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A review by one_womanarmy
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Overlapping lives. Resplendent meta fiction. Looked up more words reading this than I have since college advanced chemistry.
David Mitchell entices his readers on to a rollercoaster, and at first they wonder if they want to get off. Then - at least in my case - they can't bear the journey to end. Cloud Atlas is powerful and elegant because of Mitchell's understanding of the way we respond to those fundamental and primitive stories we tell about good and evil, love and destruction, beginnings and ends. He isn't afraid to jerk tears or ratchet up suspense - he understands that's what we make stories for.
I found the interweaving stories elegant, true, and arresting. The literary approach chosen by Mitchell may put some readers off as pretentious and unnecessarily verbose, but I found it used as a parallel spiral ladder through the character's Matryoshka-doll logic to be a beautiful meta-tool for underlining the characters' shared morality. From the complex old English of 19th-century colonialist Adam Ewing through to the barely legible pidgin of Pacific Islands' Zachary - who emerges as the central and final atory after civilizations fall post 'corpocracy,' - each advancing character finds and shares the same everlasting echo. Their morals of decency, human compassion, anti-racist and abolitionist philosophy transcend time, space, language, and religion.
I think this is one of the best books I've read in a long time, though partially enjoyment is found in challenge - a Type II fun book if ever there was one.
David Mitchell entices his readers on to a rollercoaster, and at first they wonder if they want to get off. Then - at least in my case - they can't bear the journey to end. Cloud Atlas is powerful and elegant because of Mitchell's understanding of the way we respond to those fundamental and primitive stories we tell about good and evil, love and destruction, beginnings and ends. He isn't afraid to jerk tears or ratchet up suspense - he understands that's what we make stories for.
I found the interweaving stories elegant, true, and arresting. The literary approach chosen by Mitchell may put some readers off as pretentious and unnecessarily verbose, but I found it used as a parallel spiral ladder through the character's Matryoshka-doll logic to be a beautiful meta-tool for underlining the characters' shared morality. From the complex old English of 19th-century colonialist Adam Ewing through to the barely legible pidgin of Pacific Islands' Zachary - who emerges as the central and final atory after civilizations fall post 'corpocracy,' - each advancing character finds and shares the same everlasting echo. Their morals of decency, human compassion, anti-racist and abolitionist philosophy transcend time, space, language, and religion.
I think this is one of the best books I've read in a long time, though partially enjoyment is found in challenge - a Type II fun book if ever there was one.