Cloud Atlas: 28% and 3/11 sections down

At my last update, I recapped the first section (Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing) and most of the second (Letters from Zedelghem).  I have just finished section 3 (Half Lives: The First Louisa Rey Mystery)

Toward the end of Letters from Zedelghem, Frobisher continues to get visits from Jocasta.  One night, while Jocasta is "visiting," Ayres comes in needing Frobisher's services because he has woken up during the night with a song in his head that he needs to write down immediately.  He then warns Frobisher that his wife can be a flirt, and asks Frobisher if his wife has made any advances.  Frobisher lies and says no.  He then gets an offer from Ayres to stay for another year, which he is contemplating as the section ends.

The sections are getting better and better.  While I did not enjoy the first section, I liked the second and was sad to see it end.  However, the third section, which takes place in California in the 70's, was even better, and now I'm sad to see that one end as well.

Louisa Rey is the daughter of a now deceased famous reporter, who is now a reporter herself.  She has recently been dumped, and lives in an apartment in a town near Los Angeles.  She is friends with her 11 year old neighbor who has a rough home life, and who crosses the balconies of the complex to visit Louisa.  One day, Louisa and Rufus Sixsmith (the recipient of Frobisher's letters), now in his 60's, become trapped in an elevator due to a brownout.  Sixsmith is one of 12 scientists working on a nuclear power plant(?) or some kind of nuclear project called HYDRA.  Sixsmith's research has led him to the conclusion that the reactor (or whatever it is) is not safe due to the possibility that it will fail and melt down, and he prints his findings in a report.  However, the company he works for tries to cover this up, and tells the scientists to keep their mouths shut.  Sixsmith is the only scientist of the 12 who is having a hard time with this, and he lets something slip to Louisa about his conflicted thoughts.  Louisa then attends the opening of the reactor in an attempt to get a good story out of it for her magazine, and finds herself wandering the halls of the building looking for Sixsmith's office and report.  When she finds it, she finds Isaac Sachs looking through Sixsmith's work as well, but then gets escorted back to the party by the PR rep, Fay Li.

At some point, Sixsmith gets a call from an anonymous source (Sachs?) that he is no longer safe in California and should return to England, his home country, immediately.  Sixsmith is skeptical, but complies.  He is unable to get a flight until the next day, and stays in a hotel in the meantime.  During his stay, he is murdered by Bill Smoke, an employee of the reactor company that is sent to forever silence employees who speak out against the company.  However, the press and police rule that his death was a suicide, something that Louisa refuses to believe.  She then tries even harder to get a copy of the report and go public with it.  Eventually, she runs into Isaac Sachs again, who gets drunk at another event at the plant and agrees to help Louisa find the report.  He does, and leaves it in her car.  However, the top executives, including Smoke, get wind of this and follow Louisa to the plant.  When she gets there, Smoke hits her car and it ends up in the water.

End of section (DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN!!!!!)

That was definitely my favorite section so far, although it's really difficult to compare them since they are all so different.  I hope the next section will be just as good.  While this one was clearly a thriller (I haven't read a lot of thrillers, so I'm not sure if they are all like this, but I found it very similar to Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (side note: I just rented the Swedish version of the movie and have yet to see the American one) in the speed, the way the narrative jumped around between characters to show the actions of everyone, and how the main character is a journalist looking to expose information and solve a murder) the next is apparently more comedic in nature.  And it looks like the one after that is completely written in interview form.


Here are the connections I've found so far:

-Louisa and Frobisher both have comet tattoos on their shoulderblades
-Frobisher finds the first half of Ewing's journal at Zedelghem
-Louisa orders Frobisher's "Cloud Atlas" sextet (gasp!  I knew the title would reveal itself eventually)
-Frobisher and Sixsmith were friends

I'm sure there will be more, and I'm predicting it will really come together as we go backward through time in the second half of the book.  But for now I'm more than halfway to the half, which is pretty good for only a couple of days (even if they were vacation days).

Finally Started Cloud Atlas

I have finally started reading again.  This time I am working my way (slowly) through Cloud Atlas, which I received as a gift this fall and had a hard time getting into.  The format of the book is very interesting, and it has been compared to nesting dolls.  It's as if Mitchell laid six stories on top of each other and then folded them into a book.  Basically, the book is comprised of six stories, and all but five are interrupted about halfway through and finished later in the book in reverse order.  The only uninterrupted story is the sixth story, which is in the middle of the book.  It is sandwiched by the two halves of the fifth story, and so on, so that the story begins and ends with the first story.

The first story is called The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.  Adam is on a journey on a boat headed toward California and at some point he discovers someone on the boat who is not supposed to be there (I think).  To be honest, I found this section kind of dry and uninteresting, and I had a hard time following the action since there was not much of it at first.  By the time anything happened, I was so lost that I was unsure of what was going on, but not lost enough to want to reread.  I figured if I moved on maybe it would become clear later.  (I advise my students against this, and I would tell them that not knowing what is going on is a red flag and to go back and reread or choose an easier book....I guess this is an instance of "do as I say not as I do").  Actually, I thought something was wrong with my book at first, as this section cuts off mid-sentence, only to resume over 400 pages later.  I had to look it up online to see if that was indeed correct or if somehow there was a printing error.  Luckily, that section only lasted about 40 pages, but nevertheless it took me months to get through.

The next section, Letters From Zedelghem, which I am in the middle of now, is much less dry.  It's written in epistolary form, from Robert Frobisher, a broke and disowned musician, to his friend Sixsmith.  So far, Frobisher has run out of money and jumped out of a hotel window to avoid paying his bill.  He took a train to the Netherlands and borrowed a bike from a police officer to ride to the chateau of a famous composer, Vyvyan Ayres.  Ayres is going blind and slowly dying of syphilis, so Frobisher convinces him he needs someone to help him write down his musical compositions.  So far they have written a short piece that is the talk of the town.  Vyvyan and his wife Jocasta have a bitchy daughter named Eva who is amusing to read about.  She is skeptical of Frobisher, and often brings up his family and money, and wonders aloud to all present why he never receives letters or things from home.  Frobisher has Sixsmith write him a few letters just to cover up the fact that he has been disowned by his family.  Recently, Frobisher and Jocasta have started an affair, which Eva is starting to pick up on, but no one has figured out yet.  (It was mentioned that Jocasta has not slept with Ayres since he contracted syphilis, just to clear that up since I was wondering about it as well).  I have about 15 more pages of this section to go until reaching section 3, which is entitled Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery.  Hopefully that section will be good as well, but I am going to miss Frobisher.

I will leave you with some quotes that I enjoyed.  A few made me laugh out loud as I was reading.  Good thing I was home.

"A half-read book is a half-finished love affair." (p. 64)  (If that is true I have many love affairs to finish)

[Eva is mad that her father likes Frobisher so well and has offered him a better room, and sarcastically exclaims that he should be added to the will and given part of the estate.  Ayres exclaims that it's the first good idea she's had in her entire life and tells her that at least he earns his keep]
"My hosts wouldn't hear my apologies, they said Eva should be apologizing to me, that she has to lose her pre-Copernican view of a universe revolving around herself.  Music to my ears.  Also re: Eva, she and twenty classmates are bound for Switzerland v. soon to study at a sister school for a couple of months.  More music!  It'll be like having a rotten tooth fall out."  (p. 66)

"The meadow is turning yellow, the gardener is anxious about fires, farmers are worried about the harvest, but show me a placid farmer and I'll show you a sane conductor."  (p. 71)