My Journey to Become Pretentiously Literate

My actual score is closer to a 3.5. Sorry for the lazy review, school is intense and I don't really know how to organize my feelings on this one.

Cloud Atlas is one of those books that you either love or hate, which is why it's unusual that I feel mostly neutral about it. It was an entertaining, clever book; the unusual narrative style kept the book interesting and varied. The one largest complaint I have is that I didn't "get" the main connection between all the stories. It was evident when they were referenced within each other, but I feel that if I hadn't read a little bit about the book beforehand, I wouldn't have understood the overall theme of reincarnation and souls passing through the stories. Most critics of the book fail to get this theme entirely, so maybe it helped that I came in with some prior knowledge.

To those who want to read this book but are wary of all the negative reviews, I offer this advice: just read the book. Enjoy it. I liked all of the stories, and they're so different in plot, narrative style, and setting that you're bound to enjoy at least one of them. The stories that didn't hold my attention in the first half became some of my favorites in the second half. The point is, don't read this book for some big, philosophical revelation. If you look close enough, you can gain some insight from this book, but at the end of the day it's best to approach it as a bunch of short stories compiled into a novel.

To address a few more common issues: the middle chapter. As you may know, the six stories of Cloud Atlas are divided in half and told in order, then in reverse order: 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 4 3 2 1. So at the very middle, you get the entire story in one whopping section. Many people consider the middle story, "Sloosha's Crossin'," impossible to get through. It's told in post-apocalyptic Hawaii by a boy who narrates in a futuristic English dialect, which some readers have a hard time understanding. Honestly, it's not that difficult. There are quite a bit of new contractions and a few new words that the reader has to discern, but the chapter about futuristic Korea has just as much ambiguous dialogue. It's Mitchell's style, I've noticed, to throw the reader into unfamiliar situations in which they must read along and use context clues to piece together what's going on in the setting. Nothing is handed to the reader on a silver platter, in "Sloosha's Crossin'" or any other writing of his. Besides, following "Sloosha" are some of the best chapters in the whole book, so don't call it quits right there.

This review has mostly been a collection of my musings about the popular opinion, so lastly, I'll include a short summary of the chapters. Beware of spoilers within.
* The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - the journal of a man travelling through English pacific colonies in the early 1800s. It's a slow start, and the nineteenth century dialogue is hard to understand (I tried recording all the words I didn't know in this part, and stopped on page 9 after writing down over 100 words). Probably my least favorite chapter in the book, but if you can get through this, the rest will be easy peasy.
* Letters from Zedelghem - one of my absolute favorites, start to finish. This is the story of Robert Frobisher, a bitter, disadvantaged composer who travels to prewar Belgium to visit a famous musician whose health is declining, in the hopes that he will be taken in as an aide.
* Half Lives: the First Luisa Rey Mystery - this is one that would make a good standalone novel. A young journalist finds evidence of a corporation's sinister cover-ups and puts her life in danger when she tries to expose them.
* The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish - a successful editor goes through a series of misfortunes when the thuggish nephews of his best-selling author start to hustle him for money. This is one of the stories that I didn't enjoy at first, but the ending in the second part is brilliant. I can't wait to see this in the movie!
* An Orison of Sonmi~451 - set in dystopian futuristic Korea where corporations rule everything, a fast-food serving clone tells the story of her "ascension" to humanity. This was probably my favorite story through and through. I would love to see a whole novel inspired by this story.
* Sloosha's Crossin' an' Everythin' After - the infamous middle part. Not as gripping, story-wise, as some of the others. A boy named Zachry lives on post-apocalyptic Hawaii in a village of farmers and sheepherders, and must deal with several clashes with other, more nefarious tribes.

"The Bone Clocks" is the first book I've ever simultaneously loved and hated. At least five times during the course of my reading, it switched from a hard 2.0 rating to an impressive 4.5; in the end, I'm settling for a 3.0. In all three categories I'd use to assess a book - original concepts, characters, and story lines - "The Bone Clocks" showcases the good, the bad, and the ugly. Be forewarned: mild spoilers ahead hidden under the tags.

Plot
Plot-wise, "The Bone Clocks" follows a structure of story that I've been hooked on lately: a series of independent stories interconnected by a character, theme, or event. There are six different stories told by five different narrators. All six are incredibly different - connected loosely by a woman named Holly Sykes and a mysterious set of warring cults - and could work well, perhaps even better, as purely independent stories.

