Many years ago, I read one of the most difficult books I've ever had to read in my life. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It took me more than a month to finish it because the story was complicated, the presentation of the story was different like those Matryoshka dolls from Russia, the words were awfully difficult for me in some parts, especially during the story set in the 19th century and the future...
But, I stuck with it because I simply loved the characters that Mitchell created and the premise of the story that souls travel across centuries and places to be together again. He rides on that feeling of deja vu that you get when you meet someone new, as though you've met them before in another time and place...the only memory that ties you to this person is a familiar song (the Cloud Atlas Sextet) that keeps haunting you day and night as you try to remember the connection you have with this other person.
OMG, they've made this book into a movie! This just came out of the blue to hit me this morning on the news...Where was I all this while? How come I had no idea about this? Maybe it's better this way...not knowing means that I never had to wait with torture for the move to finish!
Now, let me pick up the book and dust the cover again. I'll be meeting Mr. Robert Frobisher next month and I've got to look my best!
(Below, my two entries about the book from my now-defunct blog)
Saturday, May
21, 2005
Am reading David
Mitchell's Cloud Atlas which I got for a bargain RM8 at the recent Times
Bookstore Warehouse Sale recently. Thanks to the
self-confessed bookaholic for the recommendation.
It's actually 6 short stories in one (or the way Mitchell frames it, inside each other) and starts out with the journal writings of Adam Ewing from the 19th century detailing his passage on a ship travelling from Sydney to California.
The print in the book is very tiny and the 19th century English language (in The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing) was a little difficult for me to wade through -- these made me doubt if I could ever complete my reading of this book. To borrow a line from Mitchell himself, "After ten pages I felt (Mitchell) was reading me, not I him..."! Heheh!
But, A.S. Byatt's review of the novel in Guardian said, "David Mitchell entices his readers on to a rollercoaster, and at first they wonder if they want to get off. Then - at least in my case - they can't bear the journey to end." Yes, I was thinking of getting off and chucking the book in my ever-growing pile of half-read novels (keeping him company would be Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, Kathy Reich's Deja Dead and Peter Mayle's Tojours Provence).
Being in a ring, wrestling with difficult authors was not my idea of a lazy weekend. But I wasn't going to give up, I guess, probably because I wanted to possess that feeling again, the one Byatt described...not being able to bear the end of the journey! I was curious -- how good was this book that it made someone say that?
I'm now happily into the second story in the collection, Letters from Zedelghem, and already in love with the protagonist, Robert Frobisher -- wily, supremely talented (in music), kind-hearted (he charmed me with his croissant-dispensing act), and suspiciously bisexual! Yummy character!
Somewhere in the middle of this, Frobisher writes to his friend, "A half-read book is a half-finished love affair." Looks like the man himself has spoken to me!
Okay, David, I hear ya.
It's actually 6 short stories in one (or the way Mitchell frames it, inside each other) and starts out with the journal writings of Adam Ewing from the 19th century detailing his passage on a ship travelling from Sydney to California.
The print in the book is very tiny and the 19th century English language (in The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing) was a little difficult for me to wade through -- these made me doubt if I could ever complete my reading of this book. To borrow a line from Mitchell himself, "After ten pages I felt (Mitchell) was reading me, not I him..."! Heheh!
But, A.S. Byatt's review of the novel in Guardian said, "David Mitchell entices his readers on to a rollercoaster, and at first they wonder if they want to get off. Then - at least in my case - they can't bear the journey to end." Yes, I was thinking of getting off and chucking the book in my ever-growing pile of half-read novels (keeping him company would be Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, Kathy Reich's Deja Dead and Peter Mayle's Tojours Provence).
Being in a ring, wrestling with difficult authors was not my idea of a lazy weekend. But I wasn't going to give up, I guess, probably because I wanted to possess that feeling again, the one Byatt described...not being able to bear the end of the journey! I was curious -- how good was this book that it made someone say that?
I'm now happily into the second story in the collection, Letters from Zedelghem, and already in love with the protagonist, Robert Frobisher -- wily, supremely talented (in music), kind-hearted (he charmed me with his croissant-dispensing act), and suspiciously bisexual! Yummy character!
Somewhere in the middle of this, Frobisher writes to his friend, "A half-read book is a half-finished love affair." Looks like the man himself has spoken to me!
Okay, David, I hear ya.
Monday, July
04, 2005
Some stories make
you wish that they were true. That the people really existed. That the things
they accomplished were real. That the stories were not just fiction, made-up
tales in the heads of genius writers.
