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Cloud Atlas is layered, complex, uniquely structured, occasionally puzzling, often moving, and definitely not for the faint of heart. It's famously (or infamously) structured with a sextet of interconnected stories that range from the mid-1800s to the distant future.

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.

I like that Mitchell has a sense of humor about his story. :) Like this Cloud Atlas Sextet musical piece written by one of the characters, each story is told by a different voice, and cuts off abruptly (sometimes in mid-sentence) until the central story. Then the storyline moves back again through time, wrapping up each tale. To use another simile, the novel is very much like a set of Russian nesting dolls that is taken apart and then put back together again.

One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now" likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.

Despite the sometimes huge leaps in time, each story is tied to the stories before and after it by colorful threads: characters read (or view) each others' stories; themes resurface, showing a different face; memorable scenes--like increasingly small fruit being shot off a reluctant clone's head with an arrow--are unexpectedly reflected in a similar scene in a later story; characters experience deja vu moments that tie them to another character in a different story. karen's description in her review is so apt: "the stories. they sneak into each others' worlds both thematically, and more overtly, like foraging little mice on mouse-missions. sometimes they are each others' stories."

Part 1 is the 1850-era journal of Adam Ewing, an American notary who is traveling in the South Pacific. He witnesses the brutality of the Maori people toward the Moriori natives, not realizing �� at first �� that his own white people are often equally as brutal and predatory. This story is told in the style of Herman Melville, which, frankly, makes for a tough start to the novel. But don't lose heart, because very soon comes:

Part 2: Letters written in 1931 by a young Robert Frobisher, an amoral, self-centered, dishonest, but very funny and charming bisexual musical genius, to his friend Rufus Sixsmith. Frobisher, disinherited and looking to escape from his debts, attaches himself as an assistant to an older, nearly blind musician, Vyvyan Ayrs, who is living in Belgium. After a rocky start, the musical collaboration goes well, but soon problems start to surface again. Adam Ewing's journal is discovered by Robert while he is fishing around in the Ayrs' home, looking for old books to steal and sell.

Part 3: It's 1975, and Rufus Sixsmith is now an older man who meets a journalist, Luisa Rey, in California when they're stuck together in a broken elevator. Luisa is looking for a good story, and Rufus has some dirt on the new nuclear reactor in the area. This piece reads like a fast-moving crime novel that you'd pick up in an airport to distract you on your flight.

Part 4: In the early 2000s, Timothy Cavendish, a 60-something British man who is a vanity publisher, is writing his memoirs. One of his authors (who comes from a rough family) tosses his worst literary critic over the side of a skyscraper, killing him. The resulting publicity makes the author's book an instant bestseller. Though the author is in jail, his brothers come to Timothy looking for a piece of the monetary pie. Timothy goes on the run . . .

Part 5: Sometime in the not-too-far-distant future, in what used to be Korea, not-too-bright clones ("fabricants") are used as a source of slave labor. They are deemed to have no soul. Corporate power rules, and the slang amusingly reflects that as several trademarks are now the generic names for everyday objects (people wear nikes on their feet, drive fords and watch disneys). Sonmi-451 is a fabricant fast food worker who is unexpectedly "ascending," gaining greatly increased intelligence and understanding. A group steals her away from the restaurant, but what is their agenda for Sonmi-451?

Part 6: In a far-distant future, Zachry tells the story of his adventures in his youth on the "Big I" of "Hawi" to a group of children. Zachry's people, the Valleymen, are a no-tech, superstitious, rural people who worship the goddess Sonmi and are periodically in danger from Kona raiders, who seek to enslave them. The Valleyman are also visited annually by the Prescients, who seem to be the one group of people who still have technology and scientific understanding. One of the Prescients, Meronym, asks to stay with Zachry's people for a year and Zachry's family is elected to host her, much to his dismay. They eventually become friends as he leads her on a pilgrimage to what's left of the observatories on Mauna Kea, symbolically capping the novel as events start to descend from there.

Mitchell's ability to create very distinct narrators, writing styles, and futuristic languages without sacrificing (too much) understanding is truly praiseworthy. It helped me to know that each story section was (with the exception of the culminating central story) only about 40 pages long, so if I was having difficulties with one narrator I had the comfort of knowing that a different narrator would soon take over. Also, I cheerfully sacrificed the element of surprise for the satisfaction of better understanding, and read several online discussions and reviews of Cloud Atlas while I was reading each section of the book. The Cloud Atlas Readalong at editorialeyes.net was particularly helpful.

Cloud Atlas grapples with some heavy themes: power, greed, slavery, predatory vs. selfless behavior, prejudice, love, the nature of souls . . . I could go on. I think I may admire this book more than I love it, but it's an amazing achievement and really made me think. It is absolutely worth reading if you're up for a mental challenge.

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an�� tho�� a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an�� so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ‘morrow? Only Sonmi the east an�� the west an�� the compass an�� the atlas, yay, only the atlas o�� clouds.