Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

David Mitchell is one of those few authors who have managed to appeal to readers on both sides of the literature/genre divide. Cloud Atlas (2004) was shortlisted for the Man Bookeer Prize but also the Nebula and Clarke Awards. Something that didn't go unnoticed at the time. The novel was made into a movie as well. Given the fact that it contains six separate stories, this can't have been easy. The reception of the movie was apparently mixed. I guess I am going to have to see it myself to make up my mind. It strikes me as almost impossible to pull off but Mitchell himself apparently was pleased with the result. But it is the book I'll be discussing in this review so back to business.

Cloud Atlas is a novel composed of six interwoven novellas. The first one starts in 1850 in the Pacific and through the lives of six different people, embodying the same soul, we end up in a post-apocalyptic future. Each of the individual stories are linked, passing something on to the next generation. Along the way we visit 1931 Zedelghem in Belgium, the fictional Californian city of Buenas Yerbas in 1975, present day Britain, a futuristic Korea and a post apocalyptic Hawaii.

Mitchell does a lot of interesting things in this book with structure and prose. Five of the six novellas stop abruptly in the middle of the narrative. Sometimes with a clear cliffhanger, sometimes mid-sentence. The novella set in the post apocalyptic future, positioned at the centre of the book, is the only one that isn't broken up. Mitchell moves into the future and then turns around and starts working his way back to the first story again.

The author uses a lot of different techniques in the novel. The first story is written in the form of a diary. The second is half of an exchange of letters between two young men and former lovers. The third a multiple point of view, third person narrative. The fourth story is a first person narrative. The fifth takes the shape of an interview and the final novella is essentially a camp fire tale (I suppose you could call it a frame story). It's a way of structuring the novel that not everybody will like. The changes can be quite abrupt and the stories are only tenuously connected. The diary of the main character in the first novella is found by the main character in the second, whose letters end up in the hands of the third, whose life is turned into a novel that ends up in the hands of the fourth main character etcetera.

Not only does Mitchell use a lot of different techniques, he does a lot of interesting things with his prose as well. The diarist for instance, has a fondness for the semicolon and the & symbol. The letters are written in a lazy style, with the writer frequently omitting the first person pronoun or use 1/2 instead of half. in this way each of the novellas has its own peculiarities. The most challenging is probably the final novella, which is written in a vernacular that almost has to be read out loud to be understood. This book has been translated into several languages, I pity the translators of that particular section.

To a hardcore genre reader all these styles, changes and shifts in the prose might seem like showing off. The thought occurred to me once or twice while reading the novel any way. It has to be said that for people who enjoy creative and at times playful prose there is definitely a lot to be had in this novel. One reader might think of it as showing off, the other might feel it is a showcase of what a talented writer can do with language.

As I mentioned earlier, the novellas are linked but only minimally. There is no overarching plot but there are motifs. The most notable one is the birthmark that allows the reader to identify the reincarnated soul of the main character. Another thing they have in common is that each of the characters documents their story in some way, allowing it to be passed on to the next generation. If there is such a thing as a theme in this novel it is probably the predator/prey dynamic that each story incorporates. The main character is usually on the prey side of things and the predator can take very different shapes but it is always there. The one constant in this entire book and apparently something that Mitchell considers a universal property of mankind. Not a very cheering thought.

The science fiction element in the novel is mostly present in the fifth and sixth novella. The fifth in particular presents a very disturbing future. We get to visit a Korea where the North Korean Juche ideology (which in my opinion makes as much sense as Ghadaffi's Green Book, which is to say none) with a kind of hypercorporate economy. It is perhaps not entirely surprising that this economy in effect devouring its natural resources and the very society that supports it, so the sixth (post-apocalyptic) novella should not come as a surprise. The main character is a clone whose intellect rises beyond her usefulness with depressingly predictable consequences. The science fiction elements in the novel are clearly present but not anything that hasn't been done before. Mitchell is not trying to explore the consequences of advanced technology for society, how it will redefine or shape societies, human interactions or moral values, or any of the other things that good science fiction explores. He focusses on showing the fundamental hunter/prey dynamic. As such, I'm not terribly impressed by his future societies.

Cloud Atlas is a very difficult book to review. I'm very impressed by the way Mitchell ignores the usual genre/literature divide and uses elements from both to tell his story. I do not think that he manages to blend the best of both into this book however. It is very preoccupied with structure and technique, something a lot of readers will feel is pretentious. In fact, it hides so many literary tricks and techniques that I am pretty convinced I haven't even caught half of them. It is an ambitious book, fascinating in many ways, but also a book that I feel tries to do too  much and as a result falls short in some aspects. It does show how rich literature could be if it would manage to break down the wall that in the mind of readers, writers and publishers still divides genres. As such Cloud Atlas is a very interesting novel. One of a growing number of books on both sides of the divide that is chipping away at the wall. I don't expect it to come down any time soon but it is starting to crumble in places. Hopefully books like Cloud Atlas will allow more of these genre-defying books to slip through.


