| Cloud Atlas | 
 enlarge | Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Sceptre
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  149 reviews
Sales Rank: 1440
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.6
ISBN: 0340822783
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780340822784
ASIN: 0340822783
Publication Date: February 21, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Smoke and Mirrors July 13, 2008
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed Cloud Altas. I'm recommending it to you. I even recommended it to my mother. It's just that when I sat down to write this review, I found myself conflicted over exactly how I felt about it.
It's an enjoyable read, there's no doubt about that. David Mitchell has pinpoint control of his writing to the extent that he can evoke the six different scenarios that form the book flawlessly. It's innovative, energetic, clever. But...
Let's backtrack. Cloud Atlas is written in the form of six separate stories, all in the first person, spanning history from the diaries of an American lawyer making a business trip to Australia via the South Sea Islands on a ship straight out of Moby Dick, to the account of the last days of the human race, as we battle each other, disease and the environmental consequences of our past mistakes. The book is constructed so that each narrative ends on a cliffhanger, to be taken over by the next and then repeated in reverse order, so that we can finally discover what happens next to each of the protagonists. There is, of course, a linking theme, helpfully pointed out in the blurb: these are the worlds that result from the expression of what Nietzche called "the will to power". Dominance of one group by another, the desire to amass resources no matter what the cost to others, the destruction of the self by allowing our desires free rein are the ideas that Mitchell explores in his six scenarios. To knit the whole together, each story references the one before, to give the sense that the characters are connected, despite their distance from each other in time and circumstances.
So why my reservations? The word "clever" is the key. It's good to read a novel which has a point, especially one as serious as this and it is refreshing to come across an author who isn't frightened to take a hard look into the dark heart of human nature. However, to lighten the intellectual load, Mitchell has used a structure for his storytelling which is intriguing, but ultimately dilutes the central message. Switching from one narrative to the next makes it hard to make much emotional investment in each character, the crucial prerequisite to then feeling repulsion at the consequences for these individuals of unfettered greed. Ironically, the result is exactly the kind of emotional distancing that allows atrocities like the ones he describes to occur.
It's not the first time that cleverness has got in the way of telling the story: Gunther Grass and Thomas Mann should both have been awarded prizes for that. This is an error of trying to be too entertaining, not over earnest, but I am still left with a sense of disappointment that a novelist of such obvious gifts feels the need to resort to elaborate tricks to sugar coat an important message. Perhaps the next time, he'll tell it straight.
Oh and one more thing. Calling a character Luisa Rey and having her fall off a bridge? Enough with the literary in-jokes already.
 Cloud Atlas June 20, 2008
I'm 50 years old and have read a good deal of books in my time.
But this is the first book I've not finished. Got to page 344 out of 529 and gave up.
Not my 'cup-o-tea'
 Fine literature at its best June 13, 2008
Reading one story after the other in this delightful book, wondering what comes next and finally getting to the end and seeing the subtle link between them all was like eating your way through a 10 course dinner at a top restaurant, feeling full yet wanting more. The different style stands out from the crowd and the book stays in your memory long after you have finished it. Well done Mr Mitchel
love it or hate it May 2, 2008
I loved it. I can understand the critics but for me it was the best book I've read for a while.
a waste of tree pulp May 2, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Six ideas for stories slotted into each to try and fool you all into thinking "wonderfull" , "original" , "beautiful" and other such twaddle ! Has no one ever read "The Emporer's New Clothes"? Well this is it . You're all going on about how wonderful the book is cos you've all been told it was , when in fact all it is , is six ideas for six different stories that have at times a very tenuous connection . And as one reveiwer quite rightly pointed out , what is the point of the book , apart from suppling the author with our hard earned cash.
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