Book Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
I read this book because of the trailer, like many others. The trailer – despite the presence of Tom Hanks AND Halle Berry – fascinated me, though I could not fathom what was going on in what promised to be an excitingly visual journey through the times and lives of oddly connected people.
The first chapter was a difficult start, mainly due to the language. An older, more formal English, the dialogue was filled with words and nuances I didn’t understand, but rather than break the mood to look everything up, I just sank in and let Adam Ewing’s meanings come to me.
In the second chapter, featuring Robert Forbisher, the language changed dramatically. By the third chapter, about Luisa Rey, I had gotten the concept of the connecting threads, no matter how thin, between the people (though I felt the birthmark was a bit too contrived), but more importantly, I had fallen in love with the language and concluded that it was as much a character in this story as the people themselves. It shaped them as it moved and flowed and changed through each chapter…
Reviewing the trailer now that I have finished the book still leaves me wondering, though now I’m wondering just how they are going to tell this story – these stories – and tell them right. It’s not really the “action adventure” that People Magazine describes it as… and the trailer implies that the directors have opted to make the connections much less subtle than the book does… I will have to return to this review once I’ve seen the film for comparison….
The BiblioSanctum 