About this title: As they weave through, reference, and illuminate each other, these lengthy stories comprise a startlingly original novel. They tap into different time periods (from the 19th to the 22nd centuries), locations (the Chatham Islands, London, California, a future dystopia in what was once Korea) and genres (noir, sci-fi, diaries, dialect narrative). ...
read more
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780676974942ISBN:0676974945
Description: Fine. Paperback, Like New, clean, tight, no spine or cover creases. There is a remainder mark on the bottom page edges as well as slight edgewear over all. All orders are shipped by kbooks every business day. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Date Published: 2004-08-17
ISBN-13:9780375507250ISBN:0375507256
Description: Like New. Paperback in excellent condition with very minor shelf wear. Unmarked text. No ownership markings. No spine creases. _ read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Random House Inc, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780375507250ISBN:0375507256
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Wraps; 509 pages; First U.S. paperback printing; Textblock is tight with no internal markings; Fore-edge is rough-trimmed as published; Bright pictorial cover with no tears, no creasing to the spine and modest shelf and edge wear; ......(This novel combines adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character and a taste for scientific speculation. The story begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his ... read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780375507250ISBN:0375507256
Description: Very Good. This book is in very good to fine condition. The binding is tight and pages are clean. It appears to have had little if any use. The cover has bumps and scuffs. It has been corner bumped. There is no creasing on the spine. read more
Edition: First edition.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Random House Trade
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780375507250ISBN:0375507256
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Great Copy. Text is crisp and clean. Binding is tight, has creasing, and wear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 528 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780676974942ISBN:0676974945
Description: Good. Cover has marks, bumping, edgewear, dents, chipping, tears, tape, small piece is torn off and missing at front cover-Marks on edge-Bumped pgs-Cocked-Edgewear tears to few pgs-Dampstains on few pgs-Few marks on pgs. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780375507250ISBN:0375507256
Description: Fine. 5.5 x 8.5 trade paperback book. White and black lettering on the beige and orange spine with a color photo illustrated cover. Brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. 509 pages. Tight binding. Fine condition. read more
"Cloud Atlas unfolded patiently, but with perfect pacing. I found myself becoming increasingly drawn into the many worlds, that are really one world, of the story, until I could think of nothing else but this book. It's been a long time since I read anything so engrossing, and I wish it wasn't over. The theme, or "message", of the book, develops slowly and is not immediately apparent. What at first seem like disconnected and random stories about different characters inhabiting entirely different eras, eventually reveal themselves to be connected in subtle yet essential ways, and these connections through time reflect something about humanity as a whole. The stories all have elements of rising up and the struggle for good; freedom vs. slavery, love vs. greed, creation vs. destruction. The author knew exactly when to end the book, too, and his repeated meditations on the duality of human nature are made complete on the last page, with the last sentence. Beautiful."
"David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is an ambitious effort. Consisting of six separate (though loosely related) stories, written in different styles, each set in a different time and place, all cut-off midway (save the central sixth story told in its entirety), some mid-sentence, to be concluded in the second half of the book, counting back to the first story, David Mitchell unfolds and reforms the novel into a Matryoshka doll of stories.
From historical to humorous to futuristic, the six parts are as follows: 1) A diary from an 1850's American, Adam Ewing, traveling home on a ship from the Chatham Islands; 2) Letters from a 1930's broke musical composer, Robert Frobisher, to his friend (and implied lover), Rufus Sixsmith; 3) A 1970's reporter, Luisa Rey, trying to uncover a nuclear power plant corruption plot that could end in disaster; 4) The humorous misadventures of a present day book publishing Englishman, Timothy Cavendish, trying to escape from the brothers of his gangster client; 5) An interview with a near-future servant clone, Somni~451, about her rebellion; and finally, 6) a tribesman, Zach'ry, in post-apocalyptic Hawaii.
