From the Bookshelf of Classics Without All the Class…

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

Start date: November 1, 2012

Finish date: November 30, 2012

Why we're reading this: For November we will be reading the contemporary classic Cloud Atlas! Please feel free to add your though…more
[close] For November we will be reading the contemporary classic Cloud Atlas! Please feel free to add your thoughts to the forums regarding this new classic!

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Apr 28, 2017 Avisek Bandyopadhyay rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: metaphysical, awesome-reads, literary-genius, lofty

I would have rather waited a day to assimilate the insanely ambitious plot, the lofty vocabulary prowess, the rather concocted world building skills of David Mitchell, but procrastination is my shadow. I would rather risk writing an incredibly amateurish review of the book rather than none at all. When I bought this book, I was in awe of the scope of the book that this book has stitched through a 300 year epoch with 6 inter-related but fairly independent stories. Now that I have read it, I resea I would have rather waited a day to assimilate the insanely ambitious plot, the lofty vocabulary prowess, the rather concocted world building skills of David Mitchell, but procrastination is my shadow. I would rather risk writing an incredibly amateurish review of the book rather than none at all. When I bought this book, I was in awe of the scope of the book that this book has stitched through a 300 year epoch with 6 inter-related but fairly independent stories. Now that I have read it, I researched why did the author name it Cloud Atlas - because Cloud is a variable manifestation of Atlas - the world. Makes sense.

The book starts with a voyager, Mr Erwing, a notary sailing through Australia & New Zealand accompanied by an illustrious doctor, Dr Goose. The first story cuts short mid sentence when we see a young, vivacious, scheming, self proclaimed talented schemes his way to a revered musician's home as an apprentice and sleeps with his wife and he regales his adventures there to his lover, Sixsmith. In his letters, he admits stumbling on the journal of a Mr Erwing which he ssteals and sells it for profit. The third story, has Dr Sixsmith meeting a young journalist looking out for a big scoop. The young journalist stakes her life to reveal something sinister in a David vs Goliath setup. The fourth story has an old publisher, Timothy Cavendish, being locked in an asylum accidentally by her brother where he reads the novel of a young journalist Luisa Rey. The old guy desperately wants to get out of that hospice but to no avail. And we shift to a dystopian future world shaped by genomics where a cloned servant has evolved to see the futility in her existence. In her process of ascension to being a human with a thinking mind and a conscious, she sees the movie 'The ghastly ordeal of Cavendish. The next story introduces us to a world after human civilization has fell and the world lives in pockets of tribal people who die befor they reach 30-35 because the sky is ripped, the sea has boiled and the earth is uninhabitable. And then the author to finish these stories in a reverse chronological order.

I think reading is like a progression. You start with easier stories and graduate to intriguing, compelling ones and then you get your kick from only well written, seemingly impossible fictions. I think I have skipped a step here when I picked this book. The language was hard, the words unheard of and the way David Mitchell spreads his world, I could see what he was trying to show but as if with a translucent glass. I got the map but didnt get the details. I didn't feel left or unsatisfied because the effort and the concentration needed to read the book, the stories were rewarding enough. But I am fidgety that I couldn't get the flavor the author wanted me to.

However, on the story part, it was spectacular. The same theme recurred through the novel - how the strong eats the weak, how compassion and empathy plays second fiddle to the urge to exploit and rule the weaker tribes. As a consumer, how human race is feeding on itself till there's nothing to feed on. And history doesn't teach us a damn thing. Because, history is an outcome of beliefs. And until and unless, we change our belief, we are all eating ourselves to oblivion, to doom.

However, not all is lost. Through this stirring tales of deceit, corruption, greed, exploitation which is the way of the world - we have enough entropy within us to exert empathy. A little exertion of our inner conscious, a little extolling of our virtues, we become Heroes in our rights, And though, we may not shape or influence the outcome of the world, but we set forth a deck of dominoes and hopefully that will keep the world in balance.

Be it Erwing's bravado to take flak yet save Atatutu, the slave or Frobisher's inspiration to make his magnum opus, or Napier's decision to bunk retirement and fight for Luisa Rey to take up the corporation, or Cavendish'e friendship with the resourceful couple scheming their escape, or the Sonmi's accession and her commitment to make herself heard despite her certain death sentence or Zacchary's adventure to save the Smart Prescient..the stories resonate with the fundamental Good vs Evil. It makes no bane in saying that Good will outdo Evil but it believes Good will ultimately outdo Evil and that we might get a chance to save us from ourselves if we accept our empathies a little more convincingly.

Brilliant David Mitchell. Though, I dont think I would come back to you sooner till you mellow down your vocabulary fireworks for something more palpable that beckons to us, still amateur readers. ...more

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