George answers “Just started reading it and can't...”

Maud asked this question about Cloud Atlas:

Just started reading it and can't understand most of the words used in almost every sentence... English is not my native language but I've been reading English novels since childhood without problem - does the writing get any easier or is the whole book like this?

George If your English is that inadequate for the first, 19th-century section, it means a) you can't easily read actual 19th-c. novels and b) things will get…moreIf your English is that inadequate for the first, 19th-century section, it means a) you can't easily read actual 19th-c. novels and b) things will get somewhat better for you as the novel progresses through the 20th--like what you've been reading--before things get much, much worse as it gets into a quirky 21st and an impressionistically rural language for the post-apocalypse, before the stories and styles continue in reverse order.

My library copy has a handwritten list of vocabulary items with their definitions tucked under the taped-down flap of the dust cover: blithely, schooner, moniker, evince, terraqueous, maroon (v.), pusillaninimity, penurious, brouhaha, paltry, cri de coeur, croupier, and amanuensis. If that list strikes anyone as a vocabulary test they couldn't pass, they will find the book to be difficult--the outer sections more for the vocabulary, the inner more for the distortions. (I knew all but terraqueous, which I got from context along with knowing its Latin roots, but then I'm unusual.)(less)

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