Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell [Book Review]

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” 
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.” 
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

If you're looking for a complex read... read this. 

This novel is split up in to six narratives about novella length. The novellas are then neatly sat within the next narrative. It's kind of like you took six books, you take the first book and slot a second book in to the first, you then take a third book and slot it in to the centre of the second, you then take a fourth etc etc (remember when you used to do that when you were supposed to be reading something and you hid a comic book inside and read that instead? Yeah, it's just like that) and so because that is the make-up of the narrative each story is interrupted by the next. 

Yes. Even my description is complex!

So, the first half of the first novella takes place in the 18th Century. We are introduced to a hypochondriac lawyer, Adam Ewing, who is befriended by a doctor who collects and sells teeth. 

The second novella sees us introduced to a young aspiring composer named Frobisher. Frobisher sends a series of letters to his lover in Cambridge, both mentioning the diary he is reading, but also how he is working for one of the greatest living composers in Europe. 

In the future, Luisa Ray comes across those letters and hunts down a rare piece of music by Frobisher and they inspire her to make sacrifices to become an amazing journalist. We are interrupted by Timothy Cavendish and eccentric publisher, and realise that Luisa Ray's narrative is a book he's been sent for perusal. 

Cavendish is victim to a series of very, very unfortunate events and his life is being watched as a movie by a clone, in the distant future called Sonmi-451 who is the unknowing leader of a revolution. 

The next narrative is from a post-apocalyptic future, Zachary a goat-herder and his tribe worship Sonmi as a goddess. A woman from the Prescients has come to study the way his tribe live. 

What do all these characters have in common? The key character in all of the narratives have a shooting-star shaped birthmark somewhere on their body.

The Audiobook
I bought this book from Audible (as usual) and I was very happy to see that they had recruited six different narrators for this awesome job. I think it was necessary so that the book felt as broken up as it should have. Sonmi-451's voice was simply brilliant. She had that robotic quality that we would imagine! Also, Timothy Cavendish's narrator sounded... I kid you not... just like Jim Broadbent (who played Cavendish in the movie); It was genius. The production was excellent! 

The Story
Although the book is complex, it is so very elegant. The book won't be for everybody, I admit, but it is so beautifully crafted I really did feel in awe. Mitchell knew exactly what he wanted to achieve with this book. He did not become lost. Although all the stories are connected and lay over and interrupt each other, he is master of all the characters and does not allow them to run away with him. 

Timothy Cavendish's story is a hilarious one, which I enjoyed so very much. Nearly all the novels are super heavy and so Mitchell offered comic relief to allow the reader to giggle. It was one of my favourites, but my real favourite was Sonmi-451's narrative. It was beautiful. Slightly disconnected but also feeling. 

The most amazing part, I found, about the whole book was how Mitchell managed to forge the English language to suit each time. Of course, the 18th Century Ewing would write in a way that we would expect from the 18th Century. Timothy Cavendish is in present day London and so his language reflects this. Luisa Ray's story takes place in the 70s and so the colloquialism is reflective. But then Mitchell does something extraordinary, he fashions whole new dialects for the narrators in the future. It is incredible. Sonmi-451's language is brilliant. Instead of using words such as 'TV/Television' she calls them 'Sony's'... because it is a super commercialised world she lives in, things are known by their brand names rather than their actual names (kinda like in the UK where a vacuum cleaner is called a 'Hoover'). When we fast forward even further in the future to Zachary's narrative, it takes a little time to get used to the dialect, well, it's just amazing. I'm sure you can tell that I was just so, so impressed.

The only issue I have with this book is that it was difficult to stay interested! For instance, I loathed Adam Ewing, I found his narrative painfully boring! But because it is pretty impossible to even skip a few minutes/pages of this book for fear of missing something crucial I had to painfully listen through it. 

I tried not to extract meaning from the books as much as others have. There is much discussion of the idea that the stories are just repetitions of each other from different time periods including the same soul, but y'know what... I didn't get that. I felt that they were connected because their lives effected both the future and the past, but I left it at that. When I re-read it I will try and decipher it all!

Is the book a good one? Well, it's an amazingly crafted book. The language is amazing, the writing sensitive and in command. The characters are varied and brilliant. But as a story does it work well? I'm not sure... it would all depend on the person I believe. I've seen this book get rated 5/5 but also receive a mere 1/5. This book has the potential to frustrate some, whilst mesmerising others.

If you have a short attention span, or no real love for language or literary craftsmanship I would avoid the book. It'll make you angry! If though, you can be patient, enjoy beautiful writing, and can admire the time, love and dedication an author has put in to his work then I promise this book will definitely enlighten and awe you. 

