Cloud Atlas (novel)

This article is about the novel. For the feature film see Cloud Atlas (film); for other uses see Cloud atlas (disambiguation).

Cloud Atlas

First edition cover
Author	David Mitchell
Cover artist	E.S. Allen
Language	English
Genre	Sci-Fi Drama Fantasy
Publisher	Sceptre
Publication date	2004
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	544 (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	0-340-82277-5 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC	53821716
Dewey Decimal	823/.92 22
LC Class	PR6063.I785 C58 2004b
Preceded by	number9dream
Followed by	Black Swan Green

Cloud Atlas is a 2004 novel, the third book by British author David Mitchell. It consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and was short-listed for the 2004 Booker Prize, Nebula Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and other awards.

Plot summary

Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are interrupted at a key moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically previous work in the chain. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century South Pacific.

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing

The first story begins in the Chatham Islands (a remote Pacific Ocean archipelago), in 1850. Adam Ewing, a guileless American notary from San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, awaits repairs to his ship. Ewing witnesses a Moriori slave (pacifists who are exploited by the Maori) being flogged by a Maori man (warriors who are exploited by the British). During the punishment, the victim, Autua, sees pity in the eyes of Adam Ewing and smiles. Later Ewing ascends a high hill called Conical Tor, covered in jungle with no view. He stumbles on the lip of the crater, falls therein, and is knocked out. He awakes to find himself surrounded by hundreds of faces carved in the bark of trees. Ewing reasoning that those who carved the faces must have had egress from the crater manages to escape. Descending Conical Tor again, he resolves not to mention the glyphs outside of his journal. As the ship gets underway, Dr. Goose, who is Ewing's only friend aboard the ship, examines the injuries Ewing sustained on the volcano and Ewing also mentions his chronic Ailment. The doctor diagnoses it as a fatal parasite, and recommends a course of treatment that might save Ewing but it will certainly make him feel worse before he gets better. Ewing gratefully accepts. Meanwhile Autua has stowed aboard the ship and hidden himself in Ewing's cabin because he judged Ewing to be a compassionate soul. Ewing breaks the news to the Captain, who is ready to order his First Mate to shoot Autua, but Autua proves he's a first class seaman, so the Captain puts him to work without salary to pay for his passage to Hawaii.

Letters from Zedelghem

The next story is set in Zedelghem, near Bruges, Belgium, 1931. It is told in the form of letters from Robert Frobisher, a recently disowned and penniless, bisexual young English musician, to his old friend and lover, Rufus Sixsmith, back in Cambridge. Frobisher escapes from a hotel without settling his bill and journeys to Zedelghem to offer his services as an amanuensis to a famous but reclusive English composer named Vyvyan Ayrs who is dying of syphillis and nearly blind. Along the way he sleeps with the (male) ship's steward. Frobisher has a comet-shaped birthmark on his shoulder blade. Frobisher auditions and gains the gudging acceptance of Ayers for his services. Ayer's wife Jocasta begins to subtly flirt with Forbisher. Ayers' daughter Eva, however, smells a rat and takes a posture of unrelenting hostility. Soon, however, Robert and Ayers bear fruit with the creation of Der Todtenvogel ("The Death Bird") which is performed nightly in Krakow, where it becomes the talk of the town. Frobisher says he even has begun composing his own music again. Frobisher and Jocasta Ayers become lovers, but Eva remains suspicious. Frobisher begins taking rare books from Ayer's collection and selling them to a fence. One of the books he has found is titled The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing but it is ripped in half and it drives him crazy, because, as he says, "A half-read book is a half-finished love affair." He is amused that the author seems unaware that Dr Goose is poisoning him. One time when Jocasta and Frobisher are sleeping together, Ayers pounds on his door and demands Frobisher writes down the notes he heard in a dream. Jocasta hides in a lump under the covers, and Ayers, nearly blind, never sees her there. The dream was about a "nightmarish cafe" deep underground where the waitresses all had the same face and ate soap. When he is done humming his tune, he asks if Jocasta ever made advances to Frobisher, who answers, after some embarrassment, "emphatically, no." As the summer comes to an end, Jocasta thanks Robert for "giving Vyvyan his music back." Robert agrees to stay on until next summer at least, as Ayers asked, time enough to turn his dream music into a major symphony called Eternal Recurrance.

