BOOKD discussion

One question a lot of book critics tackled was whether or not there's a point to the unique story structure of CLOUD ATLAS. Even author David Mitchell posed the question to his readers, albeit in a sly way through one of his characters, Robert Frobisher, whose Cloud Atlas Sextet mirrors the book itself:

"Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cell, 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?"

So, what do you think?

Good question! I love how overt Mitchell is in his acknowledgement of this criticism. I would argue that it is neither - and either way, it wouldn't have mattered to me as a reader. Call it what you want, Cloud Atlas was a unique reading experience and I think an honest experimentation on Mitchell's part. In my opinion, the writing was inventive enough and the stories compelling enough that the book would have garnered similar acclaim had it had a different structure. Not a gimmick, not a revolution - just a great read.