The movie was released in 2012. I will be offering up a review of it too, BUT I must watch it again before I can! 

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The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

“My greatest enemies are Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the Sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the marks I have made.” Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

This book is just so gross. By gross, I mean recurring graphic descriptions of animal torture and deaths of children. Avoid this book if you have a weak disposition, do not have a thing for gore or if you love fluffy bunnies, because I kid you not, some of the stuff in this book is just awful.

Frank, who's sixteen, lives with his father, some old brilliant ex-university professor. His brother Eric is in a psychiatric hospital and we begin the book hearing of Eric's escape. The story is written in first person and to be honest not much really happens. We know that Frank's's father has an office that he always keeps locked. Also, Frank receives crazed phone calls from Eric every day or two, frequently becoming hysterical and overly sensitive. All the while there are a good too many scenes of animals being killed and tortured, we have to listen to endless, monotonous internal dialogue by the incredibly boring Frank, which all culminates to what you think will be an epic struggle and battle but instead a huge freaky secret is exposed.


The Audiobook
The book is narrated by Peter Kenny. He is a master of many voices and to be honest listening to him reading in Eric's voice is eerie - he encapsulates the fury, hysteria and lunacy in Eric's voice, I'm not exaggerating, you can practically hear the spit shooting from his mouth as he rages! It's scary! Unfortunately though, the voice he chose for Frank was just so boring, coupled with Frank being quite boring it was like pulling teeth listening sometimes. 


The Story
I'm sure you can tell just from my rating that I wasn't a big fan of this story. There were parts in the tale that were interesting. For instance, Frank is evidently crazy himself. He divulges the three murders he planned and perpetrated as a child with a quiet detachment, and consistently shares with the reader his obsessive compulsive behaviours and his inability to control his habits.

Frank's OCDish behaviour manifests in his creating a sort of religion. Everything he does has, in his eyes, greater meaning. The animals he tortures and kills are always done in a ritual manner, he believes himself to be able to see in to the future with these killings. We hear references of his alter, the animals being called sacrifices, and his premonitions... there is even one point where he thinks that he can reach his brother telepathically and is pretty sure he did. 

I found the story repetitive and so frustrating. It was just a constant reminder of how nuts Frank is and how much he loves torturing things. Frank does not grow. He is stagnant, and bizarre, and I'm sure Banks thought that it would all be worth it in the end with the twist, but it wasn't. I walked away flabbergasted and annoyed.

The story's twist, which I shall not give away can easily pass even the most focussed reader, but the clues are there, all along, so let me know if you catch them. I unfortunately already knew the twist at the end and I am sure that it removed some of the intrigue from the book that others would experience. All in all though, I'm not a fan of excessive gore, or animal torture or child murders, so it was a difficult read for me, and the only reason I finished reading it was because I'd started. I also like to read writers that are clever about being pretentious... I don't like it shoved in my face.

It's a coming-of-age type of story set on a tiny Island in Scotland. It has pacing that is very, very typical of the Gothic. No goblins, ghosts or ghouls though I'm afraid! You may like it, I won't be unreasonable, I mean on GoodReads The Wasp Factory has done very well indeed and so it really just depends on your tastes. For me - no, I didn't enjoy it at all, it was like pulling teeth.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

“It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. ...”  Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

This book was intense. 
Very intense indeed.

It tells the tale of the very successful Eva Khatchadourian. The book is written in first person through an epistolary structure. One of my favourite types of first person narrative.
Eva Khatchadourian is writing letters to her estranged husband, recounting certain moments throughout their lives together that told her that Kevin (their first child) was not right. The blurb sets the scene nicely, and you read the book knowing that Kevin was the perpetrator of a school shooting. She is writing two years after the fact, and throughout her letters she speaks with scary honesty about her feelings towards pregnancy, motherhood, her dislike of her own child and her inability to believe that being maternal is innate. 

The Audiobook
We Need to Talk About Kevin is performed by Lorelei King. She's a very well paced, very professional sounding lady, and does an excellent job of exuding a coolness that we would expect from Eva Khatchadourian. Even her male voices and the voice of a young Kevin are very good and believable. I bought this audiobook from Audible and it is only six and a half hours long (thereabouts) and so I found myself listening to this every chance I got; in a taxi, whilst cooking, during work breaks. The production is excellent and of high quality. 

