Cloud Atlas (Modern Library )

by David Mitchell

[clq]

This is a very impressive book. I didn't think it was quite as good as it was impressive, but I can't deny it... I'm impressed.
The book is a number of short stories of which all but the last are interrupted in the middle. Once the last short story is finished, the book makes its way back through the end of the stories. As it turns out, all of the stories are somehow connected.
What impressed me the most about the book was how incredibly different, yet very well done, the short stories were. An unfortunate consequence of this was that I found myself liking some of the stories very much indeed, and getting a bit bored by others. The links between the stories are mostly rather clever and very well done, but become somewhat tenuous on a few occasions.
Overall, I really liked almost exactly four sixths of this book. And one of the sixths, a story set in a future dystopia, left me wanting much more.
I didn't quite love this book, but I really liked it. It made me think about things, covering serious issues such as politics, religion, morals, and so on, but didn't take itself too seriously, and also served up a bunch of good, irreverent, fun.