Summary and Reviews of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Media Reviews

People Wildly entertaining ... a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative.

The New York Times Book Review Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novel’s every page.

The Washington Post Hopscotching over centuries, Cloud Atlas likewise jumps in and out of half a dozen different styles, all of which display the author's astonishing talent for ventriloquism, and end up fitting together to make this a highly satisfying, and unusually thoughtful, addition to the expanding "puzzle book" genre.

Kirkus Reviews Sheer storytelling brilliance. Mitchell really is his generation's Pynchon.

Publishers Weekly At once audacious, dazzling, pretentious and infuriating

 Dave Eggers One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is - and should be - read by any student of contemporary literature.

 Michael Chabon The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet - not just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I’m grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds.