Is Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell a masterpiece or a gimmick? The novel is composed of six narratives, each with a different setting and written in a different style. The first starts in the South Pacific in the mid 1800s. It cuts off mid sentence so the next story can commence. It too cuts off in the middle for the next story and so on. The sixth story, a tale of the post-apocalyptic future, is told to completion, then the fifth story is concluded and so on until the novel itself concludes with the conclusion of the first story.
I’m am blown away by Mitchell’s ability to shift in style and tone from one story to the next. Each story is its own unique entity, and yet there are curious ties between them. That each story has its own identity is a testament to Mitchell’s writing powers. The only flaw is that I’m not sure each story has the quality to survive on it’s own. It’s only the cleverness of the novel’s construction that makes them great. And so there’s a sense of the gimmicky.
There is a sense of fatalism. After reading the central story, which takes place long after all the other’s have concluded, despite the individual resolutions of the surrounding stories, you know as a reader how it’s all going to be in the end.
It’s interesting to contemplate how history is filtered through fiction and ideology. Our understanding of reality is truly fluid. Our subjective experience has as much to do with our perceived reality as any hard facts. Is this good or bad? Is it simply a hard fact that we need to weave into our world view?
In the end I’ll give Mitchell the benefit of the doubt. The book is amazing. The stories tie together thematically in a wonderful way. It is fun to follow the threads between the stories and contemplate what they say about each other. Cloud Atlas is a masterpiece.
2016.07.11
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