To be honest, I've been procrastinating about writing this review since I've read the book, which, coincidentally, is the reason why I didn't start writing them again until a few weeks ago. I have so many conflicting feelings about this book, I don't even know where to begin.
I guess I'll start by saying that I don't know how to rate it, what to rate it, or if it deserves the title of "favourites" on my goodreads shelving.
Cloud Atlas is, without a doubt, a masterpiece. But of what sort?
Please also note that I watched the movie long before reading the book, so I went into the whole experience with expectations. I will be referring to the movie frequently throughout my review and giving a deeper analysis of the book-to-movie translation and why I think it worked well.
Caution: The following contains spoilers
To continue on with this review, I'm going to speak on each section of the book. Starting, of course, with
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing:
One of the problems that I found when reading and watching this part was that Adam is a softer character. I feel that, until the end, he blindly follows in his beliefs, and has expectations of the goodness in people which can't possibly be true. This annoyed me. However; on further reflection of these sections, they are quite remarkable and I find myself look back on them with a softness and love that I didn't believe my heart possessed.
I found the island that they visited quite interesting. In some ways it reminds me of the vague recollections I have of More's Utopia, though I can't speak on the legitimacy of these claims. I think that this period was a good place to start. The whole book speaks to the value of human life, which I will delve into greater depths later, and it is quite obvious when we talk about Slavery.
Also, although the doctor was evil, his separation of symbols is interesting.
Letters from Zedelghem
This is, by far, my least favourite part. I enjoyed the edition of the daughter, Eva, in the book as opposed to the movie. It gave the story more flow. I did not enjoy Robert's "infatuation" with her, if you can call it that.
Where to start with Robert Frobisher? First off, he is incredibly cruel, thoughtless, fleeting, self-absorbed, and an ego-manic. It is established that Rufus Sixsmith is his lover, yet he tells Rufus of his sexual encounters and infatuations without second thought. I always feel so bad for Rufus, because, especially later in the story, it become so clear that his feelings for Robert are much stronger than Robert's for him, which makes the story a little more tragic.
Although I love my brooding, hopeless romantic, starving artist, as much as the next person, I find Robert to be a poor example of this. I feel like he is not creating "Art for Art's Sake" [there's a word for that I can't remember] music as he wants, but creating art for the sake of reputation. Though he feels he disregards reputation as a disowned son, he constantly lies about it and tried to uphold a false good reputation with Ayrs.
Finally, I will talk about his suicide. I have found that some people think this is "romantic" that he may have "died for his art" or like the idea of suicide so romanticize his character and distort him to such a point that he becomes the hero of his story instead of the villain that I have cast him as. I find this the most frustrating. First, I find his statement that suicide takes great courage to be misleading. You will find no arguments here that pulling a trigger to end one's own life takes tremendous courage, but that is the only part of suicide that I find in any way courageous. I found that through his entire story Robert was searching for reasons to die, and this mentality should, in now way, be admired and it baffles me that some people do. Robert is, deep down, a weak character. Not weakly written, in fact I find that Mr. Mitchell writes him very well, but weak morally. This weakness is highlighted even more by having his story book ended by two stories that feature two quite morally strong characters. I feel like Robert just gives up because he can't have what he wants, like an infant throwing a temper tantrum because he cannot have a toy times ten. It bothers me even more that he knew Sixsmith was there and he still followed through with his plan to kill himself instead of reuniting with his friend and lover and working through his problems. I find that his greatest act of cowardice, because his whole novel is an act of cowardice, is the one that ends his letters.
I believe, in the deepest parts of my soul, that Mitchell is trying to tell us something important about the value of human life in this section. That we are each free to live our own lives under pretenses that we create but have to deal with the consequences of them. To live a false life brings the highest of consequences, death, caused by the greatests of guilt's.
Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery
I find this section quickly becoming my favourite. I love Luisa Rey. I find her incredibly strong. I also immensely enjoy the science behind this section.
