Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - 4*

[Elise]

After finishing this book, I was left with a feeling of “what did I just read?” but in a good way. I had a hard time deciding on a star rating too, because it really feels like I read 6 different stories, and while I really enjoyed half of them (Sonmi, Luisa Rey and Zedelghem), others left me slightly unenthused (Adam Ewing, Timothy Cavendish and Sloosha). I varied between 3 and 5 for each of them, so I settled on 4 for the ensemble.

The aspect that fascinated me the most was the linguistics in the last two stories, the ones set in the future. Sloosha in particular must be absolute hell to read it you’re not fluent in English XD And I won’t even think about the translation! Mitchell was great at imitating different styles, and adapting his writing to each of them.

I was slightly disappointed though that we didn’t have an explicit explanation on the comet-shaped birthmark.

As Anita warned about this book, it was interesting but a tough read. I finished it just yesterday, so it just made the month, and put me way behind on my yearly goal!

[Rachel N.]

I have about 200 more pages to read, not sure if I'll get it finished this month or not. So far it's definitely a "what am I reading?" book.