Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. Published 2004 by Random House.
Cloud Atlas is a weird and intriguing book. Encompassing large ranges of time and space, and arranged in a matryoshka-doll
format, it's composed of a series of short stories that nestle inside
each other, connected in ways subtle and overt. The stories also
represent different literary styles, and show evolution in the human
condition as well as in language and expression.
first story, "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing," which begins and ends
the book, is a historical fiction about a man and his adventures in New
Zealand of the early colonial period (I think). The next is an
epistolary tale set in the early 20th century, then a crime story, then a
first-person contemporary narrative, then a futuristic dystopia, then a far-future post-apocalypse.
The stories go 1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1 and each first part ends on a
cliffhanger that the second part picks up immediately where the first
part leaves off.
And how are they connected? That's for
you to find out when you read it. I picked it up because it's been
selling like crazy at the bookstore, and I wanted to be able to talk to
my customers about it and recommend what to read next when they come
back. I can do that now, and I'm glad that I read it. And I really
enjoyed it. It's heavier lifting in literary terms than I'd been doing
for a while, and it felt good to read a hard book again- a change from
the fluffy crime fiction and homeworky new releases I read too much of. The stories are delightful, and a couple are quite wonderful. I particularly enjoyed the dystopic "Orison of Somni-451,"
about the rebellion of a sentient robot, and "The Ghastly Ordeal of
Timothy Cavendish," a flat-out hilarious adventure of what happens to an
elderly and particularly myopic publisher when he runs afoul of some
I'd recommend Cloud Atlas to readers not
afraid of doing that heavy lifting but I'll say I found the book a lot
more accessible than I thought it would be. If you're wondering if you
should read it, I say give it a shot. Stretch yourself if it's not
normally your thing, and just try it. You might even like it. "'Catch
you all next time.'" Luisa is going. "'It's a small world. It keeps
recrossing itself.'" Just like the book.