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)

Six Short Stories Lumped Under One Title

This book is NOT about past lives entwined with modern or future lives. Each character is ostensibly "reading" about the previous character but this is only very clear in one or two of the stories. If you're looking for a book like "Holes" where past and present lives impact one another you will be sorely disappointed.

Putting six different stories in one book under one title seems absolutely arbitrary here. The rave reviews seem directed simply at the writer's ability to write in six different styles to match the book's six different settings. All the stories are tragedies but a few have comic or thriller elements that made those FEW bits moderately entertaining, and keeping the reader hopeful for more but ultimately disappointed.

The writer uses an ostentatiously elevated writing style. Yet all that impressive vocabulary does not add one iota to emotional value of the writing. The first story, widely regarded as tedious in these very reviews, is a perfect example of that point.

Yes, some give this book rave reviews. They may be applauding the author's creativity, but they are NOT speaking of his ability to entertain which is weak, at best, and limited to the first halves of only three stories.

If you like generally bleak stories with sad endings you will love this book.

really well written

This is an amazing book with so much going on. It really is well worth a read.

Enjoyable, but not what I expected

Would you try another book from David Mitchell and/or the narrators?

Probably

Would you recommend Cloud Atlas to your friends? Why or why not?

Probably not, the story line is a bit convoluted. A written book allows you to go back and pick up details that you may have missed earlier. The audiobook format doesn't do that well and I think it diminished my experience.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I do not know.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Movie trailer was interesting, thought I'd get the book first to pick up the details the movie will leave out. Now that I have experienced the book and its ending I have no interest in seeing the movie.

Enjoyed this tremendously.

Others have commented on the unusual structure of this novel, and explained its many virtues. I have little to add other than "I agree, it was great." I particularly enjoyed "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish," which I found hilarious, and an amazing contrast with the closely following "An Orison of Sonmi 451." It's incredible that Mitchell can write so convincingly in such different styles and in such close proximity.

I will have to listen to this again because I am sure that I missed much that is important. But, that's what makes a book great - when you read it, think about it, go back and look at something, read it again, think about it again, make connections you didn't make before.

The only justification for writing this brief review is to praise in the highest possible terms the narration for this book. Each section had its own narrator which was an excellent decision, and every one did very well, particularly John Lee as Timothy Cavendish. Having excellent professional actors read a novel like this brings even more to the story. Audible, please: more like this!

Wow!

This novel had received so much attention and seemed so interesting that I decided to listen. I thought the beginning of the first story was okay but soon began to sense that there was going to be much more here...and there was. David Mitchell's story and a wonderful group of readers bring you deeper and deeper into stories that are very much related. I don't want to give anything away but you will be delighted with where you are taken.

unfinished business

Would you try another book from David Mitchell and/or the narrators?

wow, this is one of those reviews that you never want to write...this book has been a struggle to listen to, and i am still not done. i listen at work and am finding it very difficult to follow this book. the narrators i have heard have all been excellent, but the story starts off very confusing and is written in more of a literary/fancy style than i normally read, so please don't pass over this book on my account. twice, i have started other books and come back as the premise of the book sounds great...so far, however, i'm not on cloud atlas 9

Magnificent

First, let me say that I read this book once before listening to it. It is a magnificent work, elegant in its concepts and construction. I had already read Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" and that propelled me to pick up Cloud Atlas. I agree with other reviewers that the first section is the hardest to get through, but it is well worth the effort to do so (as I tell everyone I recommend this book to). Everything hinges on the centerpiece section (the 6th story).

Each story is written in its own distinctive voice and style. The connections between the stories are myriad and sometimes subtle. The first half of the book can feel like everything is going wrong with everyone and the characters you care about are not likely to survive - the second half of the book is about redemption, as piece by piece, things are stitched together.

I think the casting and reading of the different stories for audio was done brilliantly. Like other reviewers, I especially appreciate the performance of the centerpiece story which has the most unusual and compelling language. This has become one of my all time favorites-- both the book and the audiobook.

Zachry

Zachry's voice acting was good for the most part, but voice wasn't differentiated much when narrating other characters.

Interesting

I loved the way the author put this story together. I saw the movie first and wish I had read the book first. I am now going to watch the movie again.

Excellent, actually Amazing narrators

5 narrators made this book come alive. Great intertwining of stories. My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.