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Book of Clouds
A young Mexican woman adrift in post-unification Berlin encounters romance, violence, and revelation in this “stirring and lyrical first novel” (Paul Auster, award-winning author and filmmaker).
Having escaped her overbearing family in Mexico, Tatiana settles in the newly reunified city of Berlin, where she hopes to cultivate a life of solitude. But when she takes a job transcribing notes for the reclusive historian, Doktor Weiss, Tatiana’s simple life becomes more complex—and more perilous. Through Weiss, she meets a young meteorologist who, as a child in East Germany, took solace in the sky’s constant shape-shifting, an antidote to his grim and unchanging reality. As their three conflicting worlds begin to merge, the tension culminates in an act of violence that will leave none of them untouched.
Unfolding with the logic of a dream, Book of Clouds is both “a stunningly accurate portrait of Berlin” and a beautiful exploration of the myths we cling to in order to give our lives meaning. From a crowded U-Bahn where Hitler appears dressed as an old woman to an underground Gestapo bowling alley whose walls bear score marks from games long settled, Chloe Aridjis guides us through layers of history with wit and compassion, blurring the lines between real and imagined. Her debut novel is “required reading of the most pleasurable sort” (The New York Times).
Named one of the 10 Best Books Set in Berlin by The Guardian.
Having escaped her overbearing family in Mexico, Tatiana settles in the newly reunified city of Berlin, where she hopes to cultivate a life of solitude. But when she takes a job transcribing notes for the reclusive historian, Doktor Weiss, Tatiana’s simple life becomes more complex—and more perilous. Through Weiss, she meets a young meteorologist who, as a child in East Germany, took solace in the sky’s constant shape-shifting, an antidote to his grim and unchanging reality. As their three conflicting worlds begin to merge, the tension culminates in an act of violence that will leave none of them untouched.
Unfolding with the logic of a dream, Book of Clouds is both “a stunningly accurate portrait of Berlin” and a beautiful exploration of the myths we cling to in order to give our lives meaning. From a crowded U-Bahn where Hitler appears dressed as an old woman to an underground Gestapo bowling alley whose walls bear score marks from games long settled, Chloe Aridjis guides us through layers of history with wit and compassion, blurring the lines between real and imagined. Her debut novel is “required reading of the most pleasurable sort” (The New York Times).
Named one of the 10 Best Books Set in Berlin by The Guardian.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
36 people are currently reading
1423 people want to read
About the author
Chloe Aridjis
26 books152 followersChloe Aridjis was born in New York and grew up in the Netherlands and Mexico City. After receiving a BA from Harvard, she went on to receive a PhD from Oxford University. A collection of essays on Magic and Poetry in Nineteenth-century France was released in 2005. Her first novel, Book of Clouds, followed in 2009, winning the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 208 reviews
March 8, 2012
Reading this was like lying on the grass and watching clouds. After two hours nothing truly happened, although something beautiful transpired and you feel like a poet.
As the back cover would tell you ‘Book of Clouds’ is about a Mexican woman adrift in Berlin. I quite liked that this immigrant story did not include the British/American perspective. The world Tatiana came from and the world she came to are both foreign worlds to a regular British or American. Aridjis successfully married off Latin American melancholy and magical realism with German modernism and suffocating history penetrating every street and every building.
Some reviewers said they wanted to know more about the reason behind Tatiana’s disconnection with the world and her taste for escaping. It seems to me that those readers are used to those books where one secret explains all. Real life ain’t like that. Sometimes you just can’t connect with the world, because you can’t, and not because your dad accidentally killed your mother, or because your fiance ran away with your sister.
I felt this book like I haven’t felt a book in a long while. I felt the bits about the light and the darkness, the bits about sounds invading your sleep, the bits about trying hard to keep your neurosis in check. And the part about wanting to move away and start anew knowing damn well nothing really changes. And of course, the bit about detachable shower heads.
And when the old professor fumbled with a broken Dictaphone looking worried and helpless I wanted to cry and then Tatiana cried too and that’s when I decided I would give this book five stars.
As the back cover would tell you ‘Book of Clouds’ is about a Mexican woman adrift in Berlin. I quite liked that this immigrant story did not include the British/American perspective. The world Tatiana came from and the world she came to are both foreign worlds to a regular British or American. Aridjis successfully married off Latin American melancholy and magical realism with German modernism and suffocating history penetrating every street and every building.
Some reviewers said they wanted to know more about the reason behind Tatiana’s disconnection with the world and her taste for escaping. It seems to me that those readers are used to those books where one secret explains all. Real life ain’t like that. Sometimes you just can’t connect with the world, because you can’t, and not because your dad accidentally killed your mother, or because your fiance ran away with your sister.
I felt this book like I haven’t felt a book in a long while. I felt the bits about the light and the darkness, the bits about sounds invading your sleep, the bits about trying hard to keep your neurosis in check. And the part about wanting to move away and start anew knowing damn well nothing really changes. And of course, the bit about detachable shower heads.
And when the old professor fumbled with a broken Dictaphone looking worried and helpless I wanted to cry and then Tatiana cried too and that’s when I decided I would give this book five stars.
