Wow

The phrase "literary fiction" conjures images of lengthy tomes devoted to minute dissections of modern life and explorations of weighty themes.  While occasionally compelling, these works generally make an ultimately minor impression--fading quickly in the memory and falling inevitably into that category of "Books Read But Scarcely Remembered" (we're talking to you, Jonathan Franzen).  Sometimes, writers of literary fiction tackle such themes with dazzling stylistic pyrotechnics, taking the reader on a wild and often enjoyable ride, but one rife with moments of confusion and the urge to throw up one's hands and simply surrender in the face of the author's clearly superior intellect and ability to string words together in new and bizarre configurations (RIP, David Foster Wallace).  Rare indeed is the work combining formal ingenuity with "BIG IDEAS" that is also a complete pleasure to read, filled with incident, fascinating characters and easily followed plot.

We present, for your consideraton, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

We can say with reasonable certainty that, no matter how well-read you are, you have never read a book quite like this.  The book is divided into eleven sections and tells six stories, all of which revolve around one wandering soul as it appears and reappears throughout past, present, and future history.  Each story is written in a different genre--a seaman's journal gives way to a series of letters, which is followed by a murder-mystery, a memoir, a transcript of an interrogation, and, finally, an "oral history."  Each story is set in a different time period, beginning in the mid-19th century and continuing on to some point in the far distant future.  Each tale is told in a different style and voice.  By the time we reached the middle of the book (the sixth story), we could only shake our head in awe at Mitchell's talents, as we read the oral history written in a made-up vernacular that is, nonetheless, totally intelligible.  And then, after the conclusion of section six, section seven begins with the continuation of the story from section five, which leads into the continuation of section four in section eight, and so on, until the novel ends with the conclusion of the seaman's journal that began the book and which had ended abruptly--mid-sentence, in fact--at the end of section one.

As we say, though, the main appeal of the novel is not its stylistic acrobatics.  Those merely add intellectual excitement to what are, in fact, six thoroughly enjoyable stories.  All the stories share elements and overlap and echo, but each one tells its own distinct tale.  A California notary en route home from New Zealand aboard a merchant vessel finds himself the target of a nefarious plot; a British composer on the run from creditors takes refuge in the household of an elderly master and undertakes a series of romantic adventures; an intrepid journalist braves life-threatening dangers to expose corruption at a major energy company; a pompous but likable vanity-press publisher is held against his will at an old-folks' home in a sort of farcical reinterpretation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; a rebellious clone tells the story of her rise from servitude to self-awareness; a simple farmer in a pastoral, post-apocalyptic future recounts the story of his encounter with a representative of a "bygone" world.  Mitchell has compressed a six-volume, genre-crossing opus into one Russian stacking doll of a novel.

Cloud Atlas is that rare work that will leave you stunned at its author's creativity and recharged about the possibilities of what a writer of fiction can achieve.