Has anyone completed Cloud Atlas? If so, I was curious what you thought. Everyone on goodreads has basically said it was the greatest book that they've ever read. I'm curious if everyone on here agrees.

I read it a couple of weeks ago. It was not the greatest book I've ever read, but it was quite engaging and really well written. I'm a fan, personally, of non-traditional narratives, though I can see how for some it might be distracting. When I finished it I mentioned that in order to increase my enjoyment of the novel I had to remind myself that it wasn't merely a poor man's if on a winter's night a traveler, but rather another novel using a disjointed narrative and interwoven stories.

Of the books I've read thus far on this list (that I hadn't read previously), it is certainly one of the better ones.

i agree with that, it was very engaging and well written. i'm just slightly confounded by the number of people that label it as one of the greatest books ever.

I will be reading Cloud Atlas this week. I will post my thoughts on the book when I finish. I've heard great things!

I was going to start a discussion on this book if there hadn't been one already. I really want to talk about the comet-shaped birthmarks and some of the things that repeat from story to story and connect the pieces. Does anyone else? So who had the birthmark? First mention is Frobisher, right? Then Luisa? Then Sonmi, was it? Did Timothy Cavendish? And Meronym? What's the significance? What do these characters have in common?

Looking back for what I think is the first reference to the birthmark on page 85, I reread the passage on Ayrs's dream on page 79 and realized it's about Papa Song's and the fabricants.

Oh, and how did Zachry end up surrounded by young, were they, Valleysmen? Did he and Meronym have kids, or did he meet back up with the Kolekole girl somehow?

All-in-all, I did think the book was genius, but don't think Mitchell needed to moralize and wish he had refrained.

I actually really disliked it and found it boring - so much so that I only read three quarters of it, which is rare for me as I hate to not finish a book, even if I dislike it. Some of the stories were ok, but I generally found there wasnt really anything which made me care about the characters or want to find out more about them.

Yay, Emma - I'm so glad your revived this thread!

About the comet birthmark: I've seen some discussion about the idea of reincarnation. That the protagonists in each story are literally the same "comet-soul." I guess the author, Mitchell has said, "All of the [leading:] characters except one are reincarnations of the same soul ... identified by a birthmark. ... The "cloud" refers to the ever-changing manifestations of the "atlas", which is the fixed human nature. ... The book's theme is predacity ... individuals prey on individuals, groups on groups, nations on nations."

On a first reading, I can't say I really thought of the reincarnation, especially because I don't remember Cavendish having the birthmark. In fact, he thinks the manuscript for Luisa Rey is weak because she thinks she's Frobisher reincarnated. He said "Far too hippie-druggy-new age." If Mitchell really wanted to discuss reincarnation, I thought he'd be a bit more obvious about it.

That said, I kind of wish there were a few more connections between the stories, besides the obvious finding the diary, record, Orison, etc. I was hoping for some twisty connections, like a mysterious letter opener, or seeing the same person in each story, or something else "Lost"-like. It sounds like you found one - I'll have to go back and re-read Ayrs's dream.

I totally agree with you that the end got really preachy, and really, really didn't have to. By then the reader gets it: the stories are all about subjugation of the "weaker" person. I also thought the Ewing story was dull and I had a tough time getting through it. My favorite section was An Orison of Sonmi-451, but I love sci-fi.

Which sections did/didn't you like?

Cindy wrote: "My favorite section was An Orison of Sonmi-451, but I love sci-fi."

That section was also my favourite. I'm just now entering the world of scifi, and that unexpected "exposure" to it was really fascinating. I also like the God aspect in the sixth story (I have a weird relationship with religion) but the language in the story was really difficult to read. (Might have been the translation.)

I think I was least engaged by the Timothy Cavendish story at first. And I never warm initially to sci-fi, so when I got to the Sonmi section and the central post-apocalyptic section, I thought, oh no, will it just keep going into the future now. But in the end I enjoyed every section. I didn't know it was going to fold back in on itself because I didn't let myself read any of the blurbs and didn't look ahead even though I was dying to, until I was nearing the end of the central piece. I was relieved when I saw that each piece was to be revisited. And I liked that the clouds on the tops of the pages moved in toward the center of the book and back out again.

I found the Frobisher section very sad and depressing. I feel cold just thinking about it now. The idea of this man, who's not very likable, having been disinherited. He is a funny character though. He knows that Dr. Goose is a vampire of sorts, and I didn't believe him, and then, when I got back to that section at the end, I was like, well, I'll be damned, Frobisher was right. Which of course he was.

There were a couple of other echoes I can remember now, Cindy, but I've had to return my copy to the library. In the second half of the Luisa Rey story, when she and Napier are at the marina, the boat from the Ewing piece, the Prophetess, is in the marina there and its restoration is commented on. Luisa gets a sense of deja vu there.

But I think I did want it to be more of a game with puzzle pieces that would fit together and amount to something more, not that the simple echoing isn't nice.

I also noticed that Timothy Cavendish spins a globe in his office at some point and then I noticed another character or two in other sections doing this. Maybe someone in Sonmi's story. And there was Meronym's cartography. So there's the atlas being "the fixed human nature" as Mitchell says, Cindy, but there's that map sense of the word too.

Another reaction that I had, and I'll close with this, is that when I started reading the detective story section, which I enjoyed very much because I like detective fiction, I was so disappointed to realize that it was "fiction." Sixsmith showing up in a detective story made it unreal to me and made me question, so is this all fiction? I wanted it all to be true. I can't even describe it, but I think this is one of the things Mitchell is playing with. It's of course all fiction of his invention but I was enjoying the idea that Ewing's was a real journal and that Frobisher's letters were real, but then it makes no sense for this real person, Sixsmith, to show up in a detective story and I was let down about the direction I thought the book was taking. But maybe the detective story is based on actual events...

I'm not making any sense, but it messed with my mind is all I'm trying to say! :D

I hated the book. Based on the reviews, I was expecting a big finish to justify the read. I thought it was horrible and that the connection between the narrative plots was easily manufactured. I found it very disappointing.

Jamie wrote: "I hated the book. Based on the reviews, I was expecting a big finish to justify the read. I thought it was horrible and that the connection between the narrative plots was easily manufactured. I..."

Part of me wonders if this is why I'm looking so hard for deeper meanings and connections...

I enjoyed several of the individual narratives, but did not think that the whole came together very well. I was expecting everything to be slowly knitted together in the second half (after the middle story: 'Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After'), because it wasn't I became increasingly disappointed. I was hoping the ending would be big and bold to resolve both this disappointment and the individual narratives; but it was very weak.

The themes were too weakly drawn to bring it together without a very good ending. I thought it would have been better as a set of themed short stories: that way a big ending would not have been so necessary.

Regarding the stories: My favourite was 'An Orison of Sonmi~451'. I did not enjoy 'The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish' at all, and I was not keen on the 'Letters from Zedelghem'. I did like the fact that each story was written in a different style and I thought the author was quite successful with most of them.