June 11, 2019
A wonderful meditation, with a Mexican protagonist, set in scenic Berlin.
Recommended for readers who like literary fiction and/or Berlin.
Recommended for readers who like literary fiction and/or Berlin.
April 12, 2009
Why did this get magnificent reviews--a young / pretty author? So much of the writing was not good, the scenes obvious constructs.
June 26, 2019
Prekrasne,živopisne sličice Berlina viđene očima Meksikanke ,koja je izabrala grad ,za neki svoj novi početak.
Zanimljivi likovi,promatranje grada kao živog bića,galerija čudnovatih likova koje svakodnevno viđa (pa,čak i prerušeni Hitler!) ,poseban je i profinjen stil pisanja Chloe Aridjis ,koji me se izuzetno dojmio!
Ovo je bilo kratko i zanimljivo putovanje metropolom u društvu jednako zanimljive mlade žene.
Tiho i nezaustavljivo...baš kao i oblaci :-)
Zanimljivi likovi,promatranje grada kao živog bića,galerija čudnovatih likova koje svakodnevno viđa (pa,čak i prerušeni Hitler!) ,poseban je i profinjen stil pisanja Chloe Aridjis ,koji me se izuzetno dojmio!
Ovo je bilo kratko i zanimljivo putovanje metropolom u društvu jednako zanimljive mlade žene.
Tiho i nezaustavljivo...baš kao i oblaci :-)
May 29, 2011
After a few chapters I thought: a ghost story. And indeed at the end the narrator notes that "there was little difference between clouds and shadows and other phenomena given shape by the human imagination."
Is there any substance to this story? It's not just that Tatiana sees and feels and hears ghosts; every action, every thought, every word seems haunted by the past and the horrors of humanity. There is no anchor, no context to make anything real. Changes are too vast and unpredictable to find a place in. All is disguise, smoke and mirrors, chalk on the wall.
In some respects the unresolved narrative reminds me of another book I recently read, "Event Factory". As with that novel the writing is crisp, precise, simple, yet also eloquent, creating tension with atmosphere rather than action.
Tatiana is going back, attempting to escape to a solid past, but her ability to reconnect and fit into its substance is elusive and unknown. Clouds both surround and fill a formless future of uncertainty.
Is there any substance to this story? It's not just that Tatiana sees and feels and hears ghosts; every action, every thought, every word seems haunted by the past and the horrors of humanity. There is no anchor, no context to make anything real. Changes are too vast and unpredictable to find a place in. All is disguise, smoke and mirrors, chalk on the wall.
In some respects the unresolved narrative reminds me of another book I recently read, "Event Factory". As with that novel the writing is crisp, precise, simple, yet also eloquent, creating tension with atmosphere rather than action.
Tatiana is going back, attempting to escape to a solid past, but her ability to reconnect and fit into its substance is elusive and unknown. Clouds both surround and fill a formless future of uncertainty.
October 26, 2016
While there are some beautiful passages that I felt read true about my own experiences in Germany, the book lacked momentum and I wasn't fond of the narrators complacency, which oftentimes came across as mopey or listless. Tatiana's clouds or dreams or delusions, or whatever you want to call them, weren't interesting enough to make me feel connected to this "slice of life" story.
September 7, 2011
A very quiet, meditative book about a Mexican woman adrift in Berlin. Tatiana is alienated from her family and her friends, cut off from the rest of the city, uninterested in forming a relationship with anyone. She gets a part-time job doing transcription work for a historian, goes on a few lacklustre dates with a fairly nondescript meteorologist, becomes slightly obsessed with a mentally ill woman, avoids her neighbours, develops insomnia. The book meanders along like this for most of the 200 pages, as aimless as the passage of a cloud across the sky, before something quite dramatic happens almost out of nowhere.
History plays a major role in the book, particularly the dark stories that lurk beneath the surface. There are plenty of those in Berlin, both from the Nazi and the Communist era, buildings in which people were imprisoned or tortured, now converted into schools, apartment buildings and water towers. Right at the beginning of the book, Tatiana sees what she believes is an aged Hitler dressed as a woman on an underground train. Then there’s the underground Gestapo bowling alley that Tatiana explores late at night and almost gets trapped inside when she runs away from her group to go and rub out the chalked scores from the board. There’s the upstairs part of her building, where nobody seems to live but from which strange noises appear. She goes up there, looking for ghosts perhaps, and finds a dark stain on the wall which reminds her of the scores she rubbed out:
“wondering whether this dark imprint was somehow mocking me, reminding me of the inevitable, which was, of course, that nothing can be truly rubbed away or blotted out, and how the more your try to rub something away the darker it becomes.”
This, it seems, is a major theme of the book. There’s not too much background about Tatiana’s life in Mexico so it’s never very clear what she’s trying to blot out, but she is definitely trying. I read in an interview that an earlier draft of this book had more of the Mexican backstory included, but was cut out from the final version. The effect is to leave much unanswered, which can be a good thing, but it also made it difficult to understand the character’s alienation.
