David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas: A Novel

You open the book to the first page and begin reading a section entitled “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”. Mr. Ewing, you learn, is a public notary from San Francisco. It is the mid-nineteenth century and Mr. Ewing has been sent to the South Sea islands to settle an estate. The journal talks of the islands and then of Mr. Ewing’s journey back to San Francisco. After nearly forty pages you turn the page and discover that the next one is blank. The journal has stopped in mid-sentence. You didn’t accidentally turn two pages at once, and the your book isn’t misprinted — this is how the novel is written. Unusual.

Cloud Atlas: A Novel is comprised of six stories which are linked by themes and, to a lesser extent, characters. The structure is unusual in that a narrative is begun and then dropped in mid-story when another is begun. Five narratives are presented in this fashion and then the sixth narrative is presented as a whole. Then the fifth story is completed, next the fourth is finished, and so on until at the end of the novel we have the conclusion of the first narrative, picked up in mid-sentence. An usual structure for a novel but it works.

The novel’s structure is an adaptation of a musical structure. The key to understanding this is found in the second narrative which centers on Robert Frobisher, a young twentieth century composer (as well as something of a cad). The phrase “cloud atlas” appears several times in the novel, but it is central in the Frobisher narrative. “Cloud Atlas” is the title of Frobisher’s magnum opus, a sextet. The appearance of “Cloud Atlas” here, as a title, and it’s centrality to the narrative, points to the relevance of this appearance to the structure of the novel. Frobisher’s “Cloud Atlas” is a sextet, a piece for six instruments, or musically speaking, six voices. Cloud Atlas: A Novel has six narratives, or six voices. The narratives are linked thematically, just as voices in a musical piece are linked. One narrative echos another, or it picks up a point presented in another narrative and develops it.

There is one theme which is central to all the narratives in Cloud Atlas: A Novel: power — power in governments, corporations, social groups and personal relationships. One could say that this is what the book “is about”. Each narrative, and most characters, deal with power. They experience and describe the use, misuse and abuse of power. Some of the characters are misusers and abusers, of course, while others are victims. The theme is presented and then is developed and varied in the several narratives. A very musical presentation of ideas.

This description may make Cloud Atlas: A Novel sound like an “intellectual novel” which, as far as I can tell, means that one is supposed to admire it rather than enjoy it. But this is not the case; Cloud Atlas: A Novel is very enjoyable. Some of the stories pull you in deeply and at places the novel is a real “page turner”. But to enjoy it thusly one must adapt to the unusual structure. More than one person has remarked that it required 50 or so pages before they became truly engaged by the novel. I also found this to be the case. I persevered in the beginning, became hooked, and when finished was very satisfied with the literary journey.

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