What a fantastically entertaining book. This "novel" contains seven stories, presented in backwards chronology, each nestled in another like Russian dolls. So the first half of the book is simply the first half of six stories, peaking with a whole story in the middle, and concluding with the second half of the stories. The plot, tone, and style of each story vary widely, from an epistolary tale of a destitute musician to a scifi story about a cloned worker drone who develops a personality to an eco-detective about nuclear power, and every story is written wonderfully. The stories are linked together in several subtle ways - the main character in one story may be reading another story, and several characters share the same birthmark - but nothing is spelled out and no conclusions are reached. The only problem I had with the book - aside from the issue that I liked some stories much more then others - is that I don't know what, if anything, it all means. Not that I need my books to have some sort of big revelation, or feel that it's the novel's "responsibility" to have some sort of overall meaning, but in the absence of any discernable point of it all, it's hard to look at Cloud Atlas as anything more then a fun, diverting, and entertaining postmodern exercise. (A-and why did the first story have to end in mid-sentence? I hate that!)
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