Overall: beautiful, dreamy writing, lots of solitary musing and a good sense of the city of Berlin and its history. But the character is essentially solitary and self-absorbed, which can be frustrating. If you’re prepared to let things meander along, enjoy the elegant writing, appreciate the sharp observations and muse on the possible truths hidden in the shapes of the clouds, this would be a good read. But if you want a plot that develops or characters that interact with each other in comprehensible ways, this is probably not the book for you.
History plays a major role in the book, particularly the dark stories that lurk beneath the surface. There are plenty of those in Berlin, both from the Nazi and the Communist era, buildings in which people were imprisoned or tortured, now converted into schools, apartment buildings and water towers. Right at the beginning of the book, Tatiana sees what she believes is an aged Hitler dressed as a woman on an underground train. Then there’s the underground Gestapo bowling alley that Tatiana explores late at night and almost gets trapped inside when she runs away from her group to go and rub out the chalked scores from the board. There’s the upstairs part of her building, where nobody seems to live but from which strange noises appear. She goes up there, looking for ghosts perhaps, and finds a dark stain on the wall which reminds her of the scores she rubbed out:
“wondering whether this dark imprint was somehow mocking me, reminding me of the inevitable, which was, of course, that nothing can be truly rubbed away or blotted out, and how the more your try to rub something away the darker it becomes.”
This, it seems, is a major theme of the book. There’s not too much background about Tatiana’s life in Mexico so it’s never very clear what she’s trying to blot out, but she is definitely trying. I read in an interview that an earlier draft of this book had more of the Mexican backstory included, but was cut out from the final version. The effect is to leave much unanswered, which can be a good thing, but it also made it difficult to understand the character’s alienation.
Overall: beautiful, dreamy writing, lots of solitary musing and a good sense of the city of Berlin and its history. But the character is essentially solitary and self-absorbed, which can be frustrating. If you’re prepared to let things meander along, enjoy the elegant writing, appreciate the sharp observations and muse on the possible truths hidden in the shapes of the clouds, this would be a good read. But if you want a plot that develops or characters that interact with each other in comprehensible ways, this is probably not the book for you.
July 7, 2009
"Book of Clouds" is one of the must-reads of 2009. As Wendy Lesser wrote in The New York Times, "First novels by young writers who see the world with a fresh, original vision and write about it with clarity and restraint are rare enough to begin with. When you add in the fact that Chloe Aridjis’ “Book of Clouds” is also a stunningly accurate portrait of Berlin, as well as a thoughtful portrayal of a young Mexican Jew drifting through her life abroad, this novel becomes required reading of the most pleasurable sort."
The Los Angeles Times reviewer noted that "Magic and poetry are everywhere in "Book of Clouds," and the reader who can appreciate 'the fogs of time and the obfuscation that surrounds them' will find here an unsettling atmosphere unlike anything in recent fiction."
And Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times, has written: "AND NOW for something completely different: Chloe Aridjis brings a bit of realism, a bit of wonder, a hint of darkness and true originality to this sharp, lyric and beguilingly strange tale of a life in flux...this book is irresistible... "Book of Clouds" soars and shimmers through its assured writing, whimsical observations and its sheer ease. It is a story about thinking concerned with questioning life and drifting through it; it’s about knowing that sometimes even trying to take control is a waste of time..,,,Aridjis, at this early stage of her career, has learnt the value of less is more. Every nuance counts in this virtuoso performance. You feel yourself transported to Berlin, more importantly you feel as if the narrator is addressing you because she believes you will understand...Aridjis knows all about conveying the complex inner life of the mind. Her feel for characterisation is instinctive and true. "Book of Clouds" is what happens when a gifted writer heeds her masters and also listens to herself...memorable offbeat, engaging and compelling narrative with its wry intelligence and grasp of the darker fears of the imagination."
September 6, 2021
Quote “Three years later, the Wall fell. And I, in one way or another, grew up”.
Although it started slow and even though it didn’t speed up much there was plenty going on.
This book is fluid, easy to read, written in first person, from the point of view of Tatiana, the Mexican migrant who lives in Berlin.
The author describes lots of references and metaphors to animals and birds which I enjoyed and many long descriptions of not much at all, but they added to the feeling of the book, a young woman on her own in Berlin, although she has no problems with being on her own, she does seek out occasionally some company.
It has moments of poetry in the form of a novel.
History plays a big part in the book, and Tatiana works for an eldely man where she transcribes his work. My favourite and most interesting part, the descriptions of the abandoned underground stations of Berlin and the part in the underground bowling alley during a visit there at night!!!!
The author sometimes makes one simple description longer than a page or more, this might seem excessive but they are actually rather good, like at the beginning, as a child, on the metro, the description of the woman who looks like Hitler.
There is next to no mention about Mexico, but Tatiana takes you on an interesting journey around Berlin, both in the present and the past and Tatiana almost lives in an imaginary world at times with her dreamy descriptions. There is little talking, mainly thinking from the point of view of Tatiana.
I very rarely mention the titles of the book I read, but this is very apt, sometimes it seems Tatiana is in the clouds.
This is not a long book at 209 pages, , can be read quickly and it is a very fluid book to read.
This book taught me a little about underground history in Berlin
I give this book 4 stars.
