Book: Cloud Atlas

I remember this 2004 book caused quite a stir when it came out, won some prizes and a lot of praise. Five short novelettes under one cover, and supposedly at the end the author ties them all together somehow. Difficult to see how, since the timeframes and characters and styles and locations are vastly different.

But the writing so far is excellent.

I remember trying to watch the film version, where Tom Hanks and Halle Berry played all the characters across all the stories, and I just thought it was a pretentious confused pile of crap.

Back into this book, after interrupting with two Chet & Bernies and a Thor Heyerdahl. The author really does present a markedly different style of writing in each story. Ordinarily this might come off as some kind of showing off, but so far all of the stories have been charming, each in a different way. It’s like eating buffet, where each entree is gourmet.

One of the stories, “An Orison of Sonmi-451” is set in a near future China where clones perform all the manual labor and are content with their status. Sonmi-451 is a cafeteria assistant clone who gets accidentally dosed with some DNA modifying substance which causes her, like Charly in “Flowers for Algernon,” to develop sentience beyond her station.

Anyway, the society described as the backdrop to the story has some startlingly-original predictions.

One is that collecting minor diseases, and their cures, has become a hobby for some.

Another is that fashion among the freeborn leads some to “facescape” so they look like various strata of clones.

Well, I tried.

I set this book aside and returned to it a dozen times, finally started skimming, finally gave up altogether.  It's one of those books to be read by shut-ins with a month to spare and nothing else to do (I know people like this). 

I'm not that reader.  Haven't the patience, haven't the devotion.  The stories got less charming as I went along, and the last couple I read/skimmed were positively uncharming.  And by then, with all the interruptions and vastly-different stories & styles, I began to feel any feat of magic that tied them together would be a. lost on me and b. way too little reward. I stopped caring how it all came out.