Maciek's Reviews > Cloud Atlas

Hey readers...



Look at the book you're reading...



...now back to me.



Now back at the book you're reading...



...now back at me.



Sadly, that book was (probably) not written by me. But if you'd check out my book, Cloud Atlas, you'd know that I could have written it if I just wanted to. Look back at the book...



...and now back up. Who's that?



That's me, the author of Cloud Atlas, which is the book you could have been reading. What's in your hand?



It's Cloud Atlas, which is a historical novel about a pacific voyage all the way back in the 1800's. Back at me.



Now back at Cloud Atlas. Look, it's now a thriller.



And look again. Cloud Atlas is now science fiction.



Anything is possible when a book contains several stories inside...



...and I am the author.



Cloud Atlas is arguably David Mitchell's (all right, I'll stop pretending - that's him in the pictures) most famous novel - and if it isn't, it certailnly will be after the Wachowskis will turn it into a big budged movie - the trailer is not that bad looking. The novel itself is critically acclaimed - it won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and even nominated for two of the prestigious awards given to works of science fiction - the Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke award.

So what should we, the readers, make of Cloud Atlas? By now, probably everyone interested in reading it has heard that it's composed of six different storylines, all of which interact with each other in some way. The single most impressive thing about the novel is the fact that the author adapts a unique narrative voice for each of these sections, making Cloud Atlas a feat of literary ventriloquism. The six storylines are also different in structure, setting and timelines.

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing opens the novel: set around 1850, the journal is a first person account of a south Pacific journey of the naive Adam Ewing, who finds himself ashore on the Chattam Islands near New Zealand. He falls sick, and seeks help from a suspicious doctor who looks at his money with hungry eyes, and also learns a bit of the native history: the enslavement of the Moriori by the Maori.

Letters from Zedelghem is the next sequence, and as the title suggests it's epistolary. The titular letters are written by Robert Frobisher to Rufus Sixmith. Frobisher is a completely broke English musician who buys his daily bread by being a hired hand for a Belgian composer - Ayrs. Despite the implications that Sixmith is his lover, Frobisher starts an affair with Ayr's wife and it does not help that Ayrs also has a young daughter.

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery is the next section which tells the tale of Louisa Rey, a journalist who follows the lead that some nuclear plants are unsafe and can blow up the world: of course there are people who do not wish for this information to be made public. Dressed up as a thriller, it is definitely the most fast paced section of the novel and does a convincig job at passing as a grocery store rack paperback novel.

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish is probably my favorite section: 65 year old Timothy Cavendish is a vanity publisher who gets himself into trouble with one of his clients (who happens to be a gangster) and has to lay low for a while; His brother arranges a safe place for him to go to. Only when he arrives he discovers that the hideaway is a nursing home; Cavendish is an extremely likeable old codger and lots of hilarity ensues as he attempts to break free. It gets downhill from here.

An Orison of Sonmi~451 is the least inspired section: a derivative dystopian fare, totally by the book. Overused dystopian tropes abound: Far future, immensely opressive totalitarian society, corporate overlords, genetically engingered slaves (cannibalism!), neologisms and simple spelling changes such as "xcitement, xpendable, xtra". etc. To top the cake it is set in futuristic Korea, complete with "the Beloved Chairman" who is in control of All Things. Not very, um, subtle, you know.

Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After or Trainspotting in Space continues with the science fiction theme, and is set in post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Humanity has been almost completely wiped out during "The Fall". Zachry, the protagonist, is an old man recounting his teenage years, when he met Meronym, a member of a former advanced civilization. The section overuses apostrophes to an almost ridiculous extent, making me regret ever complaining about the simplicity of spelling changes in the Somni section. The style hangs over the content unmercifully, like a sharp sword, ready to drop at any moment to cut your reading enjoyment - and does exactly that, all the time.

After Slosha we return to the preceding stories yet again, this time in the reverse order, going back in time: Beginning with futuristic tale of Somni and ending with the concluding entries of the journal of Adam Ewing, in the 1850's.

So what is the big deal? The structure. On the back cover is Michael Chabon's appraisal of the novel as "series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book" and as the Wachowski's boldly emphasize in all caps in the trailer for the upcoming film, "EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED". However, I found these connections to be sketchy at best: For example, Ewing's journal is conveniently found by Frobisher at a bookshelf of his Belgian employer; Rufus Sixmith, the addressee of Frobisher's letters just happens to be a whistleblower collaborating with Louisa Rey; Louisa Rey's story is a manuscript that Cavendish is offered for publication; Cavendish's goofy adventure is a Disney romp watched by Somni in the far future, and Somni herself is a goddess worshipped by Zachry, who knows her story from a futuristic recording device. There are further attempts to stitch these stories together - a recurring birthmark, one character seemingly remembering a piece of music from another time, the recurrence of the number six - six stories, a character named...Sixmith who is...66 years old, etc. If the "nested dolls" analogy passed you by, the author has Isaac Sachs, an engineer (how appropriate!) explain the magic:

"“One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each ‘shell’ (the present) encased inside a nest of ‘shells’ (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of ‘now’ likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.”"

But that is not all. Frobisher's musical masterpiece to be is called The Cloud Atlas Sextet, which he describes as:

"a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, 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."

