Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

[Larry]

Barbara and Ruth,

It was a total surprise to me. And I was glad at how it led to that satisfying ending.

[Lynn]

Several people have said that the Argos portion was their least favorite, but it was one I liked best. I've read several sci-fi novels lately with plots about space travel to new planets to escape conditions on Earth, so I bought into the premise completely. I was very surprised at the ending, but thought it was remarkable. I liked the way Konstance figured it all out through her wanderings in the Atlas.

What did you think about some of the subtle threads through all the stories - specifically the owls and the idea of "trustyfriend"? I liked that Konstance's key to figuring things out in the Atlas was looking for the owl symbols - it really tied things back to the original Greek story for me.

[Larry]

Lynn,

I didn't I like it best, but I liked the Argos sections just as much as the other parts.

[Ruth]

Owls are all tied up with Greek mythology.

[Gina]

I would have gotten so much more out of the book if I had known more Greek mythology. My husband is now reading it and he points things out to me, like the rest of you have. Thanks for all the knowledge Constant Readers have.

[Larry]

Ruth wrote: "Three of these four books relied on the same formula. Find a bunch of disparate individuals and situations, hop back and forth between them seemingly willynilly, then tie everything together at the end. He does it very well, but I’d like to see him stretch his wings beyond his familiar structure sometime. "

I want to return to this point made by Ruth earlier. It would be easy to argue against it, saying that composer who followed sonata form in their symphonies, like Beethoven and Mozart, created miraculous results. The same for some poets with sonnet form. And then to point out that it's not the familiar form that's a problem, but what an artist does with it. That's one line of argument that does make sense.

But I actually agree with Ruth. I'm reading Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway. It's so incredibly different than what he does in A Gentleman in Moscow. Towles does what I think that Ruth is suggesting for Doerr and that is to use his prodigious talent to great advantage to work in a totally different way. So, yeah, I'm hoping for something very different next time also. But if it isn't, I'll still read him.

[Donna]

@Larry, I agree with what you said regarding Towles and The Lincoln Highway. He showed his versatility with that addition to his repertoire.

[Ann D]

Thanks, Lynn for pointing out the threads that connect the stories, specifically the "owls." As you pointed out, Ruth, they play an important role in Greek mythology. They are a symbol of wisdom, and Athena the goddess of wisdom is often pictured with them

Using Kindle search, I went back and and looked for other references to owls which I had missed the first time around. Here are some:

-the book drop at the present-day library is shaped like an owl and has the inscription "Owl you need are books."

- Aetheon wants to be transformed into either an eagle or a "bright, strong owl" in order to travel to the magic Cloud Cuckoo Land. Instead he gets to be a crow - quite a letdown.

Two very large owls guard the gate to the magic kingdom and tell Aetheon that he has to solve a riddle before he can enter the magic kingdom.

He accidentally solves it and then is greeted by an enormous goddess (Athena?), who has owls perched on her body and flying all around her. She gives him a book and tell him that if he reads to the end, he can never go back to earth.

So what does he decide and does Zeno's version make sense?

[Ann D]

Another connecting thread for me was that the book was used multiple times to comfort a sick child. Diogenes supposedly wrote it for his niece who was very ill. Anna read it to comfort her dying sister. Later she read it to one of her own children. This time the listener was saved.

I'm sure there were other connecting threads in this novel. A book with such a large scope in time and space needs them.

Any other ones you noticed?

[Katy]

I did not get it and was completely surprised. Then I began to question the whole Argos experiment. Was the virus real? Did anyone suspect that the whole journey to another planet was a scientific experiment? Why would anyone sign up for a trip that would take 500 years meaning they would never live to see its success. This was a major sticking point. I could not suspend my disbelief.

[Lynn]

I believe that the virus was real, and I think it got in because the Argos wasn't as tightly sealed as it was supposed to be. (Remember the ant that Konstance saw crawling up the wall, and she wondered how it got in there?)

As for whether the Argos was a scientific experiment - I hadn't thought of it, but I think that's possible. That might make more sense than thinking that they would live inside it (through many generations) until the Earth was habitable again... if it ever was.

[Katy]

Here is a book that is almost an homage to books, to libraries, and to librarians. The first fifty pages were were so confusing that I almost gave up, but the characters were so engaging and their stories so interesting I kept reading. Anna, Omeir, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance, the five disparate individuals living in different eras and different countries, who are somehow brought together by their connection to an old book written in ancient Greek is the focus of this novel. It is also a story of courage, hardship, self reliance, and love - historical fiction, science fiction, and contemporary fiction so well written that I finished it in a week and loved it.

[Lynn]

Last night I was fortunate to listen to Anthony Doerr talk about this book at the Iowa City Book Festival. Your comments about it being an homage to books, libraries and librarians was spot on, Katy - he talked about that quite a bit. He also talked about the experiences of astronauts seeing the world differently once they've viewed it from space, and how interconnected everything is on this planet.

One of the most interesting things to me, though, was this schematic he developed to keep track of all the elements of the book as he was writing:
https://www.anthonydoerr.com/book-sch...

[Donna]

So a year and a half later, I got to this book. Actually I didn’t think I wanted to read it based on a few reviews, but I’m so glad I did. I was engaged from the first page. For me, it was about the power of story in the human experience - how stories serve to preserve and connect cultures, to inform our lives and sometimes to transform them. I enjoyed reading all of the comments from the group discussion.

[Ann D]

This book is a favorite of mine, Donna.

[Sue]

I’m glad you enjoyed it, Donna. I really did too.

[Barbara]

I've loved everything I've read by Anthony Doerr but I definitely think this is his best.