Does "Cloud Atlas" get any better?

[NostrilDarmus]

I'm 188 pages into David Mitchel's "Cloud Atlas" and finding it a real struggle.

I've just finished the story where the publishing man gets put in an old folks home and I'm just about to start what looks like the dystopia future story. I'm not sure whether to bother reading on.

Is it worth carrying on?
Does it get better?
I'm guessing the writing doesn't improve but do the stories start to link together soon? Basically, does something happen at any point?

Thanks so much.

I'm afraid I read it in the order it makes sense, not the order he put it in for publication!

No. It doesn’t. Sloosha’s Crossing was particularly painful. I really rated The Bone Clocks by the same author though

I really enjoyed Cloud Atlas. One of the chapters really made me laugh out loud and I think it's brilliant. I loved the last chapter.

But there you go. We're all different. I've just been looking at the 'easy to read Classics' thread and some on there I've really struggled with.

I think its poorly written because there's no nuance or depth conveyed behind the writing - what we're told is just how it is (what happens, how people feel).

It just feels like very simple description but not in the style of someone like JM Coetzee which is tense and spare. I think really good writing conveys actions, thoughts and feelings of characters without actually telling you these

I also found Mitchell's playfulness with language pretentious and pointless - a tactic to disguise boring work as oh-so-clever which made some chapters almost unreadable.

I really wanted to like this book. I was transfixed for the first half and then gave up at the 3/4 mark. Might try again

I hated section 1, but loved sections 2&3 section 4 is rather dull on first read but is better next time once you start recognising the echoes. Section 5 & 6 are good. Everything after the midpoint is better than the first half.

Ok 🤷‍♀️

I finished it but it was due to circumstances (travelling & long delays). My recollection is one of it being hard work and curiosity as to why it had been so well reviewed. I have forgotten the story line completely. I’d say, don’t bother.

Hated it. It’s one of the few books I have given up on. I tried a few times but just struggled.
Maybe I’m not clever enough.

One of the things I really like about David Mitchell is that the same characters pop up across his books, sometimes just in minor roles, but it makes you feel like you are immersed in a whole universe, even though he writes across such different genres and time periods. At least one character from Cloud Atlas has popped up in every book he has written since then.

@shivermetimbers77, he's not the first writer to do that, e.g. Honoré de Balzac is credited as the first person to do this but also Zola, Barbara Pym, Marion Keyes, Noel Streatfeild, Rick Riordan.

Similarly, the jumping between stories was done earlier (and better) by Italo Calvino in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.

Ooh @FruAashild I am planning to start If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler this week and am really excited to discover it

I thought this was s beautifully written book. I love the way he totally changed styles for each story. The structure reveals itself about halfway through. But if you're not enjoying it it may just not be for you.

But the different styles are needed to reflect the different fictional worlds of the novel — a man in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii isn’t going to use language in the same way as a 1930s English composer writing letters or a 22nd century Korean clone recording a confession before she’s executed..