The Story
So the story. This excellent piece of contemporary literature - that I hope, and expect, that in one hundred years time university literature students will be reading for a feminist literature seminar. 
I really thought this was brilliantly written. Some pieces of prose were just... so... mind blowing. So beautiful in their simplicity that sometimes I would rewind the book so I could listen to it again. 

This book is written like a psychological thriller, as well as truly exploring the pressure upon women to be excellent at everything... the pressure of being successful, educated, rich, but also be expected to work, have children, and raise perfect children. Eva is a modern woman's nightmare. She is the embodiment of the anxieties and pressures on western women living now. The fear that after having fulfilled all other expectations in life, a woman must then fulfil what her biology expects of her, she must procreate - and be happy about it, and must have a natural maternal instinct otherwise she is odd, a failure. The arguments, and points to discuss are mind blowing, and I think Shriver takes this all in her stride. There is no rush to the narrative. 

Eva, throughout her narrative, discusses her relationship in depth with Kevin; but at the same time, I read this feeling that I could not trust her whole-heartedly. I then listened to an interview by Shriver who perfectly reflected my feelings towards Eva. Shriver says 

'She’s not a liar, except in the sense that we’re all liars. We all choose to remember some events more often than others, because they play to our version of the world, and of ourselves, whereas the memories that challenge who we are to ourselves have a funny tendency to seep away. So naturally Eva remembers all the scenes in which her son did (or seemed to do) something nasty...' 

and I found that this was the most important thing to remember throughout the novel... that, truly, I wasn't sure if Kevin was born with a sociopathic personality disorder - or whether he was reacting to his mother's dislike of him and desperate for attention. Does she carry the blame solely for Kevin's oddness as a child, or was he born to commit those murders. It's the recurring argument of Nature Vs Nurture.

The interesting part in the book is that Kevin's father, Franklin, absolutely adores his son, and cannot see in Kevin what Eva does... and Kevin resents it. The morning before he commits the murders Kevin has an outburst towards his father that gives the impression that his father never really saw him for who he was - and that he hated him for that. It's very interesting.

Suffice to say, in my opinion, Kevin wins at the end. That is the saddest part about the novel. He wins, and yet, Eva seems to mend a little because Kevin has won. 

I won't give away the ending, but read it - let me know what you think. Did Kevin win in the end? Or did Eva rise above it all?

A review of the movie will be on its way very soon.

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

“All right, then, I thought: here I am in the bottom of a well.” 

― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Now this quite literally is the strangest book I have ever read. Although it was strange, and although it went against every literary convention I am used to, and confused me, and puzzled me, and frustrated me, and infuriated me - it filled me with such intrigue and such hunger that I almost feel like I need to fill the hole (with another Murakami book) that it left once I completed it.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is made up of three books: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, and The Birdcatcher. All three books are narrated by the main character Toru Okada. He is a man-child, he has no job, no accomplishments, no aspirations and a failing marriage (though he does not seem to be aware of this).

The story opens with Okada being deeply concerned that his wife's cat has disappeared. This perplexes him so much that he becomes obsessed with finding it. One morning though, he wakes up to find that his wife - who had not come back from work the night before - was also missing and so he then searches for her. All the while, through all these searches, he bumps in to and makes friends with characters that veer from the odd to the outright weird. 

I am realising that this sounds like the most bizarre description of a book ever... it's because the book is so fragmented and so strange. At some moments within the book you do not know if Okada is dreaming, telling the truth, is crazy, or imagining the personalities he meets or their stories. One thing you do know though, is that the characters that he meets (a psychic, a prostitute, a mute, a sixteen year-old girl, a war-veteran) bring a little colour to his otherwise grey world.

The Audiobook
The book is fabulously narrated by Rupert Degas. He does, quite simply, an excellent job in narrating and emoting a story that is quite chaotic. 

His pronunciations of Japanese and Manchurian names and places seem to be so well executed that to my untrained ears it sounds as if he is a native speaker (of course I do not speak Japanese and this is just my uneducated assumption). 

Degas does his best with the female character voices, which can sometimes be quite funny to listen to, but you do get used to it - and they do start to sound quite convincing! 

The Story
I have to say that this book just blew me away, and maybe not for all the right reasons. 

Whilst listening to it, I felt like I was pacing on a treadmill that I was unable to stop - that I was watching the brilliant imagery and scenes pass by me, not really able  to absorb the scene before being moved on by the author to the next part.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on stage

Surreal images, scenes and situations are experienced or described to Okada and he seems to show the same confusion, or apathy that the reader does. The sub-plots, which are all so painfully curious, are threaded beautifully throughout the novel, but as one reaches the end it is easy to become panicked as you'll come to realise that not everything will be explained. 

