It seems to have become the “it” book of the post-grad set for the past year, but unlike most books that achieve that status, it’s super-interesting. It’s a collection of five or six different interrelated stories, roughly 80 pages each, taking place throughout different eras of history and written in the appropriate style for each age. So the first story is a “Horatio Hornblower”-esque tale of sea travel written in the appropriate style, the next is a series of letters from a foppish dandy in the 1930’s, the next story is an Elmore Leonard-esque 1970’s crime story, and so on. There’s even a story that takes place in the 22nd Century, written in a sort of 133t sp33k that hints at the corporate evolution of language. It’s a neat book so far, but for the amount of fuss made over it being a “Nabokovian Puzzle Book,” the connections between the stories have been disappointingly literal and obvious so far (I’m about halfway through). I hear that the “puzzle-ness” really picks up in the second half and that things get dense there. Hope so!
I have it but haven’t yet read it. His book “Ghostwritten” was stunning though, and I look forward to Cloud Atlas. “Number 9 Dream” by him was quite good as well.
Yeah, I’m getting that vibe. I think part of my problem is that I just read Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” and “Ada,” which kind of wrote the book (no pun intended) on “puzzle books.”
I’ve read “Cloud Atlas” and really enjoyed it. I would not describe it as a puzzle book, as I don’t think you have to look all that hard to see the connections. Some of the stories were riveting, but others, not too interesting for me. Loved the Korean dystopian section.
I really enjoyed it also, but although everybody said it was a puzzle book it definately wasn’t. In fact, I think playing with the form like that was silly and unnecessary - if you’re not going to do a puzzle book, why pretend like you’re about to? It got in the way of the stories, which I loved. It wasn’t the Profound Book of the Year they acted like it was, but I did really love it. Pretty depressing, though.
Ahhh… resurrecting the thread.
First question: what is a puzzle book? I didn’t feel like the connections between stories were supposed to be hard to figure out. It wasn’t like he disguised the birthmark, or the cyclic references, or anything else. Maybe it’s because I had no idea what it was about, or how it was written, but I rather enjoyed it for the cycle idea.
I didn’t feel like it was too depressing though. Kind of uplifting in the end, until you realize the future has already been written.
The one thing that kept bothering me was the way they referred to Mount Taemosan. In Korean, the san at the end means mountain. So it’s like saying Mount Rushmore Mountain. Little thing, I know, but it bothered me nonetheless.
So why didn’t Cavendish have the comet birthmark? That was the only story without one as far as I remember.
I read it last winter. I appreciated it for what it was: a well-executed “travelogue” of sorts, taking the reader through different ages and genres of fiction, with what amounts to a nifty parlour trick binding the sections together.
Brilliant philosophy it’s not; Mitchell’s insight hardly goes deeper than “it only takes one person to make change happen.” But some of the sections - especially the Korean dystopia of the future - are great fun. I’d recommend it.