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).
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