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery

The third story is written in the style of a mystery/thriller novel, and is set in Buenas Yerbas, California, in 1975. Luisa Rey, a young journalist, investigates reports that a new nuclear power plant is unsafe. After a party, she is trapped with Rufus Sixsmith, the addressee of the letters in the previous story, in a stuck elevator. Sixsmith, now an elderly scientist, hints that his employer's nuclear power plant on Swannekke Island is unsafe. Shortly after this admission, he is murdered, and Luisa learns that the businessmen in charge of the plant are conspiring to cover up the dangers and are assassinating potential whistleblowers. From Sixsmith's hotel room, Luisa manages to get hold of some of Frobisher's letters and becomes so enthralled by the composer that she orders his only published work, "Cloud Atlas Sextet." However, a Swannekke-hired assassin has been following her and pushes her car - along with Sixsmith's incriminating report - off a bridge, at which point the story breaks off.

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish

The fourth story is comic in tone, and set in Britain in the present day. Timothy Cavendish, a 65-year-old vanity press publisher, flees the brothers of his gangster client. Cavendish's brother, exasperated by Timothy's endless pleas for financial aid, books him into a remote hotel, which in fact turns out to be a nursing home from which Timothy cannot escape. In the course of his adventures, Timothy briefly mentions that he is reading a manuscript from a prospective author entitled Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, which does not impress him.

An Orison of Sonmi~451

The fifth story is set in Nea So Copros, a dystopian futuristic state that is gradually revealed to be in Korea and to be a totalitarian state that has evolved from corporate culture. It is told in the form of an interview between Sonmi~451 and an 'archivist' who is recording her story. Sonmi~451 is a genetically engineered fabricant (clone), who is one of many fabricants grown to work at, among other places, a fast-food restaurant called Papa Song's. Fabricants, it is revealed, are treated as slave labor by 'pureblood' society, who stunt the fabricants' consciousness through chemical manipulation. Sonmi~451 encounters individuals from a rebel underground who draw her out of the cloistered fabricant world, and allow her to become self-aware, or "ascended." At one point in her self-discovery, she watches an old movie entitled The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish with a pureblood, but the movie is interrupted.

Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After

The sixth story occupies the central position in the novel, and is the only one not to be interrupted. Zachry, an old man, tells a story from his youth. It is gradually revealed that he lives in a primitive post-apocalyptic society on the Big Island of Hawaii. His people, the valley folk, are peaceful farmers, but are often raided by the violent Kona tribe from the other side of the island. Zachry's people worship a goddess called Sonmi, and know that there was an event called 'The Fall', in which the civilized peoples of Earth - known as the 'Old Uns' - collapsed, and the surviving humans have been reduced to primitivism. They have short lifespans due to a poisoned environment that causes disease and mutation. Big Island is occasionally visited and studied by a technologically sophisticated people known as the Prescients who arrive in ocean-colored boats. One Prescient, a woman called Meronym, comes to stay with the villagers, and gradually reveals that she needs a guide to take her to the top of Mauna Kea volcano, a place the villagers fear because of the mysterious temples on its summit. Zachry reluctantly guides her. It is revealed that the 'temples' are in fact the ruins of the Mauna Kea Observatories. Meronym shocks Zachry by telling him that their god Sonmi was in fact a human being, and shows him an 'orison' - an egg-shaped recording device that replays Sonmi telling her story to the archivist. Upon their return, the village is invaded by Kona tribesmen who enslave the villagers. Zachry and Meronym escape, and she takes him to a safer island. The story ends with Zachry's child recalling that his father told many unbelievable tales. The child admits that part of this one may be true because he has inherited Zachry's copy of Sonmi's orison, which he often watches, even though he doesn't speak her language.

