Once again I’ve gone off my reading diet. After it was recommended by multiple friends, I decided to read Cloud Atlas, a 2004 novel by British author David Mitchell. Its status as a novel is questionable, as it is really a collection of six novelettes with interesting, and often puzzling, inter-connections. The stories range in setting from the 19th century to the distant post-apocalyptic future. All but one center geographically around the Pacific Ocean.
“The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” is a Melville-esque account of shipboard life from the viewpoint of an American notary. While not the most gripping of the tales, it gives the author a chance to write some very convincing and entertaining faux-Victorian prose. The story includes the well-worn themes of abusive behavior by ships’ captains and the self-serving practices of missionaries who try to “civilize” native populations.
Far more entertaining is the second story, “Letters from Zedelghem.” The letters are written by Robert Frobisher, a young English composer serving as amanuensis to Vyvyan Ayres, an elder composer, in Belgium. Frobisher is writing to his friend and lover Rufus Sixsmith. The younger man is an unrepentant scoundrel intent on using his employer and his employer’s wife to advance his position within the musical world and to line his pocketbook. In searching through Ayres’s library, Frobisher discovers Ewing’s journal.
After the sparkling wit and humor of “Zedelghem,” “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery” is a bit of a let down. It is the story of a reporter on a quest to uncover corruption and unsafe practices at a California nuclear plant. The writing style is sort of John Grisham: classic airplane novel with minimal characterization and an unlikely, convoluted plot. Rufus Sixsmith, the recipient of the Zedelghem letters, is the elderly engineer who has compiled incriminating evidence against his employer. He, of course, is murdered, and it is our heroine’s job to find the “Sixsmith Report.”
“The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” is a black humor piece about a publisher who is involuntarily committed to a nursing home. Like the Luisa Rey section (here revealed to be a manuscript received by Mr. Cavendish), this story seems very unlikely, involving a daring escape, a bar-room brawl, and other hijinx that smell of Hollywood.
“An Orison of Sonmi~451” launches us into a dystopian Korea. “Fabricants,” or cloned humans, make up a working underclass supporting a government “corpocracy” that feels far too realistic. Sonmi~451 (I’m guessing her “model number” is a nod to Bradbury) is a fabricant server at Papa Song’s, a fast food restaurant. She escapes the restaurant and becomes affiliated with Union (i.e., anti-government) activists. We learn of her history as she tells her story to an archivist as a last act before her execution. At one point in the story, she sees a film based on the story of Cavendish.
The centerpiece of the novel is “Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After,” which takes place in Hawaii at a time when most of humanity has reverted to a pre-technological way of life following “the Fall.” The protagonist, Zach’ry, and his tribe are visited by Meronym, a woman from one of the few pockets of “Prescients,” those who retain some learning and technology. Together, Zach’ry and Meronym climb to an abandoned observatory and later face a genocidal attack by a neighboring tribe of savages. The story is narrated by Zach’ry in a created patois. Writing in a non-standard dialect, especially a made-up one, is a difficult trick to pull off and can make for a distracted and exhausting reading experience. Here it is sheer poetry, reminding me of Faulkner.
The novel’s stucture is a Russian doll affair in which all of the narratives except “Sloosha’s Crossin'” are interrupted and then returned to in reverse order: ABCDEFE’D’C’B’A’. The effect is that we read the beginning of each story without preconceptions, but by the time we get to the end, we have some context for it. When we read of Cavendish’s outlandish escape from the nursing home, we know that we are reading about a movie being watched in the future by a Korean fast-food worker. When we read about Sonmi~451’s seemingly failed rebellion against corpocracy, we know that she will be deified in the future.
Part of the fun of this novel is to determine the connections between the six narratives. Clearly, there is an element of reincarnation involved between the protagonists of different stories, some being identified by the awkward device of a comet-shaped birthmark. Riddles are also posed regarding the veracity of various stories. Are we to interpret “Sloosha’s Crossin'” as “true,” while “Luisa Rey” is fiction? But if “Luisa” is fiction, what about the link to Sixsmith of “Zedelghem”? Yes, it’s a post-modern, inter-textual muddle, but at least it’s an entertaining one.
Thematically, the commonality that seems most apparent is betrayal. Ewing is poisoned by a man whom he considers a friend. Frobisher realizes too late that he is not the great strategist he imagined and that Ayers has used him, not the other way around. Sonmi~451 realizes (but chooses not to care) that her miraculous ascent from Papa Song’s was orchestrated by the very corpocracy that she seems to have been fighting. In “Sloosha’s Crossin'” we have a counter-example in which Meronym seems to finally put her trust in the right person, since Zach’ry is strong enough to fight the temptations of “Ol’ Georgie.”
I notice that in the course of this summary, I’ve mentioned Faulkner, Melville, and Ray Bradbury, so maybe I haven’t strayed as far from my American reading plan as I thought.