Book #32
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited
composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a
high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity
publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery
server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the
nightfall of science and civilisation. The narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.
I opened
this book knowing I was going to love it. I just knew in my heart of hearts it
was going to be nothing but wonderful because all I had heard were stunning
adulations over Mitchell's work. Of course I was expecting to join this mob of
applauding fans with praise-filled reviews and joyous cheer of my own.
Unfortunately Mitchell very quickly burst this little bubble for me, brought me
back to the ground with a bump, and taught me an almighty lesson I should've
learned from Fifty Shades of Grey: just because everyone else likes it
doesn't mean you will too.
The idea
here is that Mitchell weaves six different short stories into each other,
becoming the master of space and time, and interlinking each one to teach us
lessons in reincarnation, the butterfly effect, and all sorts of nonsense like
that. The premise is wonderful, very exciting, and somewhat new to me. The
problem is that each of the six stories are incredibly weak and mediocre.
After we
go through all six charades (I could go into detail, but as soon as this book
removes itself from the forefront of my mind, the better), we are treated to
them all again in reverse order. This is because David Mitchell is most
likely a misanthropic bastard and would like us all to suffer his mundane
characters all over again. I had hoped a good number of them would meet an
untimely and grotesque demise, but I was disappointed. They were drab. I didn't
care for any of them; anything that troubled them or possibly contributed to
their misery didn't coax one tiny little feeling inside me. I cared not. Sonmi
was the only one I was remotely interested in, and this faded away quickly into
her second narrative. Mitchell finishes off the novel with an incredibly trite
comment about us all being mere drops in the ocean of life, or something as equally
fluffy and pretentious which somehow offended my intellect.
Mitchell's
attempt to compose the novel in six different writing styles worked to an
extent, and certainly interested me at the outset. I liked the differing ways
in which voices were coming across, whether it was diary, letter, interview, or
otherwise. Going through this again, backwards and unexpectedly, however,
reminded me of an awful rollercoaster ride you are desperate to disembark.
I
originally felt stupid for not understanding the hype behind this novel. It is
certainly imaginative, challenging, and quite fresh. However, the stories were
awful, the characters didn't link very well (a casual mention of something in
the previous ordeal section just didn't seem sufficient),
and by the time we were on our reverse journey through time and space, I had
forgotten everything that had happened the first time around! All the nuances,
sub-characters and plot twists meant nothing to me because it had (very dully)
happened pages and pages ago. This quite obviously gets worse as you near the
end of the novel; the more you delve into the novel, the more unimpressed you
become.
This work
of Mitchell's is certainly trendy and certainly clever, and I
imagine that's the kind of thing people may go for. However, what I tend to go
for in a book is something worthwhile and compelling and this
simply did not fit the criteria. It was form over substance, and it just didn't
work for me.