The first story, set in 1984, follows a young Holly Sykes, our central character, as she wanders around Southern England following a fight with her mom over her much older boyfriend. Next, we jump to 1991, where we see the heinous schemes of a Cambridge scholar and self-acknowledged sociopath, Hugo Lamb. In part 3, we get a closer look at Holly through the narration of her partner, Ed Brubeck, an Iraqi War reporter who struggles with choosing between his family and his dangerous job. Next, in my least favorite section, the story focuses on Crispin Hershey, a shamed and defamed writer who takes a series of questionable actions to console himself over his fall from grace. The fifth chapter, which I still can't decide if I liked or hated, finally sheds some insight on the two warring cults, the Horologists and the Anchorites. Lastly, we jump ahead into the distant future where technology has crashed, the western world is collapsed, and global warming has wreaked havoc on the planet.

The first two parts are a great read - Holly's story is that of a classic teenage runaway (complete with a twist at the end) and watching Hugo manipulate friends and family to his own advantage is infuriating, yet fascinating. My favorite story of the six was Ed's; interspersed with flashbacks from his time in Iraq, it gives us insight to all of the characters, and it's easy to understand why Ed would both want to settle down safely with family, and continue the work that needs to be done in the Middle East. Crispin's story is boring, confusing, and frustrating (I'll touch on that more in the character section). The last chapter, set in distant-future Ireland, gave a pessimistic but insightful look at what could become of the human race if we take our resources for granted. One issue I had a huge problem with was the lack of connection between the stories when it came to consequences of the characters' actions. Several characters die prematurely, but they're scarcely mourned or even mentioned in the next story. In one incredibly glaring instance, the narrator of a story is murdered to "send a message" to the world...but we readers never find out if that actually worked.

The Horology chapter, however, is the main source of issue for the entire plot. In Crispin's chapter, David Mitchell includes a cheeky, meta comment along the lines of "a book can't be partially fantasy any more than a woman can be partially pregnant". Mitchell is self-aware, it seems, but it doesn't do him any good, because "The Bone Clocks" is ruined by his failure to either commit wholly to the fantasy aspect or do away with it entirely. To elaborate, Horologists and Anchorites are immortal, mind-reading psycho-telekinetic body-hoppers, and Holly can see the future. Each story proceeding the Horology chapter is sprinkled with little doses of fantasy, but it makes no sense to the reader and seems completely out of the blue. Listening to 16-year-old Holly describe an Horologist mind-hop into a corpse and kill an Anchorite in butchered, ignorant terms is physically painful, and one of the points at which I nearly quit the book. Perhaps Mitchell's pseudo-fantasy world would have worked better if we'd learned about its mechanics first, but as it stands, readers must go through 80% of the novel before they have any idea of what's going on in the background (and even then, the Horology chapter explains everything very casually - I had more questions than answers afterwards).

Characters
When it comes to the characters, all are interesting, and many are very realistic. Hugo Lamb, in particular, is one of my favorites to read about. The "casual psychopath reveal" is always a fun trope in literature, and as I read on it shocked me just how nasty the intelligent, handsome scholar really was. Yet Mitchell makes a strange choice with his character that completely ruined him: having the narcissistic, money-crazed sociopath somehow "fall in love" and gain a dose of empathy reads like bad self-insert fanfiction. This is the same man who joined a cult of evil soul-sucking immortals, the same man who, upon hearing that one of his close friends had driven off of a cliff, lamented the loss of the expensive car...and yet, he spares Holly Sykes because he "loved" her? Crispin was a miserable excuse for a person, yet he was a realistic and well-written character who is probably very similar to many of our favorite real life celebrities. Mitchell also throws us a bone and allows some enjoyable minor characters - such as Ed Brubeck - to reprise their roles in later stories. As much as I just complained about the Horology chapter, the Horologists themselves were fascinating...age-old eternal beings who have lived a hundred different lives in different countries, as different races and genders? This was an aspect of the story that I wish we'd learned more about. On another little tangent, it's interesting to note the difference between the all-white, evil Anchorites and the diverse, benevolent Horologists.