An Orison of Sonmi~451

In the second part of the fifth story, Sonmi learns the truth about Nea So Copros: that the fabricants are not released after serving their time at work, but are killed and recycled into food and more fabricants. At the rebels' encouragement, she writes an abolitionist Declarations that tells the truth about their society and calls for rebellion. She is then arrested, and finds herself telling her tale to the archivist. She then reveals that she knows everything that happened to her was in fact instigated by the government, to create an artificial enemy figure to encourage the oppression of fabricants by purebloods. But she believes her Declarations will be inspirational nonetheless. Her last wish before being executed is to finish watching the film she began before, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish

In the second part of the fourth story, Timothy Cavendish and a band of plucky elderly inmates escape from the nursing home. He sorts out his problems back in London. At the end of his story, he notes that The First Luisa Rey Mystery turned out to be a good read after all, receives the second part from the author, and is inspired to write his own story as a screenplay.

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery

In the second part of the third story, Luisa Rey escapes from the sinking car and by detective work successfully locates a copy of Sixsmith's report about the Swanekke power plant, exposing the corrupt corporate leaders. She picks up her copy of Robert Frobisher's obscure Cloud Atlas Sextet and is astonished to find that she recognizes it, even though it is a very rare piece. At the end of the story, she receives a package from Rufus Sixsmith's niece, containing eight more letters from Frobisher.

Letters from Zedelghem

In the second part of the second story, Frobisher continues to pursue his work with the elderly composer while developing his own Cloud Atlas Sextet. He becomes besotted by Vyvyan Ayrs' daughter, and tries to end the affair with his employer's wife. While packing his things to finally leave the composer, who had begun to steal the young composer's musical ideas, he discovers the second half of The Pacific Diaries of Adam Ewing propping up the bed. Frobisher secludes himself in a hotel to finish the Sextet, and ultimately decides to kill himself. He is content with this decision as he believes he has completed his best work, but mourns the loss of his one true love, Sixsmith. Before shooting himself, he writes a last letter to Sixsmith, and includes his Sextet and the second part of Ewing's Pacific Journal.

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing

In the second part of the first story, Ewing visits the island of Raiatea where he observes missionaries preaching to the indigenous peoples, whom they regard as savages, and treat as slaves even as their illnesses kill them off. Back on the ship, he falls further ill, realizing at the last minute that Dr Goose is poisoning him to steal his possessions. He is rescued by Autua, and having been saved by a slave, resolves to devote his life to the Abolitionist movement. He foresees his wealthy father-in-law's response that human nature will never change and that Ewing's life will amount to "no more than one drop in a limitless ocean." Ewing concludes his journal with these final words: "Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

Reception

Cloud Atlas was met with positive reviews from most critics who felt that the novel managed to successfully interweave its six stories. The BBC's Keily Oakes said that although the structure of the book could be challenging for readers, "David Mitchell has taken six wildly different stories ... and melded them into one fantastic and complex work." Kirkus Reviews called the book "sheer storytelling brilliance". Laura Miller of the New York Times compared it to the "perfect crossword puzzle", in that it was challenging to read but still fun. The Observer's Hephzibah Anderson called the novel "exhilarating" and commented positively on the links between all six stories. Author and Booker Prize winner A. S. Byatt stated in a review for The Guardian that the novel gives, "a complete narrative pleasure that is rare". The Washington Post's Jeff Turrentine called it a "highly satisfying, and unusually thoughtful, addition to the expanding 'puzzle book' genre." In its "Books Briefly Noted" section, The New Yorker called the novel "virtuosic".

Criticism focused on the book's failure to meet its lofty goals. F&SF reviewer Robert. K. J. Killheffer praised Mitchell's "talent and inventiveness and willingness to adopt any mode or voice that furthers his ends," but noted that "for all its pleasures, Cloud Atlas falls short of revolutionary." The Daily Telegraph gave the novel a mixed review, focusing on its clashing themes, with Theo Tait noting: "In short, Cloud Atlas spends half its time wanting to be The Simpsons and the other half the Bible."

