Walking in the Literary Clouds with Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is a novel perhaps unlike any other. In essence, British author David Mitchell links six novellas together in one fashion or another and, thus, seeks to form a whole.

The novel starts with the diary of an American traveling on a schooner in the South Pacific in the 1850s. The story suddenly (mid-sentence, in fact) shifts to 1930s Europe and a series of letters from a ne'er-do-well bisexual with ambitions of being a famous composer to a friend, Rufus Sixsmith. The next chapter is 1970s America, where Sixsmith is one of the focal points of a mystery/thriller with a reporter trying to investigate corporate wrongdoing. Just as we think the mystery is coming to an abrupt end, we jump to modern England and the memoir of the proprietor of a vanity press who thinks his estranged brother has confined him to a prison-like nursing home. Next, we are a couple centuries in the future and a dystopian, corporate-dominated Korea where the publisher's memoir plays a role in the life of a revolutionary. The revolutionary ends up also playing a role in the final novella, a story of survival in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii.

Yet the sixth novella is not the culmination of the book. By that point, the only story that has been completely told (or so it seems) is the sixth one. Mitchell then proceeds in reverse order back to the original diary of the seafaring American, completing the story begun previously in each novella. Each narrative could be separated from the others and read on its own because they are written in a different and unique style and voice. But each installment of each story lends something not only to the next, but also to the ones that preceded. Ultimately, the whole does become more than the sum of the parts.

Article Author: Tim Gebhart

Tim Gebhart lives in Sioux Falls, SD, where he practices law in order to provide shelter for his family, his dogs, and his books. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and his blog de guerre is A Progressive on the Prairie.

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