Video review in Spanish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4qqg...
Although it started slow and even though it didn’t speed up much there was plenty going on.
This book is fluid, easy to read, written in first person, from the point of view of Tatiana, the Mexican migrant who lives in Berlin.
The author describes lots of references and metaphors to animals and birds which I enjoyed and many long descriptions of not much at all, but they added to the feeling of the book, a young woman on her own in Berlin, although she has no problems with being on her own, she does seek out occasionally some company.
It has moments of poetry in the form of a novel.
History plays a big part in the book, and Tatiana works for an eldely man where she transcribes his work. My favourite and most interesting part, the descriptions of the abandoned underground stations of Berlin and the part in the underground bowling alley during a visit there at night!!!!
The author sometimes makes one simple description longer than a page or more, this might seem excessive but they are actually rather good, like at the beginning, as a child, on the metro, the description of the woman who looks like Hitler.
There is next to no mention about Mexico, but Tatiana takes you on an interesting journey around Berlin, both in the present and the past and Tatiana almost lives in an imaginary world at times with her dreamy descriptions. There is little talking, mainly thinking from the point of view of Tatiana.
I very rarely mention the titles of the book I read, but this is very apt, sometimes it seems Tatiana is in the clouds.
This is not a long book at 209 pages, , can be read quickly and it is a very fluid book to read.
This book taught me a little about underground history in Berlin
I give this book 4 stars.
Video review in Spanish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4qqg...
June 16, 2009
oh my god this book is terrible! only the author's extremely privileged personal connections (her dad is a super-big-deal mexican writer and diplomat) could POSSIBLY explain the positive critical attention this godawful book has gotten. it is dishonest, badly written schlock catering to an uninformed american audience that wants to think berlin = impossibly low rents + edgy nightlife + nazis nazis nazis still everywhere. ignore the gushing ny and la times reviewers and check out jessica joffe's right-on scathing review in bookforum.
July 23, 2016
Debut av nu Londonbaserad mexikansk författare med fett kulturellt kapital. I Frankrike förärad 'Prix du Premier Roman Etranger'.
Ojämn, men är ju svag för melankoliska flanörromaner. Berlinmiljön är mkt bekant och härlig, med S-bahnnörderier och Fernsehturmkärlek. men bjuder också på nya bilder i huvudet, t.ex. molnfantasten som sitter på 18:e våningen i sitt Plattenbau i Marzahn och pratar alltmedan han omedvetet skapar egna mentholcigarettmoln.
#BOTNS-bingo: Självgott fnissande kryssar jag kategorin 'Has water on the cover'!
Ojämn, men är ju svag för melankoliska flanörromaner. Berlinmiljön är mkt bekant och härlig, med S-bahnnörderier och Fernsehturmkärlek. men bjuder också på nya bilder i huvudet, t.ex. molnfantasten som sitter på 18:e våningen i sitt Plattenbau i Marzahn och pratar alltmedan han omedvetet skapar egna mentholcigarettmoln.
#BOTNS-bingo: Självgott fnissande kryssar jag kategorin 'Has water on the cover'!
August 5, 2016
Min gode vän och följeslagare i Berlin. 4 ⭐️ och tack för det. Den har sina sidor och jag vet precis hur den sista fjärdedelen borde ha skrivits. Men läs den. I Berlin.
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April 27, 2023In Chloe Aridjis’ Book of Clouds, a Mexican Jewish woman, the daughter of a large family of Mexico City deli owners —writes in first person English about her life in Berlin. She’s probably in her mid-20s and it’s probably in the early 2000’s.
Tatiana’s most satisfying relationship is with the announcer’s automated voice in the S-Bahn: ”It was the announcer’s voice. I preferred this recorded voice to any other voice I had heard in my life, especially on days when I felt disconnected from the city, attached by the thinnest of strings. . .There was a spring to his utterances, a buoyancy packed and delivered in anticipating of every stop, and I would put away my book or newspaper and sit back and listen to the stations as they were rolled off, one by one, uninterrupted—that is, if other presences didn’t interfere, such as plainclothes ticket inspectors or junkie musicians, their pleas for attention like dark blood clots in the city’s circulation.”
Her other relationships are superficial and spotty. She works for a retired, infirm historian, for whom she transcribes his thoughts on ”the phenomenology of space, especially in Berlin.” Tatiana’s also entranced by his voice: ”it was mesmeric, not quite as mesmeric as that of the S-Bahn announcer but as close any other voice would ever come.”. Then there’s Tatiana’s occasional lover, a meteorologist from the former East Berlin who’s idea of a fun date activity is playing hide and seek among . Wants to play hide and seek at night among the 2711 upright concrete slabs on the Holocaust Memorial on a pitch black night.
Tatiana’s more than a little lost in her life and in her life in Berlin. She finds what she perceives as the intrusions of her large family in Mexico. Despite what some readers may dismiss as a thin plot, the phlegmatic Tatiana is well- and convincingly portrayed, as is Berlin.
