Cloud Atlas

You know it’s a difficult novel when you open a new word document and you go ‘hooo boy’ before you’ve typed a single letter.

Cloud Atlas is a novel by David Mitchell (not the comedian, I was confused about that at first) with probably the most difficult storyline to explain – definitely if I don’t want to give too much details away. It’s a novel that follows six people who all highlight civilization in all its glory and decay through time. The only problem is that the reader (or maybe just me) can’t figure out if these characters are “fictional” in the novel’s universe, or “real”, or both.
Each of these people are very different, and the author has done a marvellous job at showing this through six very different writing stiles. Though all stories have the Simple Past tense in common, there are clear differences; one person likes to use “&” in every other sentence, another lives in a future with lots of ‘x’ words where the ‘e’ isn’t mentioned anymore (Experience becomes xperience, and so on). Or try reading fiftysomething pages in some southern farmer dialect.



Though the book didn’t rank high enough to become one of my new favourites, it’s definitely a book that stands out from all the other books I’ve read so far this year because of its format – although I guess Julian Barnes History of the World in 10 ½ chapters is kinda like it. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I think I will if we have it at our library.

Only read this if you feel smart :p

Until next time,

Bejoes