Destiny and fortune is a recurring theme personified, which is ironic, as Okada's lack of direction is reflected in the book's lack of direction. For those who love a tidy ending, and tight structure, this book will bug you to no end. 

Everything about this book should have had me hating it.
But I really quite loved it actually. The book was so refreshing and so tantalisingly curious that I could do nothing but need to listen on. I found the story monotonous at times, the characters so bizarre that they were bordering on annoying, and the hardest part of the novel was that nothing really happens. All the while, Murakami is winding you up, making you hold you breath so patiently, sure that there is going to be a climax that will make your eyes pop out of your head - but there is nothing.... and at the same time, in true style, there is everything.

I recommend this to anybody who wants to try something new. Anybody who enjoys surrealist literature, and anybody patient enough to read 600 plus pages and run the risk of blinking at the end, confused as to what you've read.

---

P.S. Okado spends a good bunch of pages sitting down the bottom of the well, walking through well walls in to hotels and curing people with a spot on his cheek that he got from said well.

P.P.S. Don't let the above 'P.S' put you off.

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The Help - Kathryn Stockett

“We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.” 
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

The Help is a contemporary novel discussing the strained relationships between white privileged housewives and their black house maids. The story is set in 1962, Mississipi - and with just that information, you can practically guess the tone, pace, and mood of the novel (and if you'd like a little bit more information - the novel rocked the book club world). 

Three narrators guide us through the novel; a black maid named Aibileen, who is raising her seventeenth white child and is mourning the death of her son. A white lady named Skeeter, who is so desperate to become a famous journalist, that she decides to collect interviews of black maids and their experiences, and there is Minny, a smart-mouthed black maid who basically brings some much needed flavour and humour to the narratives. 

All three unite to fight the prejudice, misinformation and oppression that they witness, are affected by and fall victim to. We're given an insight in to desperate housewives - who take their frustrations out on the help.

The Audiobook
I had downloaded this book through sheer desperation. I was leaving on holiday, had already packed paperbacks, and needed some audiobooks to get me through the lazy days. An hour before we left to go to the airport I was scouring through Audible's recommendations and came across The Help. I downloaded it, pretty much after reading the blurb and did not begin it until a week in to my holiday.

The producers of this audiobook did an amazing job. They brought together four different narrators to take on the different voices. All narrators used a southern accent which just added to the mood and tone of the novel. Stockett's writing, although good, was accentuated by these beautiful voices. 

The Story

So, what did I think of the story? Well, it's a hard one. Whilst other people have found The Help to have a Marmite effect. I find myself, at times, balancing on a fence and occasionally falling off one side, only to clamber back up to the middle again. 

I loved it. I hated it. At the same time.
I loved the writing. I loved the distinct voices of the characters. But I hated the clichéd voices, and the clichéd writing. I hated the obvious dichotomies of 'goodie' and 'baddie' but I also found that the lack of complexity made the book an easy read - perfect for holidays. 

I did, though, find the story uncomfortable. It was the recurring 'mammi' figures. The recurring 'white saviour' theme and the author's inability to represent the side of the privileged white housewives. It's not that I particularly want to hear what Hilly has to say, but, if we had heard a little more of what she had had to say we could hate her for what she is, rather than the stereotype she represents.

There were some massive changes happening throughout the United States during the 60s that I feel were not even alluded to. Although, some may argue that the very fact the maids plucked up the courage to be interviewed by Skeeter - that in essence they're contributing to the tension brewing during the civil rights movement. But I feel, just a slight acknowledgement that there were black people at the time not waiting for whites to 'tell their story' but were actively putting their lives at risk, and demanding and taking their rights. As the author has seemed to try to keep things a little light it did not ask the ultimate and most uncomfortable question of all.... if we had been white, privileged little housewives in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi, would we be joining them in their prejudice?

Stockett was very successful in both mixing real funny moments, and moments that were quite devastating to read. Although the book had quite a morose tone to it, she still exhibited moments of hope. 

If I applaud Stockett for anything it is her ability to control her characters - I did believe them (except one), I even believed Hilly Holbrooke - I just wanted to know a little more about her and her psychology. It was Constantine - Skeeter relationship that I had a hard time believing, I just didn't really 'get it'. I was also quite impressed how she touched upon the pressures and oppression that all characters are victim to, whites and blacks. 

So overall, I loved and hated it. I know - not the best place to stand when reviewing a book, but it's where I stand; balancing, holding an umbrella on a fence.

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