All my fears that this book would be a pretentious head-trip were initially reinforced when the first segment of the book ended abruptly. Right when I felt myself getting attached the main character, a Englishman aboard a merchant ship in the South Pacific circa 1830, I was moved into the mind of an unrelated character about 90 years later, a man escaping nefarious schemes in London to pursue an assistant position with a prominent modern composer in declining health. But once I came across mysterious and resonating links between the stories, I was able to relax and enjoy the ride. And a ride it is, skipping forward to stories in more contemporary times and eventually to a time of a dystopic society followed by a post-apocalyptic period where civilization is barely holding on.

Each of the six story settings represents a robust free-standing novella with engaging characters and distinctive (and marvelous) writing styles. Yet each repeats and elaborates themes central to human culture and history and each connects forward and backward with the other stories. If that reminds you of music, Mitchell lets his hair down at one point and has his musical character write to a friend about his work on a “sextet for overlapping soloists” which is a clear analogy to his book’s structure: “each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order.” His character’s humility about his experimental approach seems likely to reflect Mitchell’s own attitude about his creation: “Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until its finished, and by then it’ll be too late…”

I gather that the stories all have a lot to do with the nature of history and the history of human nature, with an overriding concern on the misery and devastation wreaked by the minority of wealthy societies and classes and races within cultures. This seems to mirror the current squaring off of the 1% haves and 99% have nots in the West and the thrust of Jared Diamond’s work on how disparities in control of resources arise and how their squandering contributes to collapse of societies. In the 19th century scenario, a venal character who benefits from colonialism quips that there are two laws of survival, the first being: “The weak are meat the strong do eat” and “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.” In the early 20th century story, the lead character predicts: “Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to savages, to modern man, are the same faculties that’ll snuff out Homo sapiens before the century is out!” In the dystopian future, a revolutionary intellectual returns to the first theme: “in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only ‘rights’, the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.” By the postapocalypic movement, a wise elder recognizes with simple clarity that: “human hunger birthed the Civ’lize, but human hunger killed it too” …”hunger that made Old Uns rip out the skies an’ boil up the seas an’ poison the soil with crazed atoms an’ donkey ‘bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned…”

Another key metaphor for the structure of the book and Mitchell’s exploration of history is that of a set of Russian matryoshka dolls, the ones with multiple figurines successively encased. A character in the 1970’s concerned with stopping implementation of an unsafe nuclear power system notes down a model of time as “an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each ‘shell’ (the present) encased inside a nest of ‘shells’ (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of ‘now’ likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I shall call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.” This fascinating distinction between actual and virtual pasts and presents is explained by this character’s notes. Suffice it to say here that their divergence has to do with an individual or a society's beliefs, which can empower them to swim against the tide of disparity and destruction. Each lead character in the novel represents such a hero, and their combined stories make for a very satisfying and uplifting symphony.

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