...which is obviously how Cloud Atlas, the novel, is structured. It seems to me as if the author did not trust his readers and had to spell out his game in fear of being misunderstood, or worse: the trick going unnoticed. He also seems to see critics coming, and in the next sentence Frobisher thinks about his work: "Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.”" The concept is laid out for the reader in its entirety at one moment: (view spoiler)[when the author namecalls the reincarnation, having Timothy Cavendish discount the notion of Louisa Rey being Robert Frobisher reincarnated - he has the same birthmark as them both. (hide spoiler)]. Sometimes it's done in an almost humorous way: Timothy Cavendish mutters that "Soylent Green is people", and that some geeks must be "Cloning humans for shady Koreans" - which is exactly what happens in the Somni section.

Revolutionary or Gimmicky? For this jury Cloud Atlas does not have what it takes to be revolutionary, meaning something...well, revolutionary. The structure of the novel appears to be complex at the first glance, but during actual reading shows itself as not overly complex, and the author makes sure that the reader will understand it. The stories themselves are not strong enough to stand on their own: the Louisa Rey mystery is intentionally bland, but the Orison of Somni 451 is formulaic to the bone, where all characters are reduced to familiar stereotypes: The tyranical Big Brother regime and the opressed sentient beings who should not be capable of complex thought but are, which dates back to Yevgeny Zamyatin's brillian novel We, which has been written in...1921, going through more famous examples - Brave New World, 1984, movies such as the original Planet of the Apes, THX1138, etc etc etc. To give the author credit the dystopian formula has been firmly estabilished (and exploited - currently especially on the young adult market) and it's quite difficult (if not downright impossible) to come up with any innovations: especially if there's a set limit on the lenght of the piece which hardly allows for any worldbuilding, forcing the author to work with the barest minimum.

The recurring theme ofCloud Atlas is enslavement and exploitation of human beings. Ewing is exposed to enslavement of one tribe by another and is forced to decide the fate of a person; penniless Frobisher is forced to leave England for Belgium, where he is drawn into a net cast by an aging composer, who wants to exploit his talent; Louisa Rey is fighting the capitalist ubermench who do not care about the dangers of a nuclear reactor. Tinmothy Cavendish has to escape from dangerous people and literally becomes enslaved in a home for the elderly; Sonmi is a genetically enginereed fabricant who was made to be used. Throughout the ages, the weaker are controlled, abused and exploited by the stronger, who want even more riches and strenght.

is it a new topic? No. Does Cloud Atlas offer a new look at it? alas, the answer also has to be no. The book opposes the notion of survival of the fittest, where "the weak are the meat that the strong eat" - and this is obviously wrong. But in the year 2004 (when it was published) did we not know that already? The dangers of capitalism and the money-oriented western civilization, its contemporary face being the Louisa Rey sections and the gloomy vision of the future shown in the Orison of Somni; the post-colonial white guilt for which the vessel is the character of Adam Ewing. Adam Ewing seems to exist to only espouse this notion; after being rescued by a Noble Savage he is told about the bloodthirst of the White Race by the Doctor (who is the Evil character since this is how he was estabilished to be). The morality play hits home and Ewing decides that the way the world is is Wrong and there is worth in striving for a seemingly impossible Change where everyone is Free. This storyline is not bad by default, but it is hardly original and there is hardly any place for ambiguity; I was surprised at the comparisons with Benito Cereno, which is probably my favorite work by Melville (along with the brilliant Bartleby, the Scrivener - which is also about individualism and freedom, but in a completely different manner). The genius of Melville's work lies in its ambiguity: it has been praised and criticized because of it, as various readers read it either as a racist work in support of slavery, while other readers read it as an anti-slavery text in support of abolition. There is little if any of this in Adam Ewing's journal; of course it's wrong to own another human being as property, and most of the humanity came to agree on this...after we stole land from one another and replaced their people with ours, colonized and governed them against their will and exploited them in slave labor. Melville's work was written in 1856, when abolition was a controversial (and dangerous) issue; even though Adam Ewing's journal is set in that time period, we can't forget that it was created in the 2000's. There is not enough originality or exceptionality to it, and solely by attempting to stress the human freedom it borders dangerously on the banal repetition of something done earlier and better.

The author is at his best in the narratives of Frobisher and Cavendish, where he handles two drastically different characters with skill and verve. Both are Englishmen, though of different times and of different age and profession: Frobisher is young, cynical, cunning, brash and unapologetic; Cavendish is elderly, sheepish, slow and silly. It is in these two narratives where the author's talent really shines; he writes with panache and flamboyance, and his whimsical humor is contrasted with rawness and emotion. Frobisher's egoism and frustration are off-putting, and yet the reader cannot help but feel some sympathy for his character and wish him good in creating the work of his life; Cavendish's geriatric adventure is surprisingly rollicking and full of charm. It is their stories which work the best in this book, and are the most affecting and memorable.

On the whole, Cloud Atlas reads more as an exercise in trying to write stories in different genres and styles, and then weaving them together; ultimately, it does not really work. The majority of the stories are not strong enough to stand on their own, and there is not enough to bind them together; even the two stories I enjoyed suffer from being just a part of the whole which doesn't really work. It lacks the profundity and depth it needs to be an important work; a more vicious critic would say that the author arranged his stories like matryoshkas to hide his inability to offer meaningful and perceptive insights into the human nature. I doubt that Cloud Atlas is such a case, and because of this I can't wish it would have been all that it was said to be, profound and meaningful, offering a fresh approach to the subject which is so important. But what can you say about things on which so many said so much over the centuries? Like clouds, Cloud Atlas eventually disperses, leaving in memory snapshots of its elements, and not the whole.