With the varied quality of the six stories, Cloud Atlas falls victim to a problem you really feel when you're waiting for (or dreading) the conclusion the stories coming: The good ones seem too short and the bad ones seem too long. Unfortunately, the initial story is one of the worst, so the novel begins and ends at a limping pace. Still, the idea of Cloud Atlas is too appealing, too unique, too enviable to not be impressed. Three stars."
"A Good Concept is Not Enough: I have a feeling this may become my mantra. David Mitchell, take note.
Cloud Atlas has a very good concept, but is only mediocre-ly executed, in my opinion. It contains six interlocking stories which have been recorded in various media. In each consecutive story, the manuscript of the previous story is discovered. In this way Adam Ewing's Pacific Journal (his account of his time voyaging in the Pacific Ocean) is discovered by the aspiring composer Robert Frobisher in the home of his mentor Vyvyan Ayrs in the Belgian countryside. Frobisher's letters to his British lover, Rufus Sixsmith, are discovered by a young journalist, Luisa Rey, as she investigates the mysterious death of the eminent physicist Rufus Sixsmith. Then Timothy Cavendish, a broke publisher, is given a copy of 'Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery' to edit and possibly publish. The film made of Timothy Cavendish's life is watched by the genetic fabricant Sonmi-451 in a dystopian Korea of some lost time of the future. In the final story, Sonmi-451 has been elevated to the status of a god by the people of a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. So you see how Mitchell has succeeded in his aim of creating a set of stories like a Babushka doll?
I love this concept, and maybe it spoils it for a reader to have it explained to them as I just did, because much of the pleasure from this book for me was watching as the patterns emerged, his aims revealing themselves gradually to me.
But I thought the individual stories were not particularly well-realised. The first two, of Adam Ewing and Robert Frobisher, were slightly above-average historical fiction, but not really anything special. The Luisa Rey story was a thoroughly unremarkable thriller. But I've yet to encounter a thriller that I don't find thoroughly unremarkable, so there you go. Timothy Cavendish was... meh. I couldn't bring myself to care. Sonmi-451's dystopia was dull. For me, dystopia has been explored so thoroughly by so many authors that it has to either explore profound moral and ethical dilemmas or to be radically different from every other, and this example of the genre did or was neither. And Sloosha's Crossin' and ev'rythin' that happ'nd after (the post-apocalyptic Hawaii story) was positively painful. Writing in a dialect is all very well, but it is so. hard. to. read. that it takes away any pleasure I could somehow have found in that rather uninteresting tale.
There were some interesting and relevant themes touched upon, such as the plight of the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands in Adam Ewing's Pacific Journal, and this general theme of dispossession by a more violent race was touched upon again in Sloosha's Crossin', but I didn't find that it was examined in enough depth to make it worthwhile.
One of the main problems with this book, in my opinion, was that, due to the constraints of the concept, the stories were necessarily short. For me, much of the wonder of a novel is the building of a storyline that arches over everything, dictating structure and form. This seems to me to be the thing that is most difficult to do well. Thanks to the concept, this book couldn't do that at all, so I had no opportunity to admire the storytelling prowess of the author, much as I do admire the concept very much.
Also, I don't really see why everyone makes such a big deal about the 'linguistic brilliance' of writing in different styles. Maybe I'm naive and/or big-headed, but I don't find it at all difficult to write pastiche, and this makes it difficult for me to admire it in anyone else because it doesn't seem like a difficult thing to do. As I said above, what I do find difficult is the over-arching plot thing, so maybe this is why this book completely failed to speak to me in any way.
Actually, many of the stories were quite entertaining in their own right, but the rapid switches between them were very irritating and broke up the flow too much.
In fact, after writing this review, I'm finding this book much more interesting, because it required me to examine a concept that seemed brilliant on the surface and discover its faults and weaknesses. One of my theories about art in general is that anything that forces me to think and examine my beliefs is a good thing, even if I don't like the work of art itself. I've spent longer thinking about Cloud Atlas than I do about most books, so I suppose I must take back much of what I've said and say instead that Cloud Atlas is, in some ways, an excellent book."