This section is going to be much shorter and I'm going to skip to the value of human life. Unlike in the following section the focus isn't as much on slavery or unfair working conditions expect for the brief view we get into the sweat shop while Luisa and Joe Napier and trying to escape from Bill Smoke, which is not the main focus of the story. The main focus is the building of a nuclear power plant that will most likely fail according to the Sixsmith report and kill a lot of people. I feel like this is calling the government and corporations into question and their responsibility to the lives of their electorates and paying customers. That when they receive only one report that says that
x is dangerous and shouldn't be allowed to be developed further without more research and have five others that give it the go ahead, that they should halt the project, because even the smallest sliver of doubt it too much.
I did enjoy the fact that Luisa got to meet Sixsmith. It made the story transfer more complete in some ways.
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish
The first time I watched the movie, I missed the connection between Timothy Cavendish and Luisa Rey. Now I wonder if it was Javier Gomez or Luisa who wrote the book, but feel like it's Javier. Also, when I first read it I found that it provided more comic relief, which it does slightly at the expensive of it's message.
Here we see the value of human life represented in a different way. The question has often been raised whether it is right to shut away the elderly in retirement homes and the cards are stacked high in both columns. Some homes can't care for aging family members to the extent that they need, other times the family member in question is a danger to themselves. The issue presented in this text is whether it's right to lock away functioning members of society because we don't want to deal with them and the issues with the so called "care-givers" not respecting this charges how they rightfully deserve and treating them as infants who can't comprehend their situation when it is well within their cognitive power. I forgot to mention it earlier, but along with the value of human life we're talking about the value of freedom.
An Orison of Sonmi~451
This is my favourite part of both the book and the movie. Sonmi~451 is easily my favourite character. She brings up many questions.
Not so long ago, a researcher was looking for a women to carry a neanderthal baby to term so that we could study it. This raised many questions of the ethics of it all, along with what rights the child would have. Would it go to school? Would it be treated as a human or an animal? Is it fair to bring this child into the world purely as an experiment? The story of Sonmi~451 brings up many of these same questions. Is a fabricant less than a human because it came from a womb tank? Should they be treated as less than second class because of this? Clearly, in the society that Sonmi lives in, the answer is yes. All the fabricants are treating in an appalling manner. This also reminds me a lot of Never Let Me Go [though I've only seen the movie and have yet to read the book]. I think that this is the main question that is preventing us from pursuing human cloning in our own society, over population aside.
What I love most about book Sonmi which they skip over in movie is her education. That was the part that I found most compelling about her. The fact that she read older texts that no one else had read in a long time giving her away was really fascinating.
Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After
It is arguable that this is my favourite part of the book. I've read many complaints that this section is hard to understand because of the broken English that it is written in. The best advice I've read to this extent is to ignore it, let it flow, and don't think too hard about it. Your brain will make sense of it.
In this section we see aspects of all the sections before it combined. The earth is partly destroyed and the human race is failing, slavery is alive and well, and people are though of as subhumans.
I've started to write this on another day, so I'm going to draw this section to a close .
As a book-to-movie translation, this novel is special. I cannot tell if I like to book or the movie more. I feel like they compliment each other. The movie rounds out the ends of the stories, many of which end abruptly, and is really beautiful. The book is filled with social commentary and fills in the background of all the characters. Using them together give the reader and watched a fuller picture of Mr. Mitchell's world.
Earlier in the review I called this book a masterpiece, and I'd like to take a second to explain it. It is, by rights, a masterpiece. Mitchell uses many different dialects of English in his writing, writes full and complex characters, and weaves a story through time which is wholly connects. Each section looks back on the section before it and uses the lessons wrought in it to go forward with their story. it is an ingenious writing technique.
As I've said, I've had a hard time writing this book. I've decided to give it 8 atlases out of 10. I really do love this book, but my feelings are still so mixed that I don't feel like I can give it a higher rating at this time. I hope to reread it again in a few years and see if I have a better idea about it then. Cloud Atlas is a work of art, and I highly recommend it to any reader.
