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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
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Cloud Atlas (2004)

by David Mitchell

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
9,232345293 (4.17)4 / 851
  1. 80
    If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (Ludi_Ling)
    Ludi_Ling: Different yet both well-written approaches to meta-fiction.
  2. 72
    Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (sturlington)
  3. 50
    Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (Rynooo, browner56, pfeldman)
    browner56: Highly imaginative works, particularly the phonetic recreations of the English language
  4. 40
    A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (sturlington)
  5. 62
    The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (pgmcc)
    pgmcc: Really enjoyable set of related stories with the author's well deomonstrated skill
  6. 30
    The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (one-horse.library, PghDragonMan)
    PghDragonMan: A theme of reincarnation used to balance Karma flows through the story.
  7. 20
    Number9Dream by David Mitchell (PghDragonMan)
  8. 20
    Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (novelcommentary)
  9. 20
    Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (PghDragonMan)
  10. 10
    Girl Reading by Katie Ward (rarm)
    rarm: Girl Reading isn't as intricately constructed as Cloud Atlas, but both books use linked stories to carry a theme through the centuries and into the future.
  11. 54
    A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (jbvm, souloftherose)
    jbvm: Without giving anything away, after you've read both you'll understand my recommendation.
    souloftherose: Both novels are occasionally experimental in style with interconnected short stories. They are also both very good.
  12. 10
    Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru (Tinwara)
  13. 10
    The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino (Ludi_Ling)
    Ludi_Ling: For those interested in disparate yet intertwining narratives of a somewhat fantastical nature.
  14. 10
    Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison (hippietrail)
  15. 00
    Flesh and Blood by Michèle Roberts (luciente)
    luciente: Similar structure of nested stories
  16. 66
    Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (hippietrail)
  17. 00
    Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey (alzo)
  18. 11
    The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco (hippietrail)
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English (334)  Dutch (4)  Finnish (1)  Danish (1)  Spanish (1)  German (1)  Czech (1)  All languages (343)
Showing 1-5 of 334 (next | show all)
Book drags on. The stories are pretty good, but the last one kept dragging on and on. The movie looks more interesting than the book!
( )
  sweetchuckie | May 14, 2013 |
It took me a while to think about what I would say in this review.

On the positive side, David Mitchell is an excellent writer and storyteller. Each of the stories in the book are terrific in their own right. There were a few slow spots, but I wanted to finish each one (which is my criteria for a good story).

On the negative side, I had a very hard time grasping the common thread that ran through these stories. I got the idea that they were intended to be illustrative of the ultimate downfall of civilization. But why start in 1830, and why pick the periods that were chosen? I also recognized the reincarnation theme in the comet birthmark. But why was this significant?

In the end, I felt as if the author was trying to be extra clever, and since i couldn't understand much the cleverness, he left me behind. I have a hope that if I go back and read this again in a year, I will recognize more of the cleverness. If so, I will post additional comments attesting to my increased understanding. But that begs the question, why write a book that the reader has to read twice to understand? ( )
  grandpahobo | May 11, 2013 |
kind of brilliant, kind of irritating. Very amusing set pieces in places, but the conceit and his showoffy cleverness got really tiresome. Since then I read 2 more of his books--I'd heard he was so brilliant I thought I'd give him another chance. I don't disagree that he's brilliant, but I also find him annoying and too much into his cleverly constructed chinese boxes. His other books they were all similar in that way, so I am now officially DONE with David MItchell! ( )
  lxydis | May 11, 2013 |
There was a big hoopla about this novel when it came out and, as I often do when that happens, I put it aside to read when things had quieted down. Sometimes those volumes fall through the cracks but, I'm quite happy to say, this one didn't. This may not be the best book I read this year, but it has a good chance of making the Final Four (as it were). Not only is it entertaining, it's captivating; it's the type of book you don't want to put down. Sure, part of this is that there are chapter cliffhangers, but most of it is simply good writing portraying characters you care about with themes that engage your attention.

There has been a lot of talk about the matryoshka doll structure of the book: six novellas nested inside each other, the first five split in half to contain the succeeding ones. This was interesting but, evidently, less so to me than to many other readers.

What I found much more thought-provoking was the structure's fractal nature. Each novella could stand in its own right as a story about greed and lust for power. Then, each novella referenced the chronologically preceding one as a side plot to tie them together into a larger novel that enriched those themes by adding a dimension of time and recurrence. Finally, there was a meta-story that Mitchell told, not in the plot lines themselves, but in the patterns drawn by those plots, that drove home Santayana's maxim about the fate of those who do not learn from history.

By speaking to us on so many levels simultaneously...by having each protagonist's tale echoed in the larger whole...Mitchell's message hums in the background of our minds even as we move between characters, stories and eras. It's very intelligently done.

If I have any quibbles about the book, it's that Mitchell got a little heavy-handed by the end. He seemed to lack confidence that the reader would catch what he was trying to say and resorted to having his first/last protagonist speechify to us. I felt a little let down and a little put off by this. I would rather he had just trusted his own, considerable powers of writing and a measure of intelligence on the part of his reader. What he wanted to say came through loud and clear long before that point.

Absolutely recommended. ( )
14 vote TadAD | May 10, 2013 |
Who doesn't like stacks?

I was relieved that nothing plot worthy happened to me while in the middle of reading this book. ( )
  sprite | May 1, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 334 (next | show all)
Cloud Atlas is powerful and elegant because of Mitchell's understanding of the way we respond to those fundamental and primitive stories we tell about good and evil, love and destruction, beginnings and ends. He isn't afraid to jerk tears or ratchet up suspense - he understands that's what we make stories for.
 

» Add other authors (16 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
David Mitchellprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Brick, ScottNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Campbell, CassandraNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Guest, Kim MaiNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Heyborne, KirbyNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lee, JohnNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Matthews, RichardNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mijn, Aad van derTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Important events
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Epigraph
Dedication
For Hana and her grandparents.
First words
Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.
Quotations
Oh, once you've been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn't want you back.
Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.
The stationmaster's whistle blew on time, the locomotive strained like a gouty proctor on the pot before heaving itself into motion.
"Are you mad?"
Always a trickier question than it looks. "I doubt it."

Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
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Wikipedia in English (2)

Book description
The book consists of six nested stories that take us from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or watched) by the main character in the next.
Haiku summary

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0375507256, Paperback)

Now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer
 

A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.
 
“[David] Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novel’s every page.”—The New York Times Book Review

“One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is—and should be—read by any student of contemporary literature.”—Dave Eggers

 
“Wildly entertaining . . . a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative.”—People
 
“The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet—not just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I’m grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds.”—Michael Chabon

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 03 Jan 2013 05:32:46 -0500)

(see all 6 descriptions)

Recounts the connected stories of people from the past and the distant future, from a nineteenth-century notary and an investigative journalist in the 1970s to a young man who searches for meaning in a post-apocalayptic world.

» see all 9 descriptions

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