Tatiana’s most satisfying relationship is with the announcer’s automated voice in the S-Bahn: ”It was the announcer’s voice. I preferred this recorded voice to any other voice I had heard in my life, especially on days when I felt disconnected from the city, attached by the thinnest of strings. . .There was a spring to his utterances, a buoyancy packed and delivered in anticipating of every stop, and I would put away my book or newspaper and sit back and listen to the stations as they were rolled off, one by one, uninterrupted—that is, if other presences didn’t interfere, such as plainclothes ticket inspectors or junkie musicians, their pleas for attention like dark blood clots in the city’s circulation.”
Her other relationships are superficial and spotty. She works for a retired, infirm historian, for whom she transcribes his thoughts on ”the phenomenology of space, especially in Berlin.” Tatiana’s also entranced by his voice: ”it was mesmeric, not quite as mesmeric as that of the S-Bahn announcer but as close any other voice would ever come.”. Then there’s Tatiana’s occasional lover, a meteorologist from the former East Berlin who’s idea of a fun date activity is playing hide and seek among . Wants to play hide and seek at night among the 2711 upright concrete slabs on the Holocaust Memorial on a pitch black night.
Tatiana’s more than a little lost in her life and in her life in Berlin. She finds what she perceives as the intrusions of her large family in Mexico. Despite what some readers may dismiss as a thin plot, the phlegmatic Tatiana is well- and convincingly portrayed, as is Berlin.
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March 3, 2018When inadequate imagination leads the reader out of the book and to the author
"Book of Clouds" is well enough observed, paced, and structured. It has some ingredients of a good novel: but it's trite, and the reason for its triviality is a strange lacuna in the author's imagination of her main character. The Mexican woman who wanders around Berlin, taking pleasure in riding the S-Bahn, in long walks, and in the weather, is a habitually solitary person. She isn't often lonely, but even after five years in Berlin she has only three or four acquaintances, including a homeless woman who begs on a train platform -- and she only talks to that person once. The lacuna is not the character's solitary life, which is expertly observed. The absence I have in mind springs from two two higher-level absences:
First, there's a lack of anxiety on the character's part that she is so isolated, so without interests. She knows, in the novel, that she has no friends and often does nothing for weeks or months at a time, but she is not anxious about it: it's almost as if she is on a strong course of antidepressants, so that her condition doesn't affect her.
Second, there's a lack of interest on the implied author's part that her character is isolated and without interests. The character is clearly occasionally delusional, but that does not seem to concern the implied author.
It is, in the end, disengaging to read about a character who does not care to know more about herself, described by a novelist who doesn't seem to notice that there might be more to see.
At the beginning of the book, the character imagines seeing an aging Hitler (as a woman!) on a train, and throughout the novel she remains convinced of what she thinks she's seen. At the end of the book, she hallucinates a dense fog that loosens locks throughout Berlin and causes posters to slip down from the walls. Because the character never doubts either event, the novel creates an opening: I expected the narrator to develop a story about her mildly, occasionally delusional protagonist, and I thought the novel would probably develop into a story about her decline.
But it's as if the implied author herself is unaware of the deeper psychology of her own character. In the course of the novel, the character experiences several other unusual events, and she's uncertain about a couple of things, but nothing comes of them. Increasingly, I thought not of the character or narrator, or even of the implied author, but of the real author, Aridjis. (Even though I know nothing about her.) I had no clear sense that she meant anything by these events, other than the passing whimsy that life is sometimes odd. And I could not -- cannot -- understand how Aridjis didn't experience her own character's inner life as anything except mildly surrealist and entertaining, harmless, ultimately ordinary. That's why in the end I was more concerned about Aridjis (even though as a good poststructuralist I know that she's a projection of the reading experience, and nothing would come of finding out more about her) than her novel.
"Book of Clouds" is well enough observed, paced, and structured. It has some ingredients of a good novel: but it's trite, and the reason for its triviality is a strange lacuna in the author's imagination of her main character. The Mexican woman who wanders around Berlin, taking pleasure in riding the S-Bahn, in long walks, and in the weather, is a habitually solitary person. She isn't often lonely, but even after five years in Berlin she has only three or four acquaintances, including a homeless woman who begs on a train platform -- and she only talks to that person once. The lacuna is not the character's solitary life, which is expertly observed. The absence I have in mind springs from two two higher-level absences:
First, there's a lack of anxiety on the character's part that she is so isolated, so without interests. She knows, in the novel, that she has no friends and often does nothing for weeks or months at a time, but she is not anxious about it: it's almost as if she is on a strong course of antidepressants, so that her condition doesn't affect her.
Second, there's a lack of interest on the implied author's part that her character is isolated and without interests. The character is clearly occasionally delusional, but that does not seem to concern the implied author.
It is, in the end, disengaging to read about a character who does not care to know more about herself, described by a novelist who doesn't seem to notice that there might be more to see.
At the beginning of the book, the character imagines seeing an aging Hitler (as a woman!) on a train, and throughout the novel she remains convinced of what she thinks she's seen. At the end of the book, she hallucinates a dense fog that loosens locks throughout Berlin and causes posters to slip down from the walls. Because the character never doubts either event, the novel creates an opening: I expected the narrator to develop a story about her mildly, occasionally delusional protagonist, and I thought the novel would probably develop into a story about her decline.
