Cloud Atlas Review
What do a futuristic Korean slave, a Californian journalist, and a bisexual composer have in common?  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell delves into six separate stories in a hexad of unique time periods and a sextet of different genres in an attempt to answer that question.  Writing the book was undoubtedly a huge task, but Mitchell seems to form a story with ease.  Reading Cloud Atlas was like drilling through a matryoshka doll; the first five stories are divided equally around the novel’s “heart,” or the sixth story.  In other words, readers don’t finish reading the first five stories until they finish the sixth.  Cloud Atlas may seem confusing at first, but interested perusers should read the entire novel to gain six different perspectives on slavery.
“The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” forms the both the beginning and end of the novel.  It’s the diary of a lawyer on his way from the Chatham Islands to Honolulu, tracking all of the hate and intolerance he encounters.  Then comes “Letters from Zedelghem,” the writings of a composer who snakes his way into being the musical aide of Vyvyan Ayrs, a popular melodist of the time.  Readers then encounter “Half-Lives:  The First Luisa Rey Mystery,” where a local journalist for Spyglass Magazine covers the story of a nuclear power plant that’s tipping on the edge of disaster.  “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” is a humorous piece in which Cavendish finds himself trapped in a nursing home.  “An Orison of Sonmi~451” is set in dystopian, futuristic Korea, or “Neo-Seoul”; it’s the pre-execution interview of a diner-working clone, or “fabricant,” turned revolutionary.  “Sloosha’s Crossin’an’ Ev’rythin’ After” focuses on people trying to revive the last piece of civilization they have in post-apocalyptic Hawaii.
One of the main underlying themes of the book is how easy it is for groups to “enslave” one another.  Slavery may seem self-explanatory, but it has different meaning to all six of the main characters throughout the greater story.  To Adam Ewing, it’s the literal enslavement of the Moriori people by the Maori tribe and the subjection of Polynesians on the island of Raiatea by Caucasians.  To Robert Frobisher from “Letters from Zedelghem,” it’s Vyvyan Ayrs trying to steal his music from him.  To Sonmi~451, slavery is the “corpocratic” government of Neo-Seoul not giving clones equal rights to “purebloods.”  The theme of slavery is echoed in each of the narratives, and readers will find that the recurring moral connects the stories well.  Even though the stories are separated by hundreds, if not thousands, of years and are in different genres, they’re basically the same.  Mitchell writes the narratives in a way that’s not repetitive, either.  It’s a good “same,” the kind that reminds readers of the other stories and encourages them to think.
Mitchell draws on Hindu beliefs with the implied reincarnation of the protagonists.  Each of the main characters in the six stories has a comet-shaped birth mark.  Non-Hindu readers might have a hard time reading a novel that centers so much on past and future lives, but Mitchell isn’t trying to express his personal beliefs.  When asked if he actually believed in reincarnation in an interview with The Paris Review, he replied, “I would love to believe in reincarnation, but the answer is no.”  Mitchell uses reincarnation as another way to connect each of the layers of the matryoshka doll.
“The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” leaves readers feeling disappointed.  They would think that, being the first and last story, Adam’s diary would have something at the end to pull all six narratives together, but it does not.  It ends the book on a dull note.
Also, “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” was not a good choice to start and end the novel.  The diary was too boring, possibly the most boring story of the book.  All of the narratives are ordered chronologically, and “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” is the oldest, but Mitchell could have put in more effort to make the story more exciting.  He could have also written another story set before “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” that had a more dramatic ending.
“Half-Lives:  The First Luisa Rey Mystery” could have been more intriguing, too.  It feels insipid to read.  Readers will find themselves wanting reread Sonmi~451’s inspiring quotations, not read about Luisa’s comparatively boring life.  The drabness of this chapter might have been because Mitchell is trying to adopt the Nancy Drew style of prose, but Mitchell’s approach doesn’t really work.  There’s no character development in this narrative.  Each member of the cast seems shallow, and readers don’t really have anything to secure in any of the characters to become attached.
Mitchell does a great job at weaving between diaries and interviews to fiction containing dialogue.  For example, readers would be confused if Sonmi~451 included a quotation about her experiences in “Papa Song’s” restaurant (a futuristic McDonald’s) right after the “Archivist,” or interviewer, asked her a question.  Most people don’t talk that way.  Mitchell uses a carefully constructed algorithm to get readers to the point where they’re reading fiction narrated by Sonmi~451 without them noticing the change.  At certain points in “An Orison of Sonmi~451,” readers will be surprised at the fact that the Archivist is even still there.  He’ll interrupt Sonmi~451’s narrated fiction by asking another question, effectively pulling readers back into the “real” world.
“An Orison of Sonmi~451” and “Sloosha’s Crossin’an’ Ev’rythin’ After” are both written in evolved forms of English.  The former is written in a more high-technology form.  For example, instead of saying, “Executive,” Sonmi~451 would say, “Xecutive.”  Similarly, all words with “ex” in them are changed to have “x.”  The latter is written in a primal, tribal dialect.  Readers will find themselves second guessing their translations and having to use context clues to discover what a certain word means.  They will find the matryoshka doll’s heart, or the sixth story, the hardest to read because of its language, but they should force themselves to translate and push through; the benefits far outweigh the extra time. 
Cloud Atlas is reminiscent of a play by Thornton Wilder called Our Town.  They’re both “experience pieces,” which means they’re not in any one genre; they’re both read purely for the inwardness that opening the novel or play entails. They also are both about human nature.  David Mitchell spoke about his inspiration from Wilder in the same interview with The Paris Review.  He said, “We studied Our Town at school when I was fifteen. It was one of the first works of literature that moved me.”  He even includes a tribute to Thornton Wilder in “Half-Lives:  The First Luisa Rey Mystery.”  He said, “I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey at university. It’s a glorious thing, packed with ideas for other possible books… I named one of the characters [in Cloud Atlas] Luisa Rey as a kind of tribute.”
Cloud Atlas is a good read for anyone looking to be put out of their comfort zone.  The novel will introduce readers to entirely new genres and styles of writing.  For example, someone who usually only reads science fiction and fantasy will find themselves naturally gravitating towards the central stories, “An Orison of Sonmi~451” and “Sloosha’s Crossin’an’ Ev’rythin’ After.”  They may also find themselves enjoying “Letters from Zedelghem,” which opens up historical fiction as a genre for future reading.  If readers are feeling explorative, or if they simply like a tantalizing title, they should give this novel a try.