Linking themes

Mitchell has said of the book:

Literally all of the main characters, except one, are reincarnations of the same soul in different bodies throughout the novel identified by a birthmark...that's just a symbol really of the universality of human nature. The title itself "Cloud Atlas," the cloud refers to the ever changing manifestations of the Atlas, which is the fixed human nature which is always thus and ever shall be. So the book's theme is predacity, the way individuals prey on individuals, groups on groups, nations on nations, tribes on tribes. So I just take this theme and in a sense reincarnate that theme in another context...

Many other themes permeate the book. Movements of ascent and descent, for example, appear in all six stories. They are suggestive of humanity's larger moral epiphanies and failings. Adam Ewing, whilst ascending the volcano on the Chatham Islands loses his footing and tumbles down into a hollow (pg. 19); Robert Frobisher is forced to jump from the first floor of a hotel to avoid paying his bill (pg. 43); the car of Luisa Rey is shunted off the edge of a bridge and falls into the water around Swannekke Bridge (pg. 144); the author whom Timothy Cavendish publishes ejects a literary critic from the 12th floor of a hotel (pg. 151); the clone, or fabricant, called Sonmi~451 ascends from the underground shopping mall in which she works (pg. 208), and her growing self-consciousness is also explicitly described as an "ascension". Finally, Zachry Bailey and Meronym climb and then descend the Hawaiian mountain of Mauna Kea, Zachry confronting the temptations of the devil (named Ol' Georgie in the book) (pg. 282 onwards).

Moreover, many of the stories have their authenticity challenged in the narrative that succeeds them. Robert Frobisher, for instance, feels that Ewing's purported journal is too neatly structured to be genuine; "Half Lives" is implied to be a fictional adventure novel submitted to Timothy Cavendish's literary agency.

The number "six" is repeated throughout the novel. Some examples include: six interlocking stories; the music score Cloud Atlas is a "sextet with overlapping soloists" (not unlike the six stories); Sixsmith is the name of a main character, who is 66 years old; Eva is the result of "six centuries of breeding"; a police officer is shot six times in the back; Napier knew Luisa when she was six; Cavendish is in his sixty-sixth year, he needs 60,000 pounds to avoid being "beat up", his hospital window only opens six inches; Sonmi recites Six Catechisms, drives six-wheeler Fords, lives on the university sixth-floor where she is left alone for six days, completes secondary school in six months; a Prescient woman arrives in Zachry's sixteenth year, he rolls a six'n'six when playing dice, etc.

Structure and style

In an interview, David Mitchell stated that the title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by the Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, who was Yoko Ono’s first husband: "I bought the CD just because of that track's beautiful title." Mitchell's previous novel, Number9Dream, had also been inspired by a piece of music by Yoko Ono's more famous husband, John Lennon; Mitchell has said this fact "pleases me ... though I couldn’t duplicate the pattern indefinitely."

The book's style was inspired by Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, which contains several incomplete interrupted narratives. Mitchell's innovation was to add a 'mirror' in the centre of his book so that each story could be brought to a conclusion.

Mitchell has noted that the characters Robert Frobisher and Vyvyan Ayrs were inspired by Eric Fenby and Frederick Delius (Fenby was an amanuensis to the great English composer).

Cloud Atlas contains links with Mitchell's other works. The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish revisits a minor character from Mitchell's earlier novel Ghostwritten. And the daughter of Ayrs in Letters from Zedelgehm reappears in Black Swan Green as an elderly woman befriended by the main character.

Film adaptation

Main article: Cloud Atlas (film)

The novel was adapted to film by directors Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis. With an ensemble cast to cover the film's multiple storylines, production began in September 2011 at Studio Babelsberg in Germany. The film was released in North America on October 26, 2012.

In October 2012, Mitchell wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal called "Translating 'Cloud Atlas' Into the Language of Film" in which he describes the work of the adapters as being like translating a work into another language. He stated that he was pleased with the final product as a successful translation from one medium into another.

Further reading

• Dillon, S. ed. (2011) David Mitchell: Critical Essays (Kent: Gylphi)

External links

• Cloud Hosting
• Drupal Hosting
• Managed Cloud Computing
• David Mitchell discusses Cloud Atlas on the BBC's The Culture Show
• Cloud Atlas at complete review (summary of reviews)
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, review by Ted Gioia (Conceptual Fiction)