… Or when being epic and panoramic through ages is, in the end, not enough.
I remember when I saw the “Cloud Atlas” trailer. I must have been eleven or twelve, waiting to see an animation in the movies. The trailer was the only thing standing out from the other teasers before the movie. I remember a feeling of something broad, fathomless, of perspectives and timelines so varying that making you (almost) cry. I wanted to watch “Cloud Atlas”. I wanted to read the book. I wanted to see those human stories intertwined through ages. I’ve read the novel. I haven’t watched the movie yet, but I’m going to. Maybe the book didn’t fulfill the promise I’d been given as a hopeful child, but it doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy many parts of it.
As you may know, “Cloud Atlas” is a story about six protagonists, each of them from a different time, and each of them having subtle connections to the previous one. The first is Adam Ewing, an 1850s lawyer from San Francisco travelling on the Pacific. The second is Robert Frobisher, a 1930s English pianist and composer. The third is Luisa Rey, a 1970s journalist from California. The fourth is a publisher, Timothy Cavendish, living in our times. The fifth is Sonmi, a clone from the futuristic Korea. And the last protagonist is Zachry, a man from the postapocalyptic Hawaii.
I’m not sure if these six stories are es entwined with each other as it is promised, but one can find recurring themes in the novel. It’s power and pride and greed. Adam Ewing, in the end, rejects the power of racism and colonialism. Robert Frobisher dreams of power manifesting in being famous and cherished. Luisa Rey undercovers another layer of power through an intricate conspiracy leading to a murder. Timothy Cavendish wants to become a more recognized publisher. Sonmi learns of power and greed in an ultra-capitalist world hostile to her and to her incentive ideas. And what is left to Zachry? The ruins of our pride, the memory of our greed. I get it, really. But is it enough?
Maybe I just didn’t grasp the concept sufficiently, who knows? After all, “Cloud Atlas” is a story-within-story. Robert Frobisher reads Adam Ewing’s journal. Luisa Rey reads Frobisher’s letters to his lover, physician Sixsmith (who gets murdered). Timothy Cavendish reads about Luisa in a manuscript sent to him. Sonmi watches a movie about Timothy, only to tell her own story to Zachry through a device called an “orison”. So… What is real? Which stories are truer, which aren’t? We don’t know—and we don’t need to.
Nevertheless, I think I know other epic-panoramic story through ages, and it copes better with connecting its characters. It’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr. I wonder if he was inspired by Mitchell; even the titles of those two novels are quite similar, aren’t they? If he was, I think that, still, his book is more consistent. He also focuses on the past, the present, and the future. He also writes about our dreams of freedom and our greed alike, and about our drive towards an environmental catastrophe. But he, at least, weaves his story tighter. There’s an ancient Greek fable saved from the falling Constantinople by an orphaned girl. There’s an old Greek-American translating that fable, killed by a youthful idealist. That youth gives the fable to an ancestor of the last protagonist, a girl from the near-future. It’s clear, it’s moving, it’s full of mutual references and of metatextual findings much more than Mitchell’s story. Its composition is more complex than “a character reads about/watches the previous character”.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t like Mitchell’s novel, or that I don’t see why it has been praised and adapted. There were really good parts there, genuinely moving and actually gripping. However, it was a more uneven read than I’d thought, and if I’m going to read this author on, I’d rather go for a book in which he focuses on a single story.
Left Hand of Fiction 