Karen's review

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49628.Cloud_Atlas?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Cloud Atlas" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1170360941m/49628.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49628.Cloud_Atlas?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Cloud Atlas</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4565.David_Mitchell">David Mitchell</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/10162998?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>I enjoyed this book and its nesting stories very much and was left to ponder--what does it all mean? In my view (an perhaps no one else's!) Mitchell has re-interpreted Virgil's Aeneid to provide us a guiding myth for the destruction of Western civilization--just as Virgil provided the guiding myth for the foundation of Rome/Western civilization. Mitchell mirrors the construction of the Aeneid--the first six chapters tell of journeys, the last six of the acts of defiance/battle driven by the sense of duty of the main character in opposition to the prevailing self-interest of others. Virgil took loose tales and bound them into the Aeneid--Mitchell takes the Aeneid and unbinds it into loose tales---an allegory for Virgil's narrative of the building of a civilization and Mitchell's narrative of its destruction. <br/> <br/>The disintegration of civilization is also conveyed in the movement of the narrative form from the most intimate to the least: journal to self; letters to lover; news article to public; screenplay to public; video interview to archive; also in the primary family relationships of the narrator from most intimate to least: wife/son; lover; parents; sibling; fellow snomis (family relationships also being a theme in the Aeneid); and finally in the nature of the challenge to the main character's sense of soulfulness/duty: religious principle; intellectual principle; societal institutions; family structure and finally basic human rights. At the end (middle) of the story, modern civilization has collapsed and a new soul-ful society is described with the most intimate of narratives (storytelling), relationships (family and tribe) and principles. <br/> <br/>Aeneas' reaction to the painting of the sack of Troy: "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt---these are the tears of things, and our mortality cuts to the heart" is quoted by a key character and started me on this interpretation. Isn't Mitchell challenging us to think about our own Troy? And while Virgil begins with an invocation "O Muse, recall to me the reasons...", Mitchell ends with a challenge to the reader: "He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain and his family must pay it along with him! and only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!" Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"" <br/> <br/>Recommend it for the very engaging narratives and for its ability to make me think about what Mitchell is saying and how he is saying it. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/669838?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>