991. Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
2004
Around 544 pages

This is one of those novels that you hope you like, because otherwise it's going to be a self-important, convoluted nightmare that is about 300 pages too long. I felt it leaned in the latter direction; it was more Eco than Murakami or Marquez, unfortunately.

We begin in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. Then we go to Belgium in 1931, then the West Coast in the 1970s, then present-day England then to a Korean superstate of the near future and then to postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii. Then

we go back the way we came.

So obviously, this is an exhaustive and exhausting work. Its goal seems to be to capture the essence of the universe, which is...ambitious. This is like what an alien would show you after you fly through the wormholes. It's just a completely different understanding of space, time, and storytelling. And I did not care for it sir.

You start to like and follow a thread, and then it's gone, and by the time it comes back, I wasn't so interested anymore. Not my taste, but impressive in scope and ambition I guess.

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Adapted to film in 2012.

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