Cloud atlas

I have not posted for a couple of weeks . I would like to say that is because I had been reading, “cloud atlas”. Whilst that might a bit much, it contributed in some part to robbing me of time in which I could have done something else.

The Sunday Telegraph did not review ''Cloud Atlas'' because its critic found the novel ''unreadable.'' That critic is a very sensible person. Someone who cannot be swayed by public opinion that has by and large heralded “cloud atlas” as a minor literary miracle. Unfortunately, I am not that sensible. The kind of effusive praise that the book received was hard to ignore. I have to say this. Mr. Mitchell is a brilliant man, a creative man, a man who is not content unless his creations are grand and sweeping in scope. I can admire all this but I cannot admire his book.

Enough has been said about the six independent narratives of “cloud atlas”-stories of an American notary sailing somewhere down under in the mid 19th century, a young composer serving as an amanuensis to an acclaimed composer in Belgium the 1930s, a young female journalist investigating some nuclear conspiracy in 1970s USA, a book publisher in present day England who finds himself forced into a home for the elderly, a product of genetic engineering sometime in the future being interrogated for wanting to be human and finally somewhere in the distant future a goatherd in Hawaii witnessing the end of mankind-that span a 1000 years over the past present and future. Somehow, I started with the expectation that something incredibly fascinating will link these tales together to create an overall vision. That is far from being the case. The narrator in strand two reads a journal written in strand one. Letters written in the second narrative find themselves in the hands of the protagonist of narrator three. It as simple as that. There is also some reincarnation idea floating around that is so lame it is best ignored.

The language that every story is told in is suitably different as demanded by the nature of the tale. Stories set in the distant past as in the future are composed in language is so tedious and so unreadable that is it painful at times. That makes for more than half of the book. Even if there were any promising ideas therein, it can be missed, as one is busy just trying to get through the book.

In trying to describe too many human experiences, no great picture about the rise and fall of humankind emerges from this, as perhaps envisaged by the author. It looks like it might have worked best as six different works each exploring it own theme satisfyingly. But that would not satisfy the authors of genius like Mr. Mitchell who are too busy creating works of epic proportions to see whether it works or not.