Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
A novel in six nested stories
(Review posted 10 Jan 2005 00:44:57)

The most obvious thing about Cloud Atlas is its structure: it's written as six nested stories. Each story has a minor part in the next one in the sequence (one appears as an old book in the next, which appears as a set of old letters in the next, which appears as an old movie in the next, which...). The book gives us the first half of each story in order, then the second half of each in reverse order (1 2 3 4 5 6 5 4 3 2 1).

This structure is cute, and there are a few other images of nesting and recursion scattered around that provide nice reflections. There are hints that the stories are linked by something stronger, that various characters are reincarnations of others, say, but nothing much comes of those hints.

The stories themselves are a good and varied set, from an eighteenth century South Seas adventure to a dystopian far future. They could have been pulled apart and the nesting removed, and become a book of six good longish short stories. (But then people probably wouldn't have been as impressed!) The settings are interesting, the characters involving, and the action mostly compelling, whether running from creditors, composing music, suffering illness on shipboard, or hiding out with the clone underground.

It's not clear to me how much the cute nested structure really contributes to the quality of the book, but the fact that I'm undecided and still thinking about it suggests that, whichever way, the quality is still considerable.