But it's as if the implied author herself is unaware of the deeper psychology of her own character. In the course of the novel, the character experiences several other unusual events, and she's uncertain about a couple of things, but nothing comes of them. Increasingly, I thought not of the character or narrator, or even of the implied author, but of the real author, Aridjis. (Even though I know nothing about her.) I had no clear sense that she meant anything by these events, other than the passing whimsy that life is sometimes odd. And I could not -- cannot -- understand how Aridjis didn't experience her own character's inner life as anything except mildly surrealist and entertaining, harmless, ultimately ordinary. That's why in the end I was more concerned about Aridjis (even though as a good poststructuralist I know that she's a projection of the reading experience, and nothing would come of finding out more about her) than her novel.
August 30, 2009
Essentially a brooding, atmospheric illumination of the city of Berlin. The city is certainly the co-main character of the novel, at least, and it feels here like a dark, dense stain sinking into the fabric of the universe. It is the shadowed spot left on the wall of the empty apartment above the protagonist that is not covered up even when a new tenant arrives to rehabilitate the space. It is the secret underground bowling alley of the Nazis, or the Stasi, it makes little difference which, where the ghosts impatiently wait to reclaim the place.
The tone is brilliantly set from the opening paragraph: "It was an evening when the moral remains of the city bobbed up to the surface and floated like driftwood before sinking back down to the seabed to further splinter and rot." Now there's a sentence to make any city's Chamber of Commerce fall to its knees in pain.
The narrative vehicle for this contemporary analysis of Berlin is the story of Tatiana, a young woman from a Mexican Jewish family, who has lived in Berlin for several years. She muddles along in the post-German reunification haze, working part-time for a historian, transcribing his spoken notes. She has difficulty making any real connection with people or work and bounces along on each path, unable to settle anywhere for long. Berlin's past seems to colonize her imagination, leaving her unbalanced in the present. Ultimately an act of violence (with a resolution from the school of urban magical realism) prompts her to sever ties with the city and return to her family in Mexico.
All in all, a well-written debut novel to be read for its take on the interplay of past and present.
The tone is brilliantly set from the opening paragraph: "It was an evening when the moral remains of the city bobbed up to the surface and floated like driftwood before sinking back down to the seabed to further splinter and rot." Now there's a sentence to make any city's Chamber of Commerce fall to its knees in pain.
The narrative vehicle for this contemporary analysis of Berlin is the story of Tatiana, a young woman from a Mexican Jewish family, who has lived in Berlin for several years. She muddles along in the post-German reunification haze, working part-time for a historian, transcribing his spoken notes. She has difficulty making any real connection with people or work and bounces along on each path, unable to settle anywhere for long. Berlin's past seems to colonize her imagination, leaving her unbalanced in the present. Ultimately an act of violence (with a resolution from the school of urban magical realism) prompts her to sever ties with the city and return to her family in Mexico.
All in all, a well-written debut novel to be read for its take on the interplay of past and present.
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January 12, 2014Deşi nu are nimic fantastic în construcţia lui, romanul lui Chloe Aridjis, Cartea norilor (2009, Prix du Premier Roman Étranger), este departe de a fi o simplă incursiune realistă în Berlinul de după căderea Zidului. Un oraş prins în ritmul înnebunitor al modernităţii, al adaptării la un prezent care încearcă să şteargă ultimele graniţe dintre Est şi Vest, Berlinul este şi un spaţiu încărcat de o istorie încă dureroasă: atracţia pentru latura sa tenebroasă este mai vie decât oricând, iar miturile urbane legate de nazism şi Hitler sunt deja parte a vieţii oraşului. Sunt mituri care, după cum e de aşteptat, lasă mai degrabă loc imaginaţiei să se dezvolte, astfel că organizarea de vizite în subteranele unde se presupune că s-ar fi aflat, cândva, popicăria Gestapoului, unde veneau să se relaxeze după ce torturau sau omorau pe cineva, nu are neapărat scopul de a reconstitui un fragment de trecut, cât mai degrabă de a colora rutina unui oraş ce pare uneori prea uniform. (cronică: http://bookaholic.ro/berlinul-sub-nor...)
April 16, 2017
I can sum the book up in one word: implausible.
There's the fact the protagonist has lived in Berlin five years and hasn't met anyone who sticks with her. The book is also littered with words nobody uses in real life (at one point a character says 'Look at those noctilucent clouds'. They are a cloud expert, but you wouldn't just drop that into conversation without explaining yourself... this is just one example of the wooden dialogue featured in the book). Then the magical realism bit at the end that came out of nowhere.
Novels don't need to have plots, necessarily, but unfortunately this wasn't written well, either. I give it 2 stars rather than 1 because some of the feelings about making your home in a foreign country were well-described.
There's the fact the protagonist has lived in Berlin five years and hasn't met anyone who sticks with her. The book is also littered with words nobody uses in real life (at one point a character says 'Look at those noctilucent clouds'. They are a cloud expert, but you wouldn't just drop that into conversation without explaining yourself... this is just one example of the wooden dialogue featured in the book). Then the magical realism bit at the end that came out of nowhere.
