys the natural tendency of evil to resurface in a myriad of new guises as soon as one is conquered. It's not a perfect book, by any means. Cloud Atlas reminds me of a Stephen Sondheim show - immensely clever, spiky and worldly-wise until the conclusion of the first act - at which point, as if dismayed by the nihilism of the abyss all this has led us to the brink of, it backs off from complete despair and journeys towards an unconvincing conclusion. Some of the plot denouments are frankly an insult to the reader's intelligence, and I'm surprised this hasn't been commented on more. Maybe Mitchell is trying to be terribly smart and to pastiche the formulaic endings of airport thrillers and Hollywood movies, but I doubt it. I think he's against a deadline and out of his artistic depth, but even to dive in as far as he has and surface with so many pearls is an amazing achievement. Another, less well-known treatment of the reincarnation theme, used across an epic timescale to comment on human history, is Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate history, "The Years of Rice and Salt". KSR, a leading and unfashionably optimistic Buddhist SF writer, takes as his starting point the Black Death virtually wiping out all Caucasian civilization from the earth, and thus leaving the field wide open for Muslim, Eastern and traditional ideologies. I think "Rice and Salt" is a much less successful book but, as the kind of person who spots movie refs in "The Simpsons" I did wonder whether Mitchell might be offering up a subtle tribute to his fellow Pacific Rim philosopher when he mentions an unknown disease wiping out the last remnants of advanced civilisation in his dystopia. It could mean nothing, but the remark that less than one in two hundred victims survive the disease points to odds very similar to KSR's lethal plague on Caucasian society. |
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"Cloud Atlas" has just arrived and I'm so happy for having opportunity to meet this author. Unfortunately he isn't translated yet in Serbian so I guess I'll have to "stretch to the limit" my English now as you (Ruth) said. Uhm...I'm not sure should I be scared already (because I am)? I've read so much about Mitchell here in BC-world and on the internet and he "smells" like quite interesting literary refreshments. Ruth thank you very, very much indeed. And of course thank you for lovely postcard - you should come here on Mediterranean :-)  This is David Mitchell! |
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