Cloud Atlas

A Novel

By: David Mitchell

Narrated by: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, Kirby Heyborne, John Lee, Richard Matthews

Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

By the New York Times best-selling author of The Bone Clocks

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in 21st-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical, and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite.... Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter.... From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life.... And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neo-capitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a post-apocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult-classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

List of readers:

• The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, read by Scott Brick
• Letters from Zedelghem, read by Richard Matthews
• Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, read by Cassandra Campbell
• The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, read by John Lee
• An Orison of Sonmi-451, read by Kim Mai Guest
• Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After, read by Kirby Heyborne

This audiobook is available exclusively as an audio download!

Note to customers: The complicated format of this novel makes it seem that the audio may be cutting off before the end of a story, accompanied by a change in narrator. However, this is the author's intention, so please continue to listen, and the stories will conclude themselves as intended.

©2004 David Mitchell (P)2004 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

• 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Literary Fiction

"[Mitchell's] exuberant, Nabokovian delight in word play; his provocative grapplings with the great unknowables; and most of all his masterful storytelling: all coalesce to make Cloud Atlas an exciting, almost overwhelming masterpiece." ( Washington Times)

"[ Cloud Atlas] glows with a fizzy, dizzy energy, pregnant with possibility and whispering in your ear: listen closely to a story, any story, and you'll hear another story inside it, eager to meet the world." ( The Village Voice)

"A remarkable book....It knits together science fiction, political thriller, and historical pastiche with musical virtuosity and linguistic exuberance: there won't be a bigger, bolder novel next year." ( The Guardian)

I guess I didn’t get it…

Given the many excellent reviews that led me to this novel, I expected quite a bit. Although this was not a bad book, I was not terribly impressed. Although it had a slightly interesting structure, it was far from groundbreaking. The various novelettes are, on there own, passable, but they are only loosely linked. Although there is an overall theme, it was hardly unique or impressive. The character development is in the style of a novel, but with the word count of several short stories – which I found limiting. Yes, the novel echoes Melville, Huxley, Steinbeck and Sterne, but it is only a weak, derivative, echo. While listening to this novel I was consistently thinking about the far more perfect novels the imitative writing brought to mind. Near the half-way point I nearly gave up listening, but the stories finally did link and the novel did have a semi-coherent (if old hat) message. The second half was much more interesting than the first half. At the end I was only disappointed because I expected so much.

Mixed

I'm still uncertain if I liked Cloud Atlas. Some of the stories are interesting reads, but the whole thing together... well, I'm just not sure. There's some self congratulatory notes, and I prefer both my symbolism and overall message to be more subtle. The author beats the reader over the head with both. He lays out a clear implication using a birthmark, but then can't leave the reader to understand its import and instead spells it out as if we, the audience, are too stupid to understand. It's actually kind of insulting. Other than this- the individual voices the stories are told in are interesting and each is distinct enough from the others to be plausible. Worth reading if you don't mind being talked down to a little.

Really imaginative

The future as predicted by the past through a series of what initially do not seem to be very inter-connected stories but that do lead to the post-science world of Zachry in Hawaii. The message of the need to heed our humanity and tolerate our differences is told in a remarkable weaving of stories loosely but very cogently interconnected occurring from the 1850's through to a distant (or maybe not so distant?) future. The readers are all incredibly talented and add greatly to the enjoyment of the novel.

best combination of stories and authentic voices

I am new to audible, and audio books in general. This book and my previous audio fiction "The Bonfire of Vanity" show me what I have been missing. Instead of reading a book and try to imagine the characters' voices, I now really enjoy voices done by professionals, whose voice add realistic dimensions to the story's characters.

I listen to Audible's Cloud Atlas and follow the narration with the book open. Bristish accents, illiterate Hawaii herder's accent for example all become alive and real, with emotions! (The book adds visual spelling of names, foreign phrases for memory's aide, and also add proper demarcation of italics or parentheses not easily discernible from narrator's pause or reading.)

A very well made audio production combined with an intricate thought provoking novel.

Not My Thing

I knew going into it that Cloud Atlas was written differently so that's not what threw me. I simply didn't find the story all that interesting. The characters were ok but I felt I didn't get enough time with any of them to really connect. Each story sort of built on the last but it was so far removed that it never really felt connected. I see where the author was going with it but it was too much of a conspiracy for me to really buy it.

The narrators were all very good which made the story easy to listen to at least.

I can't recommend this but I won't say don't bother. It's OK.

Ingruiging novel but political undertones

I want to give this book 5 stars- I really do. The plot(s) is really interesting. I cannot wait to get into my car in the morning and hear what happens next. I love the whimsical travel through time and the birthmark and plot lines that connect the characters. And the actors are amazing- really felt like each story was narrated by its writer.

But sad to say, the book has a political undertone- not very pronounced and heavier near the end- that was not necessary and left a bad taste in my mouth. Instead of focusing on the struggles of mankind throughout history and in the future, the book teeters on becoming a socialist/anti-capitalist manifesto. The author infused his ideology into this book through unnecessary snide comments and a completely one-sided portrayal of corporations in the Louisa Ray story.

That said, I still had to finish it!

Interesting but links are weak

Each of the six stories are excellent, but the links between them are weak.

Decent story but probaby better reading it

Any additional comments?

Enjoyed the story but it's one of the few that would have worked better for me if I had read it via listening to it. It took me a while before I started to get the gist of what was happening and by then it would have been nice to "flip back" into the book and reference some of the earlier parts of the story.

Great narration though, top notch performances.

On an aside, the book convinced me NOT to pay money to watch the movie in the theater. I don't see how they can capture of book of this length and depth into a single movie. I'll wait for the DVD but to plan on watching it.

Unity and division

Intriguing and thought provoking stories and characters are very human. Excellent voice actors narrate this story of the persistent force of conflicting human dreams. Will it be chaos or harmony? The choice continues.

Masterpiece

The audiobook's use of different narrators in different sections of the book adds dramatically enhances the story telling. Brilliantly written and genre-defying, highly recommended.