Cloud Atlas

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Average customer rating 4.9 (48 comments)

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A beautifully rendered novel comprised of six nesting stories. David Mitchell's tour-de-force is both profound and a delight to read.

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Wow, people really like this book. I'll admit I didn't read it until after the movie came out, a movie I had no interest in (although who doesn't look non-Asian actors playing Asians?). Plenty of smarter folks than I am think this book is some kind of masterpiece. And it is virtuosic to be sure, with it's dazzling blend of styles and possibly interconnected plot lines, but is sure isn't much fun to read. I dare anybody to read the "Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After" section out loud without snickering. Heck, just read that title. I don't get the fuss, but this is certainly hermetic post-modern wankery on the vastest, most self-indulgent scale.

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It's a unique experience. Don't go see the movie, read the book.

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Not just my favorite book of 2012, but an all-time favorite, Cloud Atlas is a wonderful read. David Mitchell gives us a little bit of everything - sci-fi, mystery, adventure, betrayal, humor - and writes in such a way that keeps the reader absolutely gripped. The narrative takes you on a grand adventure that you won't want to end. Set in six different settings and time periods, the stories could stand on their own; but Mitchell weaves them together beautifully as the book progresses. This is a book I look forward to enjoying again and again, each time discovering new details I didn't catch the first time through.

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Reason for comment: I needed to write something...and wanted to nominate for best book of 2012. My reading was a re-read of "Cloud Atlas" and it was even better the 2nd time around (like Vonnegut always said - books are complicated things and there is only so many things we can get with one read). I will admit, I initially picked up the books years ago in a Borders because of the cover. I made the purchase because of the sci-fi elements and the setting of Hawaii for one of the six stories. However, "Cloud Atlas" has to be in my top ten all-time books due to it's structure, prose, and the ability of the author to weave this disparate characters and stories together to make me give a damn and try and find the connections in my stories with those around me. Top notch!

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I read this book on the recommendation of my daughter who had just finished her English Literature degree at the University of Wales Newport, she claimed that it was the best book she had read. With the movie right around the corner I decided that I had better see what she was talking about. I found David Mitchel's writing exquisite and enthralling, I could not put the book down. I was completely drawn into the story line and the characters. The book also made me think about our actions and ramifications there of in our future generations. I think that I have to agree with my daughter, simple the best book I have read.

