For all that we aspire to achieve freedom, few of us manage to ever taste its glorious fruit. For even if we succeed in throwing off the government-imposed shackles that bind our bodies -- no simple feat in its own right --, the cognitive chains that burden our thoughts yet remain. These limitations, imposed by our ideologies, by our biases, by our prejudices and by our classes are so potent that it matters not if our bodies are free. For if the mind is enslaved to a cruel or destructive worldview, then what does it matter if the flesh is free to move about as it pleases? The mind is the engine. The mind is the light. The mind is the seed of civilization and the only defense we have against the lies and the deceptions that are imposed upon us and that we impose upon ourselves. Mr. Mitchell vividly demonstrates this truth in his narratively complex but eminently readable piece of genre-busting speculative fiction.
From the unfathomable expanse of the South Pacific to underground hideaways in Korea, from the industrializing colonialism of the 19th century to the despotic, technocratic states of the near future, six disconnected souls wage their own little wars against ignorance, deception and the vicissitudes of time. A gullible notary, a frustrated musician, a dogged journalist, a hapless publisher, a brave martyr and a curious villager should not have anything in common, particularly when each of them belong to their own space and time. And yet not only do they each battle against the lies that hope to bind them, they each manage to relate to the reader their histories in a way that will leave, at least in some, a lasting legacy of truth and determination. Of love and war, of justice and corruption, these are their stories.
Though it falls short of the lofty heights to which some have uplifted it, Cloud Atlas is a work rewarding thanks to its tangled nature, not in spite of it. Comprised of six loosely connected narratives, the plot is essentially one, long boomerang toss, with each of the stories progressing in chronological order until their midpoints at which they are each interrupted and compelled to give way to the next story in the chain. This succession ends at the farthest point in the future, or halfway through the book, where upon the narrative curves back on itself, telling the latter half of all six tales in reverse order until it concludes not long after the point at which it began. This not only generates suspense by making something of a mystery out of each of its tales, it allows Mr. Mitchell to unleash upon his readers the book's greatest virtue, its patois.
Each protagonist is given distinct and sometimes difficult dialects, each of which, while at times labyrinthine, wonderfully embed the reader into the different periods in which he finds himself. This spares Mr. Mitchell the laborious effort of constructing vivid settings for each of his tales. His use of language does it for him, conveying not only social trends but the degrees to which the characters are educated, foolish and idealistic. Rarely has this device been deployed so effectively. For at times, the reader needs only a paragraph or two to understand that he has entered a very different mind locked in a very different world.
For all its linguistic and structural virtues, though, Cloud Atlas is at times overly simplistic and tonally deaf. His book envisions a future in which corporate branding consumes not only our culture but the nation state itself, a fear which largely spent its energy in the last two decades of the 20th century. Here, it smacks of a means by which Mr. Mitchell can express his skills at wordsmithing which is beneath the dignity of his novel. Moreover, the author's decision to transition between humor and seriousness, from tragicomedy to deathly struggle, left this reader cold. At times, the humor helped to make the work seem human, but this came at the cost of the gravity of some of its tales, leeching them of the import I would have otherwise bestowed upon them.
Cloud Atlas is an ambitious work that rises well above the fray of modern-day speculative fiction. For this, it should be celebrated as a success. However, it is also reminiscent of a wonderful golf shot that pulls up a few feet from the hole. Almost brilliant, but just...not...quite. (4/5 Stars)
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