If I had a wish right now, I would ask to be taken back in time, into a make-believe world, to meet Robert Frobisher playing his composition of Cloud Atlas Sextet for an intimate audience of eight -- Rufus Sixsmith from 1931; Vyvyan Ayrs; Timothy Cavendish and Veronica Costello; the fabricant Sonmi 451; Eva, Empress of Bruges; the Prescient Meronym; and me.
Yes, this is still about David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Just arrived at the final line in the final page. It took me a month to get here. Reading it was like scaling a gruelling 10,000 steps and then, past the halfway-point, was like zipping down effortlessly on a mountain bike. After getting past Sloosha's Crossin' an Ev'rythin' After, the stories simply told themselves to me like I deserved it for sticking with it through those pages of tiny font.
Sloosha's Crossin' took forever to finish but when Sharon (who introduced the book in her blog) told me to just skip some parts, I didn't have the heart to do that. I wanted to read every word, understand every slang, picture the almost barren world that Mitchell created after "The Fall" of Civilisation. I can be quite a determined reader when I put my heart to it, and quite a lazy one when I don't.
I must confess, one of the reasons I stayed the course was the thought of meeting Robert Frobisher again in the later pages of the book. I just fell madly in love with the deliciously naughty, cheeky, Robert Frobisher from his croissant-dispensing moment, and was enchanted by his character and demeanor (and yes, his adoration for Sixsmith peaked my interests too) -- maybe because he was the artistic type, a talented musician and composer, maybe because he had a streak of the devil in him, maybe because he could be charming and acerbic in turns.
Oooh, and that music -- his music -- which Luisa Rey describes as "riverlike, spectral, hypnotic" and in which she could not help but stand "entranced, as if living in a stream of time." Like Luisa Rey, I feel that I "have to own this music too. I have to. You know what it's like..." With a title like Cloud Atlas Sextet -- a beautiful, ethereal name -- it just begs to be listened... and I so wish that it was real.
I have absolutely no idea how Cloud Atlas Sextet sounds like...its time signature, its timbre and tempo, its chords, its rhythm, its sentiments and feelings. I just know that it evokes feelings in people, it shakes loose memories of the past, and conjures visions of the future. To my ear, it begins with a crescendo of chords that mirrors Frobisher's own ecstasy for the beginnings of his musical inspirations, and ends as despairingly, with long-drawn bars of largo pianissimo, as his final moments in life.
If I had a wish right now, I would ask to be taken back in time, into a make-believe world, to meet Robert Frobisher playing his composition of Cloud Atlas Sextet for an intimate audience of eight -- Rufus Sixsmith from 1931; Vyvyan Ayrs; Timothy Cavendish and Veronica Costello; the fabricant Sonmi 451; Eva, Empress of Bruges; the Prescient Meronym; and me.
Yes, this is still about David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Just arrived at the final line in the final page. It took me a month to get here. Reading it was like scaling a gruelling 10,000 steps and then, past the halfway-point, was like zipping down effortlessly on a mountain bike. After getting past Sloosha's Crossin' an Ev'rythin' After, the stories simply told themselves to me like I deserved it for sticking with it through those pages of tiny font.
Sloosha's Crossin' took forever to finish but when Sharon (who introduced the book in her blog) told me to just skip some parts, I didn't have the heart to do that. I wanted to read every word, understand every slang, picture the almost barren world that Mitchell created after "The Fall" of Civilisation. I can be quite a determined reader when I put my heart to it, and quite a lazy one when I don't.
I must confess, one of the reasons I stayed the course was the thought of meeting Robert Frobisher again in the later pages of the book. I just fell madly in love with the deliciously naughty, cheeky, Robert Frobisher from his croissant-dispensing moment, and was enchanted by his character and demeanor (and yes, his adoration for Sixsmith peaked my interests too) -- maybe because he was the artistic type, a talented musician and composer, maybe because he had a streak of the devil in him, maybe because he could be charming and acerbic in turns.
Oooh, and that music -- his music -- which Luisa Rey describes as "riverlike, spectral, hypnotic" and in which she could not help but stand "entranced, as if living in a stream of time." Like Luisa Rey, I feel that I "have to own this music too. I have to. You know what it's like..." With a title like Cloud Atlas Sextet -- a beautiful, ethereal name -- it just begs to be listened... and I so wish that it was real.
I have absolutely no idea how Cloud Atlas Sextet sounds like...its time signature, its timbre and tempo, its chords, its rhythm, its sentiments and feelings. I just know that it evokes feelings in people, it shakes loose memories of the past, and conjures visions of the future. To my ear, it begins with a crescendo of chords that mirrors Frobisher's own ecstasy for the beginnings of his musical inspirations, and ends as despairingly, with long-drawn bars of largo pianissimo, as his final moments in life.
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