Published 2004 / Length 529 pages
A novel made up of an ensemble cast of six wildly different stories that fit together, one inside the next like a Russian matrioshka doll, Cloud Atlas is a masterful, complex work spanning time and place. The structure in the first half of the book gives the feeling of an upward slope of suspense and set-ups, with each of the stories interrupted, often abruptly, around the halfway point, to be replaced by the next narrative. The pay-off to navigating this series of cliffhangers and half-told tales is the downward slope, where the stories are concluded in reverse order and the reader is able to freewheel gloriously from the denouement of one half-remembered tale to the next, connecting the themes that tie the book together. Each of the narratives is loosely linked to the next in a material sense – for example, the first story, the diary of Adam Ewing, a nineteenth-century American lawyer travelling in the Pacific, is unearthed in 1931 by the protagonist of the next tale, Robert Frobisher, a composer whose genius is quite at odds with his finances. However, there is a strong suggestion throughout that between the central characters of these six stories – stories that run from the past through to a post-apocalyptic future, employing remarkable shifts in style and voice – there exists an underlying and elemental connection.
‘Cloud Atlas is powerful and elegant because of Mitchell’s understanding of the way we respond to those fundamental and primitive stories we tell about good and evil, love and destruction, beginnings and ends. He isn’t afraid to jerk tears or ratchet up suspense – he understands that’s what we make stories for.’ – The Guardian
• What themes do you see running through each of Cloud Atlas’s six stories? Is there a consistent point of view with regard to these themes?
• What do you think is the relationship between the stories’ central characters? What is the significance of the birthmark?
• Robert Frobisher questions whether the structure for his Cloud Atlas Sextet ‘for overlapping soloists’ is revolutionary or gimmicky. Which best describes Cloud Atlas the novel?
• Each of the stories is written in a very specific style, often redolent of a certain genre, if not a specific book. Discuss the various styles employed and how they compare to one another. Which other works do you think are evoked by Mitchell?
• Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize and won the 2005 British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year Award.
• Orlando by VIRGINIA WOOLF – exploring a single life through numerous historical and geographical worlds.
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by ITALO CALVINO – Mitchell’s inspiration for Cloud Atlas: a series of interrupted, varying stories linked through an exploration of similar themes.
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by AUDREY NIFFENEGGER (see here) – a love story set against a backdrop of unpredictable time travel.