So, the month of love finally draws to a close and we will have a winner for the Love book competition in a few days.
But I wanted to write my review about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
As I have said before, The Man recommended this book to me. Pretty much on our first date and considering that when he was ‘courting’ me, he said that one of his favourite authors was Tom Robbins – my ultimate favourite favourite – and that I had seen David Mitchell’s books around and was fairly attracted to his covers I thought, cool a new author to discover.
Well, four years later I still hadn’t read it and it being sat on my bookshelf for a year (it was my birthday present last year) and after NEEDING something to read, I thought, right I’ll do it. I will, if only to stop the jibes whenever I bemoan the fact I have nothing to read, ‘read Cloud Atlas’.
And I did. It was hard going in the beginning. It begun to redeem itself in the sort of middle and then went down hill from there. I struggled through it and honestly,even left it for about a week while I read some other stuff as it was really hard going. I eventually finished it (and I am not the usual reader who will finish a book even if I am not enjoying it but I persevered with this one just to prove a point) and I did not enjoy it.
It had a great thread and his writing is good, but the actual story just didn’t really make much sense in the end. There was no meat in the story, just the basic aroma of a good novel, which doesn’t taste as good as it might smell.
Futuristic, not enough substance but great story telling. I can see how someone would enjoy it, but I found the ending bland.
Have you read it? Did you enjoy it?
