nicanical
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell tells six stories, separated by time and place but connected through a birthmark implying the main character's reincarnation. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis released in 2012.
Cloud Atlas's stories are nested: the first five stories halt midway, the sixth story is told in full, then the first five are concluded in reverse order. The stories also happen to be presented in increasingly engaging order: the first two stories are collections of diary entries, archaically-styled and, frankly, boring; followed by an action-mystery, a "prison" break, a dystopian thriller, and a post-apocalyptic survival story.
The most engaging stories conclude in the middle. After, the remaining conclusions decrescendo in vigor with the hoity-toity and olde Englishe diary entries of Robert Frobisher, and Adam Ewing. The book ends weak because it ends with its weak stories. Further, when each story is interrupted halfway, momentum is necessarily lost for that narrative. Upon resuming each story later, readers have to recalibrate—like matching revs before shifting gears. It's not a smooth reading experience.
This is one of those times where the film adaptation is better than the book because the film maintains its momentum better—by going back and forth between the stories several times and also by grouping similarly energetic scenes together. Interestingly, the US and UK editions differ but the differences are only in content of the Sonmi-451 story—nothing with the nested structure. (The US edition is the basis for the film and also later electronic editions, but neither has been declared as the definitive edition).
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell tells six stories, separated by time and place but connected through a birthmark implying the main character's reincarnation. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis released in 2012.
Cloud Atlas's stories are nested: the first five stories halt midway, the sixth story is told in full, then the first five are concluded in reverse order. The stories also happen to be presented in increasingly engaging order: the first two stories are collections of diary entries, archaically-styled and, frankly, boring; followed by an action-mystery, a "prison" break, a dystopian thriller, and a post-apocalyptic survival story.
The most engaging stories conclude in the middle. After, the remaining conclusions decrescendo in vigor with the hoity-toity and olde Englishe diary entries of Robert Frobisher, and Adam Ewing. The book ends weak because it ends with its weak stories. Further, when each story is interrupted halfway, momentum is necessarily lost for that narrative. Upon resuming each story later, readers have to recalibrate—like matching revs before shifting gears. It's not a smooth reading experience.
This is one of those times where the film adaptation is better than the book because the film maintains its momentum better—by going back and forth between the stories several times and also by grouping similarly energetic scenes together. Interestingly, the US and UK editions differ but the differences are only in content of the Sonmi-451 story—nothing with the nested structure. (The US edition is the basis for the film and also later electronic editions, but neither has been declared as the definitive edition).