Original Concepts
I feel like I've touched enough upon the fact that the original fantasy world was thrown in too carelessly and ambiguously, so I'll focus on the idea itself. Though not entirely original, it provides good food for thought: what makes a person who they truly are, if not a body, a race, a gender, or even what mind they reside in? If a person lives many lives, who are they, truly - the first person they lived as? Their most meaningful life? We see a little bit of this variance with Marinus, who kept his first name, and Esther Little, who chooses to keep her original, indigenous name known only to a small personal circle. Mitchell uses a linguistic tactic to make his words original that I found very annoying: adding "sub-" or "psycho-" prefixes to other words ("psychovoltage", "psychostream", "she subspoke", "he subasked", and even "he subinquired"). Mitchell's writing also did a poor job of capturing the battles, fights, and scrimmages in a way that made it meaningful or understanding; often, I just glanced through these paragraphs. Over all, I feel that if the concept was elaborated on, it could have been a great fantasy series...but that just didn't happen. Maybe Mitchell figured the audience would understand more than they actually did, or maybe he used unreliable narration as a cop-out of explaining everything. The world will never know.

All in all, this book is worth a read, but not a struggle. If you pick it up and find yourself bored or confused, don't be ashamed about skipping to the next story or quitting the book altogether. Skip over any Horology riff-raff if you can't understand it.

A witty, nostalgic, bittersweet collection of stories that isn't afraid to play around with timelines and styles of narration. Despite the rapid changes between chapters and the large cast of characters, this book is quirky enough to keep you hooked.

"A Visit from the Goon Squad" follows a large ensemble of characters who are all linked in some way or another. Teenage punk rockers, record executives, kleptomaniacs, movie stars, dictators - you wouldn't think these stories would mesh together well, but they do. As each chapter goes by, Egan reveals a little more about our central characters, Bennie and Sasha, and the people in their lives. Our cast is both funny and tragic, both hopeful and depressing, and entertainingly self-destructive.

Depending on the reviewer, this book will either be criticized or praised for its style of writing, which changes with each chapter. First, second, and third person points of view are all present, as well as a chapter told entirely through power-point slides. It's a refreshing change of pace that allows Egan to expand on characterization in ways that best fit the character. Truthfully, the book could be picked apart and rearranged in any way, its stories read independently, and still make sense. It may seem plotless and trivial, but every story shares an overarching theme that connects it to the rest.

With so many leaps backward and forward in time, "A Visit from the Goon Squad" focuses heavily on nostalgia and a yearning for the past. Often, a character's offhanded comment about the 'good old days' will be the main focus of a later chapter. Younger readers who can't identify with the book's theme of inevitable aging will still be able to enjoy and appreciate it, and to older audiences, it will serve as a bittersweet reminder.

"The Ruins" is paced well enough to make for an entertaining and chilling weekend read, but its source of conflict is exhaustively hopeless and its cast is too unlikeable to stick with you for long.

I stumbled upon "The Ruins" in search of nature-related horror. My favorite genre of horror involves the unknown: being lost in the woods, hunted by some unseen entity. "The Ruins" didn't quite fit this quota. It's more along the lines of survivalist horror, and unlike most stories I've read, it's set in a small, isolated area...far too little wandering for my taste. The mystery is developed fairly quickly, so most of the horror revolves around the deteriorating conditions our heroes must go through. This is not a gratuitously gory book, but it's not for the faint of heart either.

One of the things I appreciated most about this book was Smith's ability to write an interesting narrative. After slumping into a reading block trying to parse through books by Murakami and Pynchon, "The Ruins" was exactly the kind of book I needed: fast, interesting, and easy to digest. The book opens and gets off to a quick start, weaving exposition and background information in a way that's easy to read. Smith devotes significant amounts of time to showing us what's going on inside his protagonists' heads, but often he does so by showing their reactions to the plot progression rather than pausing the plot for pointless introspection.

"The Ruins" focuses on the thoughts and feelings of our small cast. The horror of the plot is mostly psychological and relies heavily on the characters. Nine out of ten readers are going to tell you this book is awful because the characters are insufferable. Well, they are insufferable, but they're believable, and their stupidity is what keeps the plot going. Our four narrators are a group of friends whose relationships seem to be fading; half of them are dating, but they show more affection to the people who aren't their partners. The characters' interactions are depressing.

My main issue with the book was the complete lack of hope I had for the characters throughout the story. They face many small struggles that come with a bigger overall conflict, and they work hard to take care of those little issues, but there's very few attempts to solve the big problem. It makes a whole arc of the story seem pointless and disheartening. This is not a happy story - this is a story that will wear you down.

Three stars for a quick, easy read. If you're discouraged by the negative reviews on this site, go ahead and give it a try; it won't take long.