Author: David Mitchell
First Published: 2004
Publisher: Vintage Canada
509 pages (paperback)
I am in love with this novel, I really am. Recommended to me by a friend, at first I was kind of wary of the book. I gave up on it after the first 5 pages on my first try because, I admit, I found it difficult to read and I wasn’t really into it. Left it to sit on my bookshelf for five months or so. Then the movie came out, which I kind of wanted to see, but ended up not doing that either. I’m not sure what caused me to pick up this book nearly a year after I bought it, and a handful of months after the movie’s release. Who knows?
But I did, and I’m so glad I gave it another shot. Long after I finished the last page, I am still thinking about this book, still ruminating and trying to come up with how everything links together. This is the kind of book not everyone will like, I admit. It has a unique structure to it that, as one of the characters state (out of this context), that could either be hailed as revolutionary or gimmicky. I think even people who like this book might not “get” it one hundred percent. I love it though, I love everything about it: the characters, traveling through time, all the settings, the crossing of literary genres. I think it’s a brilliant novel, and the writing is so amazing. I am quite blown away by what a chameleon the author is, able to adapt and mold his writing style and writing voice to fit the different time periods and characters. If you told me six separate authors wrote each of the six novellas, I would believe you.
This book is essentially six novellas that connect and relate to one another in vague ways. Only the first half of each six is revealed in the beginning, except for #6. We get the full story of #6, and then the novel goes backwards, telling the finishing half of the rest of them. To put it plainly, the order of the stories go 1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1.
1. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, set in 1850’s. Adam Ewing is an American notary who learns about the enslavement of the Maori people during his time away from his home in San Fransisco. On his journey back, he falls ill and is being taken care of by the slightly eccentric doctor, Henry Goose. This first novella is his journal that he is writing in as he sails ship back to America.
2. Letters of Zedelghem, set in 1931. Robert Frobisher is an aspiring composer, down on his luck. He finds work helping famous composer Vyvyan Ayrs compose his music. During his stay at Ayr’s home, he receives the sexual advances of Ayr’s wife, gets in a multitude of arguments with Ayr himself, and becomes interested in a book called The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. He writes about his days in the form of letters to his lover, Sixsmith.
3. Half Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, is set in the 1970’s. Luisa Rey is a journalist bent on exposing the hazards of a Californian nuclear power plant. She is searching for the Sixsmith report, which exposes the dangers of the power plant, but the nuclear power company will stop at nothing to make sure the report never gets out. Luisa Rey finds Sixsmith’s letters to Frobisher during her search for the report.
4. The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, set in our present day. This is a humorous story about Timothy, a publisher, who is fleeing his client’s gangsters. Timothy’s brother sets him up with a hotel to hide out in, but it turns out to be a nursing home, which will not let Timothy leave. As Timothy tries a variety of escape methods, he also comes across a manuscript for an unpublished novel called Half Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery.
5. An Orison of Sonmi~451, set in a dystopian future in Korea (or what used to be Korea). Sonmi~451 is a fabricant, a genetically engineered clone. She is giving an interview to an Archivist before her subsequent disposal, explaining how she came to join rebels against the corporacy and the use of fabricants as slaves, and her role in the whole conspiracy. At one point in the story, she comes across an old film called The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.
6. Sloosha’s Crossin’ and Ev’rythin’ After, set in an apocalyptic future even further than the previous story, in what used to be Hawaii. Zachry is a member of a primitive but peaceful valley tribe that lives in fear of another tribe on the other side of the island, the Kona, who are fierce warriors and cannibals. They worship a goddess called Sonmi. One day, they are visited by a Prescient — a far more technologically advanced people — who stays with them to learn and study their ways. The Prescient is greeted warmly and everyone loves her, except Zachry, who is wary of her true intentions. It turns out the Prescient needs a guide to a mountain top where abandoned observatories lay. The valley temple fear the mountain, believing it to be haunted by the devil, but Zachry reluctantly takes her, where it is revealed to him through an old hologram device that Sonmi is not a goddess, but someone who lived a long time ago.
As you can tell, this novel is huge in scope. It is a novel about truth, power, freedom, captivity, power, greed, love, loss, and so much more. There are elements that thread the six novellas and link them together; for example, in each story, there is a character with a comet-shaped birthmark. You won’t be able to link together everything the first time, probably, which makes it have incredible re-reading and re-re-reading value. I personally love trying to figure out how things link together, trying to figure out the overarching themes and how they play out in each novel. If you don’t like that kind of stuff, well, the six novellas are really wonderful, clever and exciting stories all on their own as well, and you can certainly read them each separately if you like, instead of the Russian-dolls-way the author has structured it.
Oh yes, and I did actually end up seeing the movie after I finished the book. The movie stays mostly true to the novel, though I found it emphasized love and romance a bit more than the book did. Really wonderful stuff here. I am not, however, going to go around recommending it to everyone I know, because I know not everyone will appreciate the novel in the same way, though I wish that was the case. It’s a very daring novel, ambitious in scope, the kind that is going to be challenging for some people to like, and easy for others to engage with. I, as you know by now, fully enjoyed it. It is a novel that will stay with me for a while yet.
My Rating: 5/5
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