Novels don't need to have plots, necessarily, but unfortunately this wasn't written well, either. I give it 2 stars rather than 1 because some of the feelings about making your home in a foreign country were well-described.
August 21, 2024
his book... Hmm... Well, there's a lot going on. I felt like I was reading her thoughts as they jumped around. There were many descriptions of things around her, but it almost felt like nothing was clearly stated. A lot of time was lost figuring out how much time had passed from one event to another, and what exactly was happening.
Tatiana is an interesting woman, but that's about it. Everyone in the story is quite peculiar. It seems like the author just wanted to put a bunch of weird people in one book and make them friends, coworkers, or something. I wanted to read it because I saw it was about Berlin after the fall of the Wall, but it was nothing like I expected. If I had known it was like this, I probably wouldn't have bought and read it.
Tatiana is an interesting woman, but that's about it. Everyone in the story is quite peculiar. It seems like the author just wanted to put a bunch of weird people in one book and make them friends, coworkers, or something. I wanted to read it because I saw it was about Berlin after the fall of the Wall, but it was nothing like I expected. If I had known it was like this, I probably wouldn't have bought and read it.
February 18, 2020
A supremely boring book that postures like that’s one of its selling points—that the reader’s experience trudging through the mud of its pseudo-academic “big ideas” (unreconciled histories, imagined etymology of weather phenomena [wtf?], ghosts) is supposed to be meditative, etc. etc.
I read her novel Asunder and found it slightly more striking. Not sure if I’ll get around to seeing what her latest, Sea Monsters, is all about.
I read her novel Asunder and found it slightly more striking. Not sure if I’ll get around to seeing what her latest, Sea Monsters, is all about.
October 3, 2016
This book freaked me out a bit at parts as I celebrated 5 years in Hamburg while reading about the main character having spent 5 years in Berlin. I enjoyed the parts of life in Germany as I could so closely relate; however, at times it was also tedious because I felt like I was reading about parts of my every day life which I try to escape through reading! A lovely little book though though.
August 2, 2018
The most uneventful book I’ve read in a long time.
July 27, 2023
el final me gustó mucho
January 6, 2025
Pega más cuando vives en Alemania y todo diciembre se siente como una sucesión infinita de domingos.
September 5, 2017
I was a little unsure of the chronology, of the narrator's age. She's 14 in 1986 but seemed to write as if in her early 20s in 2009. Perhaps that was the point. She was in limbo. I chose this book for its Berlin setting as well for its excellent reviews and lovely size. It is a pleasure to hold in one's hands and to read. What a contrast to the Dutch author, whose characters' musings seemed so false. Tatiana, a Mexican fluent in German and living in Berlin, is not an academic but every thought sounded genuinely intelligent. Her professor, Doktor Weiss, though past his prime, rang true as well.
Her Jewishness and the Holocaust was easy to forget. Look at reference's to her family's deli in Mexico and pages 182 "the exception of a few unfortunate years" and 187 "the old Jew probably laid a curse on us." The midnight visit to Berlin's monument to the murdered Jews of Europe where she reluctantly plays hide and seek with her date, is it a metaphor for today's Berlin.
17 Xolo, the Mexican breed of dog that in Aztec mythology leads humans through underworld. [He belongs to Doktor Weiss]
33 Doktor Weiss preparing an essay on history and space in Berlin: "Spaces cling to their pasts, he said, and sometimes the present finds a way of accommodating this past and sometimes it doesn't. At best, a peaceful coexistence is struck up between temporal plans but most of the time it is a constant struggle for dominion.
61 Jonas, the East German meteorologist and love interest studies clouds especially.
73-74 The Simpleton of Alexanderplatz. 74 "The smile seemed to get in the way of language."
104 In thinking on her failed friendship with Sonia, a trainer, Tatiana wonders about one's inner landscape. This made me consider my own inner landscape, which I think would be an interior view, looking out. Paintings with views into other rooms--through doors--or outside--through windows--attract me.
139 Tatiana in bed at night: "me, the village idiot from Mexico who actually thought she knew Berlin and its inhabitants well enough to go up and demand answers to mindless questions only a tourist would ask."
143 Tatiana compares fingernails to days: "You would only notice the erosion if my hands were at rest, otherwise the nails still looked elegant, a harmonious blur, just like the days themselves, which passed without consequence unless you pinned one down and examined it too closely."
143 ff Midnight trip to Holocaust memorial: "the 2711 concrete slabs like a stalled army converging from all sides. Despite the hundreds of possible e hits and entrances it was hard not to feel an immediate wave of claustrophobia and disorientation, and wherever I looked I saw dark pillars..."
186-194 Fog
198 "The gaps in conversation were not because there was nothing to say but rather because there was too much to say." [with Doktor Weiss in hospital]
203 "Once you decide to leave, you view a city through an entirely different lens."
205 [Going home to Mexico] "The only way to move on is to avoid sentimentality about the past, especially the recent past, which will always try to reclaim you."
