CLOUD ATLAS (BY) DAVID MITCHELL

Published 2004, 528 pages
Characters: B+
Writing: A
Plot: A
Pacing: B+
Poignancy: A

When I'm walking around a bookstore scouting for something to read, it's always irritating when books are missing a summary — as if publishers are knowingly trying to kill impulse buys and give Amazon more business. A lot of times, of course, the summaries on the backcover are so vague or poorly written that they might as well not be there anyway.  It would be difficult to tell what kind of book Cloud Atlas is just by giving it a quick look-over, so while the back cover summary may seem frustratingly elusive, this happens to actually be the kind of book that can't be captured in Marketing Speak.  With Cloud Atlas, the events that occur aren't as important as the structure of the narrative, the way the pieces fit together.  Because this book isn't one story, but five separate narratives nested within each other like Russian dolls.  Each takes place in a different time period, moving forward chronologically, and therefore each is written in a radically different voice, style and genre from the others. The first is a sort of Victorian adventure novel, the second a novel of letters set in 1931, both written in the style of their time, and thus distinctly archaic sounding.  The following two pieces are the closest to modern novels — the first, set in the 70's, mimics a pulpy paperback thriller; the next is the only tale set in the present day, a first person account from a cantankerous old man trying to escape his life's many debts.  After that we move into the future, and finally, the distant future.  Making a plot summary even more impossible, the first four "threads" of the novel are split in half, each ending in a cliffhanger before jumping to the next time period.  Only the fifth and final tale is told in one piece, and when it ends we travel back to the previous stories in reverse chronological order, so that the novel ends where it begins, having spanned a few hundred years of human history.

Difficult to explain, of course, and after all that I've not even attempted to summarize what actually "happens" in Cloud Atlas.  It's somewhat beside the point, but if Cloud Atlas is about anything, it's reincarnation.  Smaller threads and minor themes begin to tie each of the five stories together, and it's strongly hinted that many of the protagonists are the same soul, reincarnated.  It's a remarkably bold concept, and Mitchell executes it brilliantly.  Though he at times spells out the reincarnation bits a little too explicitly, he has a lot of fun throwing clues to the reader here and there.  After crossing the halfway point and realizing I would again be returning to each of these worlds to discover its unique conclusion, the experience became one of the most satisfying and thrilling I've had with a novel.  Mitchell builds up his themes gradually, letting characters make their points as best they could based on their lives and social atmosphere, but these personalities all add up to a few stunning, beautiful statements about life and the burden of being human.

Mitchell's ability to switch between styles and genres is nearly superhuman, and though he never holds back, it doesn't seem as if he's showing off either.  He plays these genres against each other, and against themselves, often re-appropriating tired genre cliches by placing them adjacent to a wildly different storyline, adding new meaning through context.  Read any other way, one would not think to compare the smaller details, the universal constants — but here, together, Mitchell is able to draw attention to the fundamentals of each world by the reader's natural tendency to force comparisons, instead of heavy-handed narration.  If one were to critique some of these stories on their own, a few of them likely would not hold up... but that's okay.  "Half-Lives," the 70's thriller about a corrupt nuclear energy company, is written like an airport novel, and therefore bears all the faults of the genre — awkward 3rd person narration, internal monologues delivered in italics, dastardly villains that seem to know everything at every turn, a preposterous conspiracy that seemingly everyone and their mother is in-on.  It may appear to be poorly written at first, but it's done intentionally, and in the context of the novel, it works.  The first section, "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing," is somewhat tedious to get through, as it reads like a journal from the 1850's actually would, and is certainly the slowest-paced thread in Cloud Atlas. None of these issues are necessarily flaws, and they don't detract from the novel's overall impact.  Mitchell's writing in other places ranges from deadly accurate to beautiful.  His plotting is precise and creative, and it's impossible not to admire the easy grace with which these stories were assembled.

Mitchell doesn't necessarily have one direct message to impart, or one clear story to tell, and the significance of the novel may accumulate in your mind rather than dropping on you all at once.  Themes of slavery, oppression and endurance somewhat tie everything together, but hints of reincarnation and the vast scope of the novel make everything more profoundly melancholy than any of it would seem on its own.  Indeed, simply struggling through each character's individual problems knowing how encased and limited their lives are, both physically and existentially, is quite affecting.  While Mitchell could have taken this concept in any number of directions, the result is pleasantly subdued, letting the results speak for themselves without getting too flashy in their delivery.  I have never read another novel quite like Cloud Atlas, and while it's often a challenging, strange hybrid of styles, it's also one of the best books I've read in recent years.