Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

This book is worth reading, but it’s not particularly enjoyable. It’s one of those complicated affairs that shows just how inadequate a 5-star rating system is to capturing the quality of a book (translated: my 3-star rating doesn’t mean a whole lot).

Cloud Atlas is six completely separate stories that take place across the globe over a 1,000+ year time span. The stories are all written in different styles: one is a journal of a 19th century traveler with the flowery, verbose, and intricate language of that era; another is written like a 1970’s detective or thriller, with lots of sarcastic characters and cheesy one-liners; yet another is a futuristic sci-fi story full of fancy technologies and corporate newspeak (e.g. all shoes are called “Nikes”, all TVs are called “Sonys”). Mitchell’s ability to create totally different characters, worlds, and dialects is impressive. The writing is generally beautiful and occasionally touches on powerful themes (especially the last few paragraphs of the book). Just as it it’s fun to see a talented athlete perform remarkable physical feats, it’s fun to read this book to see a talented author perform remarkable writing feats.

The problem is that these impressive feats do not come together particularly well, just as a bunch of superstars athletes playing together do not always form a great team. Each of the individual six stories, by itself, is not strong enough to carry the whole book. And while Mitchell loosely ties them together with a few common narrative threads, a few cross-references, and one cheesy spiritual-theme, the six stories together do not form a greater whole. Instead of one great story, you get six OK stories, which is pretty underwhelming given a) the effort it takes to read them all and b) the crazy effort it must’ve taken to write them all.

When you’re done, you feel like you just saw a movie with spectacular cinematography and production values, but with forgettable plot and characters. It was fun while it lasted, but now that it’s over, it doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression.

Rating: 3 stars