Monday, October 30, 2006

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell The Cloud Atlas was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2004. It is a series of nested stories, that at first glance seem unrelated, but actually refer to each other. The first story is the diary of a man traveling the South Seas in the late 1800's. He is waiting for the ship he is traveling on to be repaired when he meets an unusual doctor. They leave when the ship is ready and find that the captain is not as upright as they would have liked. It ends mid-sentence. The next story takes place in Belgium and is a series of letters from an upperclass Englishman who has been disowned by his family, to his friend at Oxford. He is a musician and book thief. He talks his way into a job with a blind composer, and while combing their library for books to steal and resell comes across the partial diary! The story next takes up with the friend form the diaries many years later. He has become a physicist and has found that a nuclear power plant has been badly designed and will probably blow up. He befriends an investigative reporter and promises to get his report to her so she can expose the officials. Unfortunately, he is being spied on by the nuclear power plant employees. You can't tell who can be trusted and who can't The next story starts with a publisher in London who has dubious business dealings. He has received a story detailing the investigative reporter from the previous story. He has a few run-ins with unsavory characters, and ends up nearly imprisoned in northern England. We next jump to the future where there are two classes of people, those who are "purebreds" and those who are "clones". Some of the clones are beginning to think for themselves, and some of the purebreds are trying to help them. The world is run by corporations and people are expected to be consumers above all else The Final story takes place in the future, after a horrific event that nearly wipes out humanity (we never are told in detail what happened). This takes place in the South Seas(!) The last story finishes up, then we start going back through the stories in reverse order, until we find out how the diary ends. There is adventure, love stories, and philosophical and scientific speculation about, among other things, humanity and war. It is a fascinating book. One reviewer described it as a series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes. While reading the stories, you ask how is this related to the ones that come before, and how will they all tie together. JRS 2:31:11 PM

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