"Apologies again: this book did take me a while to finish, but I got through it finally over a week ago and just haven't been able to sit down and write up my thoughts until now. I've been doing a lot of my own writing these past few weeks and it's hard to justify stopping that (when it's going well) to read or play around online...
Anyway, Cloud Atlas turned out to be one of the most phenomenal books I've ever read, but I almost gave up on it after fifty pages. If my fiance's parents hadn't BOTH been telling me that it was the best book they'd read in the past year, I think I might never have pressed through the impenetrable opening section and gotten into it. Allow me to explain...
Cloud Atlas is basically six novellas, which don't appear at all connected at first, but eventually turn out to be quite integrally linked. The first section is called The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing and, if I may give an example of why I barely made it through... this is just from the first page...
"Had the doctor misplaced anything on that dismal shore? Could I render assistance? Dr. Goose shook his head, knotted loose his 'kerchief & displayed its contents with clear pride. 'Teeth, sir, are the enameled grails of the quest in hand. In days gone by this Arcadian strand was a cannibal's banqueting hall, yes, where the strong engorged themselves on the weak. The teeth, they spat out, as you or I would expel cherry stones. But these base molars, sir, shall be transmuted to gold & how? An artisan of Piccadilly who fashions denture sets for the nobility pays handsomely for human gnashers..."
It's a completely foreign world, and the language is so intentionally dated that it becomes exceedingly difficult to penetrate, and I found that after forty pages of this, all I really knew was that this guy, Adam Ewing, was on some Pacific Island, a long time ago, and that he and his crew were somehow involved in the slavery trade. But names, places, events... all sort of blurred together. And it leaves off in mid-sentence and moves to the next novella. But as I said, I'm glad I pressed on.
Novella two is called Letters from Zedelghem and is about a young composer (Frobisher) in the early 20th century who travels to apprentice with a master composer named Vyvyan Ayrs. V.A. (as he goes on to call him) is blind and needs someone to help him write down all his music, and through the course of several letters a nice little story develops, as Frobisher begins to have an affair with V.A.'s wife and the two composers begin to collaborate on a masterwork. The language is still tough, but not as bad... mostly tricky because Frobisher likes to abbreviate things (as you might if you were writing lots of long letters to the same guy - a friend named Sixsmith.) Then, almost as abruptly, the third novella begins, but finally after 80+ pages, we begin to see why these stories are all put together.
Novella three is called Half Lives: The First Luisa-Rey Mystery and from the very start we realize that one of it's main characters is... Rufus Sixsmith! The guy who all those letters from the last novella were going to. This one is set in the 1970s in California and written in the style of a pulp mystery about an evil nuclear power plant corporation, and is not only readable, but exceptionally smooth and fun... as a good pulp novel can be. Having made it this far, I was hooked, and excited to keep going along with something a bit easier to read.
I won't spoil the book by talking about the other three novellas, but I will make one observation about the overall structure, which you could figure out just by flipping through it (as I did). After getting to Novella #6 (Sloosha's Crossin' An Ev'rythin' After) you're only halfway through the book, and Mitchell takes us back through the second halves of the first 5 novellas, in reverse order, finally ending with the second part of Novella #1, The Pacific Journal. And he does manage to cleverly explain in each case, why the previous parts left off without finishing. It's hard to explain this, but I think it's important to know going in, so that you'll have the faith to stick with him through many seemingly insane authorial decisions. Most importantly, the arrangement of the novellas and the ultimate connections between them DOES repay the reader's efforts, and ultimately I put the book down feeling my head swimming with the sensation that I had just read something completely, eternally powerful.
Books like this are rare, and while I'd say it isn't quite beach reading, I actually read the bulk of it poolside, with a drink or two to ease my anxiety over the language. By the end I was so delighted and so excited I'd been able to penetrate the language, that I wanted to go back and re-read The Sound and The Fury. I still might. But I may have to read all of Mitchell's other books first."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
