Raising the Bar to the Clouds
January 6th 2008 08:54
Well, I’ve raised the bar very high indeed to start the New Year! Beginning 2008 with Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell has set a standard that will be hard to keep. I also need to apologize to my colleague who has been waiting patiently for this book … Sorry Sam, but I couldn’t let it go before finishing.
Mitchell has brilliantly (and intelligently) written a series of stories that chronologically link, with the finest of threads, to weave a story of mankind’s unstoppable march towards … well, himself. ‘Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost.’ So quotes Adam Ewing, the author of chapter one ‘The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing’. Adam, an American notary is returning home from a business trip in Sydney on the good ship Prophetess. A God-fearing, family man he is both appalled and intrigued by all he experiences in the hands of hardened seamen, local natives and opportunistic con-men. His journal draws the reader into the world of the 1800’s sea travel with all the clarity and none of the romance, until its abrupt halt in mid sentence.
We then jump to the 1930’s and meet Robert Frobisher, a young music student with exceptional talent, but who has a penchant for getting into trouble with his gambling and carousing. We become privy to his life in letters to friend Rufus Sixsmith for the next 40 or so pages. Then to the 70’s, bringing Rufus with us, we have what was everywhere at that time … a story of mystery and corruption.
After a few more leaps and jumps, (sorry, there’s a pun in there) eventually we end up in a futuristic world where ‘purebloods’ (humans) teeter on the brink of extinction, the threat coming from one their own creations … the human clone. This chapter is exceptionally clever, written as an interview which is stored on an electronic device called an ‘Orison’ (future offspring of the i-pod). Sci-Fi readers will love it!
At this point, you are far from satisfied with the outcome of each story, but fear not, we now start again, working our way backwards until the lost half of Adam’s journal is recovered and his journey’s end recorded.
I’ll tell no more. To spoil the outcomes of this book and its individual stories would be criminal, but I do urge all fiction fans to read it. I would be hard pressed to find a more satisfying novel in my cache of best reads. Just as the clouds in the sky appear, take shape and move on, so do Mitchell’s characters, only to reappear in a different time, space and form. Mortality is a strong theme here, but there are more strings and connections through these stories than the obvious. And I’ve never enjoyed finding the links in a story more!
This is only my second David Mitchell book. I reviewed Black Swan Green last year. Great book, but very different to this one and I won’t be stopping there. His other titles include Ghostwritten and number9dream. Would love to hear some feed back on any of these titles if someone out there has read them. If not, get onto them and let me know what you think … or, if you know a title that could top this book for me, please … pass it on. I think I’m going to need help on this one!
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