Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

David Mitchell’s excellent characterisation and imaginative writing captivates in this exploration of six lives interlocking over the globe and history...
 

Cloud Atlas is a colossal epic which opens in the 19^th century and rises towards a post-apocalyptic adventure. 

Each chapter richly delves into the lives of six brilliantly realised characters, beginning with the journal of Adam Ewing, a young lawyer who is documenting his travels across New Zealand during the 19^th century. 

From the first few pages it is impossible not to fall in love with the deliciously archaic language.  Words like ‘simulacrums’ and ‘schrimshandered’ pepper the text, while histories of island tribes and stowaways unfold alongside the beautiful imagery of ships sailing the aquatic blue pacific. It is also here that David Mitchell introduces the violent themes of race and power which run a current throughout the rest of the novel. All these elements are blended with such a gorgeous vibrancy that when the chapter abruptly cuts short midsentence, the only conclusion to draw at first is that there has been a misprint.

The next chapter consists of letters dated in the 1930’s written by Robert Frobisher, an upper class musician suffering from a self-induced “financial embarrassment”.  Driven by an impulsive and careless sense of life direction, Robert embarks on a journey which begins with him jumping out of his apartment window, arriving in Belgium by ferry, and ending in the mansion of Vyvyan Ayrs, a frail once greatly revered composer. Robert manages to procure the job of amanuensis to Ayras, and in his letters he relates his time negotiating family politics and Ayras’s tempestuous mood swings.

The letters are delivered with an eloquent dry humour and at times Frobisher snobbery can verge on the unlikable, yet it is in this voice David Mitchell delivers a line that serves as a mandate for narrative structure of Cloud Atlas; “A half finished book is a half finished love affair”; written after Frobisher discovers the published journal of Adam Ewing urges his devoted friend Sixsmith to track it down.

Cloud Atlas then drifts from the dark and dreary Ayras mansion in Belgium to Buenas Yerbas in 1975. This fictional city in California is the home of Luisa Rey, a gossip columnist who is looking for her first hard news scoop. Half-Lives – The First Luisa Rey Mystery is written as crime-thriller. David Mitchell hooks you in with the pulp-thriller tone as the young journalist investigates the corrupt Seaboard Corporation provoking contract hit-man and murder attempts. Yet once again Mitchell leaves you hanging in anticipation of Luisa’s fate when the action reaches a climatic point.

David Mitchell then moves on to modern day England to the self-depreciating voice of Timothy Cavendish, an elderly editor and head of his own publishing house. The energetic writing of Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish cleverly depicts an old rogue who still has more sparkle than society realises. The memoirs hilariously recount dangerous runs in with gangsters and a frustrating battle with the matron of an old people home who could give Nurse Ratched a run for her money. My favourite scene being when Timothy is being chased about the grounds of the home by an orderly yelling “Solyent Green is people!” at the dazed zombie residents on-looking.

A futuristic world with an Aldous Huxley-feel is created in the next chapter, set in what used be to Korea. The life of the clone, Sonmi-451, reveals a society in which humans have been overtaken by consumerism and brand names such as nike, sony, ford, and starbucks are the unified signer for objects. 

Halfway through the Cloud Atlas slight connections are apparent between the characters but the overall question of what the novel is reaching to is yet unrealised. However the journey of reading and intriguing characterisation pulls you across the pages at an alarming pace. It is only when one finishes reading camp-fire retelling of a post-apocalyptic civilization set in Hawaii that the beauty of David Mitchell’s project is fully realised.

Cloud Atlas is a living breathing text interlocking over time and history to bring you a set of brilliantly captivating characters. David Mitchell explores the term intertextuality with characters living inside of each chapter. The epic rises with a story within a story, each half-life only complete once the second chapter has been read.  The half finished love-affair is at times melancholic and bittersweet but flashes with comical antics of Timothy Cavendish and next gripping instalment of Luisa Rey. David Mitchell proves he can master genre with homage to crime and sci-fi fiction, but brings his final trump on narrative by creating a novel which sails across many skies to detail lives that are but a drop in a large ocean.