bookrev: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

The connectedness of everything

You can call it the “small world” phenomena, or the theory that everything is connected. But David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas portrays a sometimes tight and sometimes loose connection of six pieces of time and the characters in them. Each of the separate stories is individual and very well written, with characters that bring out emotions in the reader one way or the other…yet each story is pulled together.

The book is written as a wrapper, with half of the first five stories started as incomplete, then the complete sixth, followed by the last halves of the five in reverse order, revealing or completing the revelation of how they are interconnected.

The author captures the “voice” of each of the characters, their situations and time periods admirably. From the obviously 17-1800’s based Adam Ewing on a sea voyage to Robert the moocher who finally finds inspiration, and inspires others in the story, to the futuristic times where life has gone backwards into kind of a stone age…very little description of the environment, but you can see it in the dialog and actions of the characters.

Even though some of the stories are smoother to read than others, and more impactful, the thread(s) keeps them together.

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