Just finished reading 'Cloud Atlas', the 3rd novel by Brit author, David Mitchell. A lot of the reviews and summaries call it a series of nested Matryoshka dolls; I consider it more of a chiasm. It tells 6 stories in A-B-C-B-A fashion, telling half of the story at first and then providing closure and resolution to each story in the 2nd half of the book. The plots cover protagonists that are doing such things as writing a journal in the South Pacific in the early 1800's, working on a classical-music
opus magnum in Belgium in the 30's, cracking a giant conspiracy in California in the 70's, trying to convince the workers in a convalescent home in England that you don't belong there, providing a final interview to an archivist explaining how you achieved enlightenment, all prior to being executed for being a heretic clone, and telling a campfire story in post-apocalyptic Hawaii about how you saved your tribe with the help of a tech-savvy outsider.
Obviously the different stories provide varied themes and perspectives, but I especially enjoyed how the author was able to weave it all together, which, from my observation, ties to the central theme of the text: that we all, as souls, pass through time like clouds shifting and floating across the sky. E
ach protagonist has an undefined origin and travels through time changing and advancing. He is linked to his predecessors and progenitors and finds himself on different parts of the globe.
Call it gimmicky, but I loved the way Mitchell was able to write each story as though he were an entirely different author. From each transition, I felt like I was picking up an entirely new book--which is why I'm counting this as reading 6 books.
