Yesterday I finished reading "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell. It's an unusual novel that's composed of six separate novellas, each wildly different than the next. Each story is told in a different fashion and is set in wildly varied times and locales (the West Indies of the 1800's, Korea in the the far future, 1931 Europe, etc). Most feature characters that for the most part don't exist outside of the individual tale. Yet all six are connected by a thread of rebellion and struggle that wind through them all, and there are hints that these individuals are the same struggling souls born time and again.
This is not a book I recommend to a casual reader, or someone looking to make the jump from pulp novels to something meatier; I initially found the format confusing and even intimidating, and I'm not exactly a casual reader.
I came to love the book, although a nagging part of me feels that the novel failed to make the final leap and accomplish what it set out to do - the problem is, I'm not 100% sure what that goal was to start.
Grade: A Book# 89 of the year
No comments:
Post a Comment