Title: Cloud Atlas
Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Sceptre
Pages: 529
Year: 2011
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-340-82278-4
First published: 2005

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has received a lot of attention lately. It's been longlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize so I guess I am actually reading something the literary establishment might approve of for a change. It is set for the most part in Dejima, the sole place where the closed Japanese society of the Edo era had limited contact with the outside world. For much of it's existence this trading post was run by the Dutch East India Company so it is not entirely surprising there has been quite a bit of attention for this book over here. The novel has been translated into Dutch under the title De niet verhoorde gebeden van Jacob de Zoet. It's not a literal translation but I am not going to tell you what it means since I consider it a spoiler. I read the original English version which created the very strange sensation of reading in English about Japanese people struggling to speak Dutch. It is a very unusual book.

Dejima in 1799 is not the place it used to be. Run by a Dutch East India Company that is long past its heigh-day, only one ship a year still makes the trade run to Japan. Plagued by corruption and the uncertain political situation in the Netherlands, which is under constant threat to become a department of France, and the pressure of the British to take control of the Dutch colonial possessions, the place is not nearly as profitable as it once was. To turn the tide and wring at least some profit out of this enterprise Chief Overstraten arrives from Batavia. In his company is a young clerk named Jacob de Zoet.

De Zoet arrives from his home town of Domburg in Zeeland to make his fortune in the east. He has lost his heart to the lovely Anna, who is unattainable for someone from his station. His only hope is to return as a rich man after five years of service. Making a profit in Dejima is not going to be easy for someone with the ethical standards de Zoet lives by. Together with Overstraten he sets about uncovering the corruption that has plagued the trading post in the last decade and uncovers quite a few dubious transactions. Something that not all of Dejima's residents appreciate. De Zoet is a bit naive about how money is made in the east and soon he becomes ensnared in a web of corruption, fraud and deceit. Things become even more complicated when he falls in love with a Japanese woman.

The story of Jacob de Zoet is but one of the story lines Mitchell weaves into his tale. The story of a Japanese Buddhist Shrine and various Japanese officials and scholars in Dejima and the story of an English captain trying to win Dejima for the British are told as well. Historically the novel is loosely based on the live of Hendrik Doeff, Chief of the trading post between 1803 and 1817, and the Phaeton incident (1808) when a British warship fired its cannons in Nagasaki harbour to press the Japanese into supplying them with water, food and fuel. Although Mitchell plays around with the time line a bit, there is a lot of historical material in this novel. I thought his choice to set the novel during one a period when Dutch colonialism was on the verge of complete collapse is very interesting. He drives home the lack of contact with the Netherlands or even de Batavia very well. One ship a year, if one arrives at all. How's that for lonely?

One other point that Mitchell drives home mercilessly is the enormous greed that was the basis for the Dutch presence in Asia. Events in Nagasaki were mostly dealt with without bloodshed, something that cannot be said for the Dutch expansion in Indonesia, just about everybody seems to be out to get rich at someone else's expense. This trait is not limited to the Dutch, both the Japanese and English in the story have some rather selfish motives for their actions. Something that clashes violently with de Zoet's devoutly protestant upbringing and gets him in trouble more than once.

The book is divided in five parts, two of which are pretty brief and could be considered an epilogue. The first three parts contain the bulk of the story, with the first focussing on Jacob, the second on a number of Japanese characters and a third which introduces the English to the stage. Part of the genius of this novel is how he weaves those three stories into each other in the final part of the book. The tree parts each contain a decidedly different outlook on events, with the Japanese part, the one I was least familiar with, as the most fascinating of the three in my opinion. I won't pretend Mitchell didn't lead me to a couple of things about the history of my country but the way he handles the Japanese characters is my favourite part of the novel.

Language is another key element in the book. Not so much the language the author uses, what I noticed most about that is his use of the present tense, but the way the characters communicate. The Dutch are not allowed to learn Japanese (although that does not stop Jacob) so they have to rely on translators provided by the Japanese. Dutch and Japanese are very different languages so it is not surprising that a lot of semantics and grammar has to be discussed. Where a lot of authors would gloss over the problem of trying to learn a second language and just assume a character would become fluent soon enough, Mitchell makes the reader very aware of the problems this kind of communication would entail. When I read English, I don't have an instant translation ready in my mind of course but those passages did make me consider the difference between Dutch and English and how one explanation to the Japanese would work in English but not in Dutch. It's a very strange way of reading. The author seems to have picked up some Dutch while researching this book, he has advanced enough to realize Major Cutlip has a name that would sound very funny to a Dutchman. Apparently it is true that bad language is still the first thing you learn.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a fascinating book. From the very first scene in which we witness a difficult birth (with illustration) to the eventual return of de Zoet in the Netherlands the story kept me captivated. I have to admit the use of the present tense in the narrative took some getting used to but when the story drew me in it was a very enjoyable read. The way Mitchell portrays three very different cultures and the very interesting historical setting as well as the unusual way in which he ties the three main parts of the book together easily make it one of the best historical novels I've read. I may be a bit biased because of the author's choice of setting but I still recommend you read this.

Book Details
Title: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Sceptre
Pages: 469
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-340-92157-9
First published: 2010