Fiction: Exactly how many voices does a novelist need? How many stories does it take to make a novel? Is there a point at which the reader should announce, "enough, I'm weary of tricks"?
David Mitchell's third novel is closer in ways to Ghostwritten, his first, and not nearly as good as number9dream, his lively Booker-contending second work set in modern-day Tokyo. That said, Mitchell is a daring, inventive writer with talent, humour and energy to burn - and this may well explain why reading Cloud Atlas is a love-hate relationship, offering some easy entertainment as well as a couple of sequences sufficiently tedious to justify abandoning ship.
There is no mistaking that Mitchell is a novelist of voices, or perhaps it is more accurate to describe him as a ventriloquist. There is a difference, however, between being a novelist of voices and writing a novel of voices. Therein lies the difficulty of assessing Mitchell's offbeat approach, most particularly in the context of this big, big book that seldom really feels as a cohesive novel. The notion of writing alternate narratives within one book is not new. It is a device that has long since shown its age. Flashbacks within a related story are often useful, but in the case of Cloud Atlas, Mitchell's vision is bigger, or simply looser and he makes his connections through links that at times fail to surface convincingly.
Every new book is a lottery, perhaps it will be wonderful, perhaps it won't. Mitchell is different, he is an original and has been hailed as the great white hope of British fiction. True, there have been several great white hopes of British fiction and not all of them make it past the first novel. But Mitchell has things to say and rather of lot of ways to say them. Yet, this time, the reader is left with a feeling that Mitchell was having so much fun mimicking a variety of different characters inhabiting several genres that he lost interest in the central narrative. The result is a novel that emerges a bit like runaway carriages being dragged in too many directions by a surplus of wayward horses.
Not that imagination should be considered a downfall. But considering that this book is more about the amoral politics of human society and its power shifts than it is about story or character, it is disappointing that Mitchell would allow fancy to obscure its potential edge. Whereas number9dream was a quest pursued by young Eiji, a dreamer intent on finding the father he never met, search has different meanings for the various characters inhabiting the clunky set pieces that make up Cloud Atlas.
The opening sequence is set in the world of a 19th century sailing ship, territory much favoured by British writers. A well-intentioned American, Adam Ewing, shares his thoughts with the reader in the form of a journal. Dull but worthy, he is a good guy in a book short on heroes. Ewing's adventures are shaped by the sheer unpleasantness of all he encounters. Mitchell's lightness of touch and comic feel ensure it is entertaining. Far less fun is at hand when the nasty young aspiring composer, Robert Forbisher, begins sharing his antics with a pal back home through a series of arch epistles.
The pal, some 40 years on, has become a famous scientist about to expose an evil corporation. He is also serving as a narrative link. This yarn, written as a high-speed thriller, features the other nice character, young Luisa Rey, the cub reporter daughter of a famous photo-journalist dad. Thanks to old Rufus Sixsmith, she is on to a story, as well as a series of near-death experiences. Mitchell leaves our heroine in a cliff hanger to pursue the hilarious escapades of Timothy Cavendish, publisher with problems, not least angry Irish hoodlums and a brother who sends him to a luxury hotel that turns out to be a retirement home run by ruthless minders.
Cavendish tells his story with all the vigour of a man who can't believe a word of it himself. So far, so fun, but then Mitchell enters a bizarre, futuristic dimension heavy with shades of Huxley's Brave New World. Equally testing is a confusing sequence, written in dialect, featuring an islander telling his story. This is followed by a tedious return to the prison hell of the genetically modified creature in the futuristic chapter. These difficult maverick passages, that do nothing for this overly long novel, scupper the narrative flow. The reader can only be reeled back in to some grasp of understanding by the return to the Cavendish odyssey. Interestingly, the two Cavendish sequences, which are funny, but may seem superficially trite, actually have a political point - the plight of old people. Further returns are made to the intrepid girl reporter, who then yields centre stage to Ewing's interrupted journal.
Cloud Atlas, claiming its name from the sole composition left by the scheming young composer Forbisher, never lives up to either its promise, nor its ambitions. Perhaps David Mitchell is paying for the achievement of number9dream, or for the expectations that duly greeted this new book. Maybe it's far simpler; once a writer has proven he can do pretty much anything, and Mitchell did that in his Tokyo picaresque, he has now tried just about everything else in a haphazard, whimsical book that is so intent on subverting conventional narrative, it merely subverts itself.
• Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
