Book of the Week

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Recommended by Sam DeMarco

This week’s recommendation for Book of the Week is one that lies very close to my heart: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I first read it a few years ago, but since then, I have found myself drawn back to it, and such is the nature of the book that every re-read presents something new and rewarding. 

The structure of this book is unusual; where other books may focus on one story and one time period, Cloud Atlas focuses on six, stretching from the 19th Century to many years after the fall of human civilisation. The first of these six stories tells of an American lawyer crossing the Pacific, told through journal entries. The second is a story of an aspiring British composer’s conning of an ancient composing mastermind, told through the letters he sends to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith. The third story is presented as a mystery, taking the shape of a novel based on true events in which a 1970s journalist investigates a cover-up around a nuclear power plant. The next story is told by an old publisher, trapped against his will in a nursing home in the present day, and is often very comedic. The fifth story, then, moves into the future, presented as an interview with a clone with revolutionary intent. Finally, after the fall of civilisation, the last story takes place in the Pacific Islands where the story began, and tells of a tribesman’s meeting with one of the last members of the civilised world.

As can be seen, the novel jumps between themes and genres extremely effectively, encompassing science fiction, comedy and mystery, meaning in essence the book holds something to appeal to everyone simply based on each individual story’s style. The characters in each story are also very compelling, especially given that they have only a sixth of their usual time in the limelight, something that Mitchell seizes upon and uses to keep the reader enthralled – he presents cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger, only to switch to another story in another time period, leaving the reader with a need to keep reading.

However, to take the stories as simply separate would be to miss out on part of what makes the book so fundamentally enjoyable; each of these stories are fundamentally linked (with characters from each story having the same comet-shaped birthmark), with elements and themes from each story popping up in the next (for example, the young composer’s work which appears later in the 1970s on the path of the investigative journalist, and the theme of freedom and slavery that recurs from the 1800s to far in the future). This makes the book not simply a collection of short stories but a thought provoking musing on the connections between lives and times, and makes it incredibly enjoyable.