**spoiler alert** I sometimes get asked for book recommendations and to be honest I rarely have a good response. I don't mind recommending books if I **spoiler alert** I sometimes get asked for book recommendations and to be honest I rarely have a good response. I don't mind recommending books if I know what people like, but there's a wide range of tastes out there and what works for me might not work for someone else. That said, I do have a very short list of books that I would, without hesitation, recommend to anyone who loves reading, regardless of what genres he/she prefers. And Cloud Atlas is on it. It's one of those books that you wish someone had told you about years ago.
Mitchell's books get talked about a lot for how ground-breaking they are in terms of structure (Tom Bissell, I'm looking at you!). I'll agree with you, Tom, that not so many novelists choose to break up a story and spread it over a 1000 year time span and six different narrators. But at the point when you claim that Mitchell's innovative structure makes us wonder "to what end things are being moved," you and I have to part ways, I'm afraid. For myself, at least, there doesn't really need to be a point to innovative narrative structure. It's just interesting to see what happens, I think, when a novelist disrupts the way we typically process a narrative. And it's even more interesting to see what happens when a novelist makes innovative narrative structures seem more compelling and enjoyable than anything else out on the market.
It is telling, I think, that Cloud Atlas is a novel in which a reader is simultaneously being constantly reminded of the very act of reading, even while the narratives themselves work to make the reader forget reading as a process. Each of the narratives nests within the others, and each one highlights or emphasizes reading repeatedly. The first story is a diary, the second story is a series of letters, the third is a manuscript, the fourth is a journal (in which the manuscript from story three is read) . . . you simply cannot get away from determined acts of reading in this novel. Every where you turn, practically, someone is reading. But for all that, it becomes very, very easy to forget that you are, in fact, reading a series of nested stories and to become completely lost in each new voice Mitchell presents. While enjoying the misadventures of Timothy Cavendish, the diary of Adam Ewing slips away, forgotten. And ditto for Timonthy Cavendish once Somni 451 begins her own tale. By the time you reach Zachry, it's downright difficult to remember this is a work of fiction.
Cloud Atlas isn't necessarily a book for everyone--it's a little bit Bertie Wooster, a smidgen of Blade Runner, and a pinch of M is for Murder. There's even something in there for fans of slapstick retirement home humor/One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. It's an odd mix of stories that undoubtedly won't appeal to a quite a lot of consumers. But for people who delight in the sheer joy of reading, Cloud Atlas should be at the top of the list. ...more
Safe Area Gorazde isn't an objective account of the war in Bosnia, nor is it so biased as to render the reader skeptical or disbelieving. It does, howSafe Area Gorazde isn't an objective account of the war in Bosnia, nor is it so biased as to render the reader skeptical or disbelieving. It does, however, question the very nature of being a reporter (or cartoonist) in a situation such as a civil war. Sacco repeatedly discusses the ethics of his role as a documenter, as well as the actions of other reporters who remain in Gorazde. Sacco's point seems to be that ultimately you cannot really know Gorazde and the situation there and yet remain objective about the conflict. That is, understanding the civil war in Bosnia necessitates that you forsake a central tenet of professional journalism. Whether you agree with him or not on this, his book at the very least forces us to ask what we really want out of our news reporting....more
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