David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas

Hi

My first review of 2016 will be about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
This was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
My copy has 530 pages and I got it from Bol.

“The narrators hear their echoes in history and change their destinies in ways great and small, in a study of humanity's dangerous will to power. A reluctant voyager crosses the Pacific in 1850. A disinherited composer gatecrashes in between-wars Belgium. A vanity publisher flees gangland creditors. Others are a journalist in Governor Reagan’s California, and genetically-modified dinery server on death-row. Finally, a young Pacific Islander witnesses the nightfall of science and civilization.”

The book can’t be put into one specific genre or time period and I like that a lot. The narrative is different for every story too; Mitchell uses an interview and diary entries for example.
Every story could be written be a different author because they are all so different; quite an accomplishment!

It started out with two quite boring and slow stories. The ones after those got better but the middle story is just awful and gimmicky.
I didn’t care for most of the characters.
The story is not even based on that clever an idea because I’ve read a few books like this before (to be honest the ‘rebirth’ thing is new to me but the whole interwoven stories through time and space is definitely not new). So in my opinion, the praise for the book being clever and new and different is very much misplaced.

There is one thing I want to take away with me from this book; a beautiful quote. “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

2.5 STARS

Have you read this book? If so, how did you like it?

Happy reading.
Helena

A book, homemade coconut-chocolate and a big cup of tea!