Her Jewishness and the Holocaust was easy to forget. Look at reference's to her family's deli in Mexico and pages 182 "the exception of a few unfortunate years" and 187 "the old Jew probably laid a curse on us." The midnight visit to Berlin's monument to the murdered Jews of Europe where she reluctantly plays hide and seek with her date, is it a metaphor for today's Berlin.
17 Xolo, the Mexican breed of dog that in Aztec mythology leads humans through underworld. [He belongs to Doktor Weiss]
33 Doktor Weiss preparing an essay on history and space in Berlin: "Spaces cling to their pasts, he said, and sometimes the present finds a way of accommodating this past and sometimes it doesn't. At best, a peaceful coexistence is struck up between temporal plans but most of the time it is a constant struggle for dominion.
61 Jonas, the East German meteorologist and love interest studies clouds especially.
73-74 The Simpleton of Alexanderplatz. 74 "The smile seemed to get in the way of language."
104 In thinking on her failed friendship with Sonia, a trainer, Tatiana wonders about one's inner landscape. This made me consider my own inner landscape, which I think would be an interior view, looking out. Paintings with views into other rooms--through doors--or outside--through windows--attract me.
139 Tatiana in bed at night: "me, the village idiot from Mexico who actually thought she knew Berlin and its inhabitants well enough to go up and demand answers to mindless questions only a tourist would ask."
143 Tatiana compares fingernails to days: "You would only notice the erosion if my hands were at rest, otherwise the nails still looked elegant, a harmonious blur, just like the days themselves, which passed without consequence unless you pinned one down and examined it too closely."
143 ff Midnight trip to Holocaust memorial: "the 2711 concrete slabs like a stalled army converging from all sides. Despite the hundreds of possible e hits and entrances it was hard not to feel an immediate wave of claustrophobia and disorientation, and wherever I looked I saw dark pillars..."
186-194 Fog
198 "The gaps in conversation were not because there was nothing to say but rather because there was too much to say." [with Doktor Weiss in hospital]
203 "Once you decide to leave, you view a city through an entirely different lens."
205 [Going home to Mexico] "The only way to move on is to avoid sentimentality about the past, especially the recent past, which will always try to reclaim you."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 17, 2022
2.5? Little plot, mostly a lot of cold air. Very first novel—so many unnecessary adjectives, awkward descriptions. Very granular level city description, except when she pinches bits of the map together like most movies do to fit the tourist attractions in closer together. Sadly Gagarin didn’t survive the pandemic. Can be Poetic but overwrought, flirts with magical realism but can’t pull it off, and really just cumulates into bitterness. (Also if your being Sie-ed, the first name isn’t used, and it bothered me inordinately that Weiss calls her Tatiana.)
November 25, 2024
Odd but good. About a stranger in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s one of those books where I’m not sure what it means but still found it absorbing and interestingly, sometimes beautifully, written. Somewhat like The Wall by Marlen Haushofer or I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. Even Orbital fits the category.
January 6, 2020
Writing novels is an art not a science. This book reads like an assignment on a economics course nota novel. Rarely have I read anything with such turgid prose, frankly laughable symbolism and utterly laughable description.
The book is a fraud
The book is a fraud
November 23, 2025
This book leads with images that describe Berlin in 2007, and the story follows along. Reading it right after a trip to Berlin and also while reading Stuart Dybek’s very image and place-based writing about Chicago, was a really lovely experience.
June 26, 2023
Hmm there’s really not much to say. A nice story but the protagonist was a bit lackluster and wishy washy (An ester greenwood wannabe if you will) but soon I will also trapeze the streets of Berlin as a young angsty twenty something. So maybe I don’t get it yet.
November 30, 2023
Chloe Aridjis’ debut novel Book of Clouds is the story of a young woman named Tatiana adrift in Berlin as she encounters the many phantoms of Berlin’s past. The best moments of the book are those between the often-clumsy plotline, where the story isn’t moving forward, where Aridjis is describing a feeling, a person, or a part of the city—I will gladly take all the dreamy musings on solitude, foreignness, clouds, and city life any day.
Yet these moments also make it easy to forget at times that there is something more haunting Tatiana’s thoughts and experiences in Berlin—she is Jewish. I read a review from BookForum that said, “It is unclear why this [her Jewishness] is important”. But it is important, and it is there if you read between the lines. It is there in her constant paranoia, her obsession with the dark corners of the city, her difficulty in connecting with most Germans around her (heck, I think it is pretty freaking obvious during some moments like when her German date wanted to play hide and seek in the Holocaust Memorial). And it is there when she finally realizes that these shadows not only haunt cities and spaces but our imaginations as well.
3.5*
Yet these moments also make it easy to forget at times that there is something more haunting Tatiana’s thoughts and experiences in Berlin—she is Jewish. I read a review from BookForum that said, “It is unclear why this [her Jewishness] is important”. But it is important, and it is there if you read between the lines. It is there in her constant paranoia, her obsession with the dark corners of the city, her difficulty in connecting with most Germans around her (heck, I think it is pretty freaking obvious during some moments like when her German date wanted to play hide and seek in the Holocaust Memorial). And it is there when she finally realizes that these shadows not only haunt cities and spaces but our imaginations as well.
3.5*
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