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Ten minutes after finishing this book I found myself lonely for it, desperate to wear in the binding from chapter one and begin anew. If it were possible to un-know the contents of “Cloud Atlas” and discover them again, I would embark on this journey every year for the rest of my life...the powerful images still flit through my daydreams and nightdreams...an aged composer...a stopover in the Chatham Islands...a dystopic ultramodern Korea...a publisher, locked away... This book will enchant the deepest parts of your curious, questioning mind, and if you haven’t got one of those, this book will give it to you. I am not the most well-read bon. lass ‘mongst the bookish Warrior Womyn class of the Pacific Northwest, but I punch in more than a few nights a week at our City of Books and somehow always make time to hole up and retreat to my page worlds. Thus with this trifling credibility I entreat you to read this book; it is probably the greatest work of our century. “Cloud Atlas” is a genre-bending voyage through times, spaces, cultures, races, political systems, social orders, religious assumptions, genders, and so, so many more of the hinges that humanize us. The author has described his championing work as a "sextet for overlapping soloists", in which each solo is interrupted by its successor and in the second, each interruption is continued in order. The byzantine structure of the book is woven by six overlapping stories, each revealed by not only different characters but also vastly dissimilar flairs of script. The author graces us with stylistic fluctuations of historical, science, noir, farce, and comic fiction, and each takes their shape via diaries, letters, mysteries, interviews, and a tale told around a fire. The dense book is daunting at first, but when you consider that it covers kindness, cruelty, civilization, greed, vengeance, art, history, faith, tradition, love, family, religion, barbarism, enslavement, release, the corrupting and dehumanizing nature of power, the universal cultural story of societies rising, falling, and building again, all told with a stimulating and challenging narrative, it is amazing that David Mitchell could manage to fit a lifetime’s (or two or ten’s) worth of philosophizing into a mere five hundred pages. Somehow, without my noticing, the book managed to fit ALL of this discourse into an entertaining read that detonated my cognizance towards the minutest of intricacies, but closed on a simple, beautiful theme. The last lines will leave you sated and bursting with a love of man. Surprisingly, the book elicited within me deep stirrings on God and What Is Godly. The multiple religious constructs presented in the book had me questioning my own lack of questioning in hateful ways, only to feel, at the next chapter, a deep yearning for the conviction expressed by the characters therein and a jealousy of their certainty--which I found amusing given that my region has the lowest rate of church attendance in the United States and consistently reports the highest percentage of atheism. Throughout the book you may notice a handful of blatant references to other films, books, stories, fables, musical passages. Why would the author appropriate, plainly and in even the least-cultured reader’s sight, the characters, story arches, and concepts of 1984, Blade Runner, Nurse Ratched, Soylent Green and other classics? These references are rife with meaning and are not to be casually overlooked. In addition to confronting tough and unfamiliar language, I had to concentrate very hard just to glean every bit of meaning from the lush passages. Many key thematic tirades were loaded with double and even triple meanings, and I found myself pawing back and back again just to be sure I had them all. I agree with other reviewers that it was hard to get into Chapter One at first, in fact, all of the chapters were a little bit hard to “settle into”, and they took quite a bit of “legwork” and guessing from the reader in terms of determining time, place, new characters, etc. I didn’t care for the middle story (the central anchor) much…call me lazy but I don’t like invented slang that takes hours to dissect; it feels gimmicky, and his payoff wasn’t worth the reward to me as a reader. Most of the work WAS well worth it though, and by the time I was 25% through the book I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat, sleep, or do ANYTHING until I had finished the entire thing. Work through the research and enjoy this part of the process...your patience will be greatly rewarded. I predict “Cloud Atlas” will go down in publishing history as the rumbling cult favorite that spawned the visionary artists, thinkers, and designers of the future. This book is required reading for anyone who aspires to pass through the ignorance/innocence of childhood and into the realm of adulthood. Take the time to dissect this beautiful gift of a novel and be forever enlightened as to man’s capacity for love, hate, good, evil, and maybe, just maybe, deliverance.

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Cloud Atlas completely blew me away. I consumed this book in two days, unable to put it down. Everything about it was vivid and rich. The characters popped off of the page, and the story wrapped itself around me as I read, gripping me tightly. I loved the formatting of this book, and the way David paced the chapters. Each story flowed into the next with an intriguing rhythm. One moment I felt enchanted and romantic, the next horrified and disgusted, and then suddenly I would find myself laughing at one of Cavendish's hilarious comments. I can say without hesitation that this was the best book I read in 2012.

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An absolutely amazing mosaic of interweaving narratives and cosmic commonality. Its message is deeply moving and emotionally rewarding to the reader.

