Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

*warning: contains spoilers

Cloud Atlas, written by the author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Ghost Written, and Number9Dream, is a collection of stories tied together by similar themes (such as slavery and technological advances), similar location (the Hawaiian islands), and a comet-shaped birthmark that appears on multiple characters’ bodies . Each chapter is dedicated to a new character in a new time told in a new way.

The first story is told from the diary pages of a man named Adam Ewing as he crosses the ocean on a ship filled with unsavory types. He grows weaker and weaker due to a “parasite” in his brain, though we come to find that his doctor “friend” has been slowly poisoning him. Ewing witnesses slavery in multiple countries during his voyage, and while he doesn’t condone the use, he rarely speaks up against it.

The second takes place a little further in the future, told in the form of letters from an “R.F.” to a man named Sixsmith. R.F. is a young, twenty-something young man who has been disinherited and kicked out of his prestigious music school. Broke and generally disliked, he convinces an aging composer to take him on as an amanuensis. While staying at the composer’s home he steals books and sleeps with the man’s wife while strangely falling in love with their daughter.

The third story follows Luisa Rey, a reporter trying to get to the bottom of the death of a man she briefly met, a scientist by the name of Sixsmith (yes, the very man R.F. has been writing letters to). Her story reads like a standard spy novel with a race against the clock and assassins at every turn.

The fourth story is told through the pages of the “memoir” of Timothy Cavendish, a small book publisher on the run from his debtors. He accidentally signs himself into a senior care facility thinking it’s a hotel, where he is then kept prisoner. While forced to stay in the facility he reads a manuscript that had been sent to him right before his flight from London, the very same spy novel featuring Luisa Rey.

The fifth jumps much further into the future, where humans are almost entirely reliant on technology and horrific breeding of servant-humans. It follows the life of Sonmi, a girl genomed to be a server at restaurant called Papa Songs. In this time, “coffee” is referred to as “starbucks” (though I’d argue that language change is already well under way) and shoes are called “nikes”. Largely consumer-based, the culture is broken into two main groups: those with “souls”(a microchip embedded in the skin which is a tracking device and permanent file on the individual), and those made in tubes to serve people with “souls” .

The last story brings us even further into the future, after the collapse of civilization when humanity is reduced to a very primitive existence. It follows a goats herdsman named Zachry, who is telling the story to what seems to be children years after the events he is describing. Because Zachry is telling the story, the entire chapter is written in their strange version of English:

I planted my first babbit up Jayjo from Cutter Foot Dwellin’ under a lemon tree one a-sunn day. Leastways hers was the first what I knowed. Girls get so slywise ’bout who’n’when’n’all…This ain’t a smilesome yarnie, but you asked ’bout m life on Big Island, an’ these mem’ries what are minnowin’ out.

It’s a difficult chapter to read at first, with so many unknown words and slang, but by the end of it the terms become familiar and generally understandable. “Babbit” is “baby”, “smilesome” means basically “happy”, and so on. It was this tough language that became a roadblock of sorts for me as I read this. I sped through the earlier chapters, but this portion slowed me down and at one point almost made me stop reading the book entirely. It is the only chapter that wasn’t split into two parts- it serves as the very center of the novel and therefore goes on the longest. This portion, I felt, went on far too long and could have been edited down considerably.

These five stories aren’t told in complete portions, but actually divided up. The first half of the first four stories are told, then the fifth is told in full, then the other four stories are completed, much like an arc.

The connections between the characters is a little confusing, why they all have the same birthmark is never explained (I inferred that it was meant to suggest all of these characters are the same “soul” reincarnated over the years, but other details dispute that theory). Another connection is that in one story Timothy Cavendish is reading the story of Luisa Rey while in turn Sonmi reads the story of Timothy Cavendish, which had the effect of Russian dolls, each story somehow folding inside of the next one while still remaining almost entirely separate from each other.

While the personal narratives of each character are very engaging, it’s the over-arching themes that are the real meat of this novel. Mitchell seems to have a very strong opinion about humanity and where we are headed as a species. Some of his characters are very flawed and do morally reprehensible things, such as R.F. and his theft from the old composer and adulterous affairs with the same man’s wife. These acts are nothing in comparison to the societies as whole, however, that Mitchell draws out for us. In the past Africans were enslaved for the purpose of labor for the United States and other countries, which is shown through a scene where Adam Ewing witnesses the beating of a misbehaving slave. Later, in the technologically advanced future, slaves are created in tubes and genomed for specific purposes (like serving, or with large eyes for seeing in dark mines) and are used until they have finished their terms as slaves, after which they are executed. In the most distant future, one tribe (the Kona) are most dominant and take slaves from the other, more peaceful, tribes to do their work for them.

Mitchell paints a world in which slavery is an ongoing continuum, regardless of time and how technologically advanced (or primitive) the society is. There are themes aplenty running amok through these stories; this would be a fantastic book for a book club to discuss.