Cloud Atlas might be the worst novel I have ever read, yet as I state this, it could quite possibly be the most ingenious novel in terms of form. As we all know it begins with the novel in the 19th century in journal format. This was an easy way to get a first hand (boring) account of what was going on at the time (ships and whatnot). Either way it gave the reader an initial chance to be introduced to diary writing and the name Sixsmith. Then it continues on to morph into a story, then a script and then a movie. After that it furthers it’s ideologies into a recorded interview and finally into a campfire tale. This shows just how cyclical everything in life turns out to be. It’s as if just when the point of destruction comes around that new life takes places and things start again. Not to digress to far, but it also shows how a novel can impact so very many people.
Going with that idea, I am inspired to look up other reviews of this novel and see what they had thought about this form of a novel. This is what I found:
- “Cloud Atlas is a singular achievement, from an author of extraordinary ambition and skill, setting himself challenges that would drive most authors to madness” (reviewsofbooks.com)
- “David Mitchell entices his readers on to a rollercoaster, and at first they wonder if they want to get off. Then – at least in my case – they can’t bear the journey to end. Like Scheherazade, and like serialised Victorian novels and modern soaps, he ends his episodes on cliffhangers and missed heartbeats. But unlike these, he starts his next tale in another place, in another time, in another vocabulary, and expects us to go through it all again” (guardian.uk.co)
- “What is interesting is the way the author deliberately chooses a symmetric nested structure so that you have to read the entire book to see what happens to each of the characters. Each chapter until he middle of the book ends abruptly but returns in the second half of the book to continue the plot. The writing styles are wildly different, requiring a prolific writer to master the nuances” (Bonjournal.com)
I have to agree with the idea that this novel is much like being on a rollercoaster in the sense that just as the section builds up you drop back down or drop off and start up with another hill of a section. I don’t like what the last quote says, however, in the sense that I do not need to be tricked into reading to the end of the novel and I do not think that Cloud Atlas has done that. I suppose I feel this way because I think that writing in journal form is a cop out to an extent (as I have written in previous posts), especially when the author does so and just leaves mid sentence.
Tabitha Said:
on November 5, 2008 at 9:33 am
I have to agree with your last quote and disagree with you. I think that the form of this novel does alot and works in a lot of ways. I don’t think that the journal form is a cop out, so much as it is clever. It allows Mitchell to jump through time and change voices, languages and perspectives. I admit, that stopping mid-sentence is a cruel ploy to use to entice the reader to keep reading…and if you didn’t know that it would come back to the story at some point, it could be really frustrating. But for our purposes, in the study of the novel as a form, it kind of excited me that Mitchell had a grander plan that just finishing one particular story start to finish. He lets us in on multiple lives and times, and shows us that everyone effects everyone else and history has continutity, however disjointed it may appear at first glance.