CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell

I first came across Cloud Atlas as a movie. There was quite a lot of advertisements and hype, and mistakenly thinking that it was a Hollywood production, I didn’t pay much attention to it.

Then Fate intervened. One day I was taking Aeroline; can’t remember if it was from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur or vice versa. What was important was that amongst the movie selection was Cloud Atlas. Even then, it didn’t entice me. It took a glimpse of a fellow passenger’s screen to finally intrigue my interest and make me tune into the movie. And you know what? I don’t regret spending three hours of my life on it. The movie was good. I especially enjoyed the Korean segment and even ventured to Fanfiction to feed my need for more Cloud Atlas.

Then I discovered that the movie was based on a book. Hallelujah! Quickly I hightailed to the nearest library and checked out a copy of the book, with a little fear that for once in my life, I might find the movie better than the book.

Well, that didn’t happen.

But would I say that the book is better than the movie?

Not exactly. I’ve come to view both book and movie as separate entities and I don’t overly prefer one or the other.

The movie

I watched the movie without having read the book and hence many nuances and details were lost to me. I managed to follow the gist of the movie but without 100% comprehension. It was an entertaining enough movie but what lifted the experience from a typically enjoyable viewing to one that left a deeper impression was the Sonmi story. I found the romance between Somni~451 and Im Hae-Joo touching. Which is quite amazing actually. In all my 41 years, I’ve never enjoyed a single Western romance. The Koreans do romance very well: My Name Is Kim San-Soon, Sassy Girl Chun-Hyang, My Girl, Coffee Prince, Best Love, City Hall, I’ve enjoyed them all. But I’ve never come across a Western romance movie or series that I liked. Hence my utter surprise when I found my heart softening, and then aching for the Sonmi-Haejoo pairing.

Imagine my further surprise when I discovered that the storyline in the movie was rather different from the one in the book. But since it worked well, I shan’t be a purist and complain.

Apart from Sonmi’s story, I didn’t find the other stories particularly inspiring. They were all right, just not outstanding.

The fun in watching Cloud Atlas the movie was in trying to spot which actor/actress was in which role. Some were pretty obvious, like Halle Berry as Luisa Rey or Zhou Xun as Yoona~939. Others, though, were so heavily made up that it made the guessing game quite challenging. I was shocked to find out that the actor cast as Im Hae-Joo was actually Jim Sturgess, a Caucasian actor!

Even though the movie stretched almost three hours (172 minutes), it was entertaining enough so that one does not feel the strain of time too acutely.

The book

The structure of the book is very interesting. It is made up of six stories:

1. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing — 1800s

2. Letters from Zedelghem — 1931

3. Half-Lives — The First Luisa Rey Mystery  — 1970s

4. The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish — 2012

5. An Orison of Sonmi~451 — 2144

6. Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After — even later than Sonmi’s story

The six stories are listed according to chronology. What is rather novel is how David Mitchell, the author, arranged the stories. Instead of running the stories chronologically, he began with the first story but at a critical juncture, he broke off the story and started the second story. Likewise as the second story reaches the climax, he broke off and began the third story and this goes on until the sixth and final story, which is allowed to unfold in a conventional manner from beginning to end. Then we return to the fifth story and so on, finishing each story but in reverse order.

To be honest, it was quite infuriating, if interesting. I cheated anyway. For the stories that I find truly too interesting to resist (Letters from Zedelghem, Half-Lives— The First Luisa Rey Mystery, An Orison of Sonmi~451), I jumped ahead and finished them before continuing with the later story.  :)

What is impressive about the book is how Mitchell demonstrated his range of writing repertoire. Each story is a completely different literary genre. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing is a historical novel, or novella in this case, Letters from Zedelghem is a humorous epistolary memoir, Half-Lives—The First Luisa Rey Mystery is a potboiler thriller, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish is a satire, An Orison of Sonmi~451 is about science fiction dystopia, while Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After has a post-apocalypse fantasy setting.

When you think about how most writers specialise in just one genre for most of their writing lives, and here we have David Mitchell blithely exercising his creative juices by penning a total of six different genres, and doing it well… I take my hat off. Really.

But I must warn that not all the stories are equally enjoyable. You know my three favourite. Top story for me is a close fight between Letters and Sonmi, but Letters wins by a tiny margin, mainly because of its humour and compelling narrator, Robert Frobisher. (Yes, in the movie, Sonmi wins hands down.)

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing takes some time for one to settle into because of the archaic language used. But once you get into the story, it is all right. I found The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish a little over the top, but overall, still rather enjoyable. Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After was, for me, the weakest story. Maybe it was because by the time I got to this story, I was exhausted (it’s a thick book — 529 pages!). But I particularly didn’t like it because of the language that Mitchell used to depict the primitive state the people returned to after the (hinted nuclear) apocalypse.

Apart from being awed by the writing skills of Mitchell, another thing I like about the book is how the stories are all inter-linked. These links come in many layers. Firstly, it is strongly hinted that the main character in each story is the same soul, reincarnated over several lives. This soul is identified by the comet-shaped birthmark that accompanies him in each life.

Then we have artefact from each story falling into the hands of a character in the next story, like Robert Frobisher coming across Adam Ewing’s journal, Luisa Rey find Robert Frobisher’s letters, Timothy Cavendish receiving a manuscript based on Luisa Rey’s story, Sonmi~451 watching a movie based on Timothy Cavendish’s story, and Zachry viewing Sonmi’s orison and thinking she is a goddess. Sublime really, all these connections.

But what is even more sublime is how the various characters would have premonitions or deja vu of incidents that occurred in other lives. It’s like past and future events breaking down the barriers of time and manifesting as dreams and inexplicable sensations.

This book is highly recommended. Read it for Mitchell’s brilliant writing, his wide repertoire and its innovative structure.

I generally don’t buy books. In Singapore’s birdcage-like apartments, there isn’t much space to store books. I only buy books that I really, really like. The last book I bought was Suzanne Clark’s Mr Norrell & Jonathan Strange. I’m seriously considering getting this one.