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Once in a blue moon will the voracity-tongued reader encounter an author with David Mitchell's combination of fearlessness and skill. "Cloud Atlas", his third novel in a steadily increasing catalogue, is an exemplary work attesting to just how brilliantly those traits commingle in the author's craft. Simply put, "Cloud Atlas" is phenomenal. To be more precise, "Cloud Atlas" is an unprecedented and inimitable work of art, a masterpiece the world of contemporary literature should be proud to see issue from its inveterate loins. If this praise seems too high to be truly warranted, a week-long sojourn in the book will confirm what I theorize: "Cloud Atlas" is unlike anything you likely have ever read, or will ever read again. The glory of Mitchell's creation is in its transcendent nature. "Cloud Atlas" tells a story, of course, and an engaging one at that, but it is so much more than the events of its ongoing narrative. There is an attention to detail the likes of which literature had theretofore (2004, the book's release) never known, not just in its literal composition, but in the very arrangement of its contents. The order in which Mitchell chose to unfold his expository sextet is so profound and brilliant I, in all my obvious verbosity, am left grasping for the appropriate descriptors. I hesitate to go further into detail for fear of shattering prematurely what is a truly mind-blowing and rewarding mosaic. I can only report that it is an incredible, unfathomably connected set of stories, and hope that you take me up on my promises. There is heart to "Cloud Atlas." In its entirety, there is a revelry in the spectrum of human existence; sadness and joy, life and death, love and hate. "Cloud Atlas" is a celebration of all it is to be both human and spirit, a rapturously written map of the latter's effect within and around the former. It challenges the reader to rethink human purpose, the function of life and relationships, and most of all the infinite nature of our actions and choices. It challenges, but the payoff is, for all my wordy attempts, wholly indescribable. You will not regret a single moment spent drifting through this atlas of clouds. You have my word.

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Before the movie hits the screens, read Mitchell's captivating novel that travels across time, across genres. Reviewers call it "virtuosic" and that's an apt description. The novel chronicles a 19th explorer and a cloned human, a journalist, a composer, and a publisher all against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world.

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This book is a sometimes exhausting roller coaster for the reader, who must adjust to new stories and styles, or pick up the thread of a story left behind several hundred pages back. But that is what makes it so creative and interesting. Mitchell's mastery of language and social commentary will leave you spinning, deep in thought, and ultimately satisfied with a very good read.

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This was both the most challenging and rewarding book I read in 2012, a Jacob's ladder of stories in masterfully different styles and time periods that colorfully clicked together to create one breathtakingly unbreakable chain.

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This is everything I could want in a book.

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This is a beautiful, thought-provoking book. I loved the different parts of it, and I wanted each to continue. Months after finishing it, I find that I am still haunted by certain scenes, ideas or implications of it.

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Through seven layers of stories, you drift through the past and the future, while always in sight of the present's tension between driving self-absorption and profound generosity. The book's unique structure is not a clever trick for the author to show off - it pulls you into the narrative and unfurls its meaning.

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This book is, in every sense of the word, brilliant!

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This was the most exciting, thought-provoking, challenging and beautifully written book I have read in a long time, maybe ever. You can read it as a collection of shorter pieces that eventually are pulled together. But you can also read it as a new type of story, one where the original format of the book is equally interesting and thought-provoking, making you consider "What is a novel?" Read this book!

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If you want to see what contemporary fiction can do, this book is for you! If you want to to be entertained and provoked to think at the same time, this book is also for you! It's not perfect, and every section might not be equally to your taste -- but it's a virtuosic achievement.

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This is the best book I have read in a long, long while. Amazing writerly craft is on full display in this jigsaw puzzle of a book. Highly clever, multi voiced and absolutely fascinating. The premise: several stories with only the most tenuous of connective threads are presented to the reader and all end on cliff hangers. At the middle of the book each story is brought back and "finished". I was captivated, and truly saddened to have each story end. Brilliant!

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Cloud Atlas wove me into a fabric of stories, implications, people, and problems that made me feel less alone in the world and less crazy for thinking about it as I do. I highly recommend it: make sure to push *past* the first story, since the book is not at all what it seems at the start.

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This book was a fascinating mix of genres and time periods. It started off slowly but built to a disturbing dystopian crescendo. I particularly enjoyed trying to make sense of the relationships between the characters of each time period.

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complicated, genre-bending, and technically brilliant.

