Reception
Cloud Atlas was met with positive reviews from most critics who felt that the novel managed to successfully interweave its six stories. The BBC's Keily Oakes said that although the structure of the book could be challenging for readers, "David Mitchell has taken six wildly different stories ... and melded them into one fantastic and complex work." Kirkus Reviews called the book "sheer storytelling brilliance". Laura Miller of the New York Times compared it to the "perfect crossword puzzle", in that it was challenging to read but still fun. The Observer's Hephzibah Anderson called the novel "exhilarating" and commented positively on the links between all six stories. Author and Booker Prize winner A. S. Byatt stated in a review for The Guardian that the novel gives, "a complete narrative pleasure that is rare". The Washington Post's Jeff Turrentine called it a "highly satisfying, and unusually thoughtful, addition to the expanding 'puzzle book' genre." In its "Books Briefly Noted" section, The New Yorker called the novel "virtuosic".
Criticism focused on the book's failure to meet its lofty goals. F&SF reviewer Robert. K. J. Killheffer praised Mitchell's "talent and inventiveness and willingness to adopt any mode or voice that furthers his ends," but noted that "for all its pleasures, Cloud Atlas falls short of revolutionary." The Daily Telegraph gave the novel a mixed review focusing on its clashing themes, with Theo Tait noting: "In short, Cloud Atlas spends half its time wanting to be The Simpsons and the other half the Bible."
Read more about this topic: Cloud Atlas (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)