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I'd been reading reviews about David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob Zoet. I couldn't find any of his books in my local bookstore except Black Swan Green, which I bought (used) and read with increasing joy. At last, I've found a new real writer, someone who loves language but doesn't overdo it with false flourishes; who loves people and creates characters I want to know; who is deeply imaginative but creates worlds that feel familiar. Then I purchased The Thousand Autumns of Jacob Zoet, a slower and subtler novel, but rich with details that felt true to me (having lived in Japan for several years). Again, I was completely drawn in to the world he created, cared about the people he'd created, but was also delighted by his language, the sentences themselves. Finally, I read Cloud Atlas - and here were 6 worlds to inhabit, entirely different characters, changes of voice, visions of futures....I jumped back and forth, rereading passages, savoring sentences, then scurrying forward to follow the different plots. His pacing, his words....the brilliance of the whole...What can I say? It's hard to choose any best loved book for 2010, but the three of these would have to be the top three, and Cloud Atlas finally the very greatest.

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This is an amazing book in which David Mitchell manages to beautifully intertwine six stories with six different voices. Highly recommended.

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Best book I read this year!

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At first glance this book has six disparate stories. But, as in a tapestry, there are threads that bind them together with colors that re-emerge, disappear, or flash brilliantly to highlight the extreme humanity that is the heart of its theme. An excellent book club book to share.

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I loved the intricacy of these stories. Sometimes they echoed among each other faintly and other times there were direct and intriguing allusions. Figuring out why they all held together was part of the fun. Warning, it does get off to a slow start...

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Mitchell's writing is incredible and changes with the time and place of the narrative, which moves forward and backwards in time. With themes of imperialism, human dignity, commodification, consumerism, and environmental catastrophe, Mitchell takes the reader into despair, but leaves her (or him) with a tiny taste of hope. This book was enthusiastically recommended to me and I want to do the same. If you are reader, read this book.

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Cloud Atlas sits next to my autographed copy of Barry White's biography. Enough said.

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Typo correction: Mitchell effortlessly blends 6(!) stories together. A wonderful journey. A wonderful read.

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Mitchell effortlessly blends 4 stories together. A wonderful journey. A wonderful read.

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Totally original. Totally unexpected. Totally satisfying. To a person, everyone who has read on my recommendation raves. A book I will go back to again and again.

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Best book of the decade, in my opinion.

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Fans of Murakami, Chabon and Lethem should enjoy this masterful blending of genres, consisting of 6 separate narratives, seemingly disparate, but somehow Mitchell manages to coalesce them all into a mysterious whole.

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A wonderful, wide-ranging, fearlessly original book that earns the overused moniker "tour de force."

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A beautiful amalgam of the puzzle, sci-fi, noir, quest, memoir, and thriller genres. It contains stories within stories on every single page. It is Mitchell at his best, which to be honest, is right where he seems to hover whenever he writes fiction. My original copy has been read by no less than a dozen people, friends with a wide variety of tastes, backgrounds, and reading habits. All have enjoyed the novel, and have continued to discuss it, drop it into conversations, and buy copies for themselves (or partners, friends, family, etc.). If you haven't read Mitchell, this is definitely the place to start...it is sprawling, imaginative, prescient fiction from an extremely bright and entertaining author.

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The in-bounded structuring of tangentially linked stories that blossom, then close again layer upon layer, era upon era, is almost musical, not in any way forced. Mitchell's ability to appropriate diverse writing styles and inhabit different character voices amazes, though arguably he succeeds more in re-creating historical flourishes and bolting down modern-day plots than in projecting futuristic imagery. A tour de force that far exceeds the promise of his first two novels (also recommended) Ghostwritten and Number 9 Dream.

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Reading this multi-faceted novel will cultivage new and deep neurological grooves in your brain. Sevral genre's are contained in one wild ride of a story line; science fiction, historical adventure, mystery thriller, comedy. This one-of-a-kind book is one that you will finish, ponder, and then read again.

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David Mitchell displays an incredible breadth of writing styles in the interwoven tales of Cloud Atlas, with a mastery in each one, while simultaneously drawing the reader in through a succession of concentric -- and yet far-removed, both geographically and temporally -- intrigues. This book is a finely woven tapestry of words.

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This collection of six related stories defies categorization, but if you're a fan of David Mitchell's, rest assured you will love this one too. I consider it his best to date. Each story takes place in a different time period, with different characters, but all the narratives are brought together towards the end of the book to show the interconnectedness of the stories, how one inevitably leads to the next, and the next, and so on. Pure genius. A little sci-fi toward the end with robots and such, but wholly enjoyable. I am nominating this book for the "best book of the decade" prize. There is nothing else that even comes close and, as a librarian, I read quite a bit so that's saying a lot. While I don't remember every detail of all the story lines, I can tell you that, on the whole, this book has stayed on my mind from the moment I finished it about 5 years ago and I look forward to revisiting it someday soon.

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Who would have though that 10 years from Y2K we'd be where we are now? We do not live in the futuristic world so many thought would be here and yet we have experienced advancements unimagined for our time. Of my reading in the past ten years, no novel other than has reflected this conundrum more authentically than "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell. Through both his style and creative content, Mitchell captures the complexity of human time- our past, present, and future- as well as how we understand and move through it. He borrows from multiple styles and writes in them with the authority of their greats, including Dickens and Orson Scott Card to name just two. Structurally interesting, touching and powerful, "Cloud Atlas" is a book that is both timely and timeless. It is a perfect read when looking to get lost, to identify, to understand, to reflect, and when standing on the precipice of a new decade.

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When asked to name the best book I read in the last decade, this one came to mind immediately. It had some fierce competition from the likes of Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy, but several things about Cloud Atlas make it stand out as a singularly important novel. The author not only masters six distinct voices in six different periods, but does so using five different narrative techniques; the Victorian travel journal of a barrister in the Pacific, the letters from a bisexual expatriot composer to his lover, a mystery novel set in the 1970's, the memoirs of an aged publisher's escape from a home for the elderly, the interviews of a near-future clone bred to work in fast-food in the Korean "corpocracy," and the far-future oral history of a post-apocalyptic Hawaiian islander. In lesser hands the result could have been a lot of heat but no light, but Cloud Atlas evokes Nietzche's Eternal Return, weaving narratives together to explore the very nature of Being.

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David Mitchell hands us a work to a praised with Cloud Atlas. Each character and setting we are introduced to comes with thier own genre and conflict. Themed towards power struggles and the dangerous path humanity is on, it's a read that almost any audience can enjoy. On the surface, six short novellas that can be read for simple escapism. Deeper, it's the Bible meets Blackadder meets humanistic values. While I struggle to write a comprehensive summary (you almost forget the plot of the first by the time you reach the sixth) it's a book worth reading, if not adding to your bookself.

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This book drove me crazy. I would just get into the characters and plot when the author would switch to a different storyline. So then you are perplexed to read it accordingly or skip to the chapter of the characters you like. However, each plot slowly relates to the other, so you just can't. It really is such an original book with realistic tones from the past to the distant future. Plus the author added themes and character complexity.

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A jaw-droppingly brilliant novel that offers both virtuosic literary prowess and real soul. The structure is fascinating, the several genre styles pitch-perfect, and the plot fascinating and affecting. I won't spoil this book's many delights by revealing specifics. Mitchell is one of our most talented living writers, and Cloud Atlas is a book well worth reading.

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It's impossible to give a coherent summary of this book since in actuality there are 6 plots, with 6 entirely different narrative styles. And each of them will have you divided: on the one hand, you want to turn the page and discover what happens next. On the other hand, you want to reread each line, keeping the taste of his words on your tongue as long as possible. I think my vocabulary tripled from reading this book. So did my capacity for hope. Read it. Now.

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I read Cloud Atlas during the summer of 2005 and found it remarkable in terms of structure, imagination, detail, character and plot development. The author switches perspectives with ease which makes me scratch my head in wonder compared to your standard 'parallel plot-line fiction which ties it all together by the final page' book discussion club pick. Am uncertain that my group will be able to cut a wide swath through the plot-lines in the limited time which they have(a month, and a busy one) but will be proud to present such a unique book to my unsuspecting friends!Memorable read. Oct.13,2006