We start with the diary of Adam Ewing, a notary who travels in the South Pacific and encounters the Moriori tribe of the Chatham Islands in 1850. The peaceful Moriori are persecuted and enslaved by both white colonialists and the neighbouring Maoris. According to a local farmer, “the Maori had performed the White Man a service by exterminating another race of brutes to make space for us.” When he is at sea again, Ewing reluctantly helps a Moriori stowaway — an act with major repercussions later in the book. But for now, his journal ends in mid-sentence.

Next we meet deeply dodgy down-on-his luck composer Robert Frobisher who attaches himself to a syphilitic composer during the 1930s. In his letters to ex-boyfriend Rufus Sixsmith, Frobisher talks about his work for the demanding old composer, his affair with the composer’s wife and yearnings for the daughter. He begins his own composition – ‘Cloud Atlas Sextet.’ He reads a book in the house library, ‘The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,’ and he’s very cross to find he only has half of it!

Luisa Rey is a journalist trying to break out of writing celebrity schlock. She is investigating a nuclear power plant in the 1970s when a whistle-blowing scientist contact is murdered — it is Rufus Sixsmith. As Luisa dodges assassination attempts, Rufus’s niece gives her a set of letters written by his old mate Frobisher, which will eventually complete Frobisher’s interrupted tale.

Vanity publisher Tim Cavendish has to flee when ‘Knuckle Sandwich’ — a gangster’s fictionalised memoirs — enjoys unexpected success following the author’s public murder of an unsympathetic reviewer: “So who’s expired in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief now."

The author’s associates are now after Cavendish for their cut. Desperate for refuge, Timothy unwittingly consents to a humiliating incarceration in an old peoples’ home, where he dreams of a film being made about his ordeal and plots escape. He is editing a “lousy and lousier” submission called ‘Half-lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery’ by Hilary V Hush.

Far into the future, a cloned fast-food server gives a death-row interview to an archivist. Once genetically programmed and drugged to serve “mouthwatering, magical Papa Song’s” for 19 hours a day, Sonmi tells how she starts to get ideas above her station and gets embroiled in an underground organisation. As part of her education she is watching an ancient 21st-century film, ‘The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.’ In the middle of the film, a friend announces that the police have raided the university. Off they flee, but before her capture she writes her ‘Declarations.’ Her last request is to see the rest of the old film before she is executed.

Further into the future and after “the Fall” we are back in the Pacific. Zachry is a tribal goatherder and descendent of the Moriori. A “wyrd buggah,” Zachry likes to smoke ‘dammit’ weed and tell tales. His family hosts a “Prescient” visitor from ‘civ’lise’ lands who wants to study his tribe. While other tribes “had more gods’n you could wave a spiker at,” his folk worship only one goddess known as Sonmi. Zachry views Meronym with suspicion, but a respectful friendship develops between the two. Zachry and Meronym finally go on a journey up a mountain to the ruins of an ‘observ’tree,’ where Meronym reveals the truth about the real “freakbirthed” Sonmi, the Prescients and the situation faced by all humans. She leaves him a hologram or ‘orison’ where Sonmi gives her interview. Zachry’s uninterrupted narrative forms the centre of the book, then the other stories are finished in backwards order.

Mitchell’s command of voice and language never falters as he switches period, geography and viewpoint. He is at home with dialects of all kinds — be it the Victorian musings of Adam Ewing, Sonmi 451 talking in text-speak and advertising slogans or Zachry’s post-Fall Pacific patois. Both real and invented dialect flows well. It doesn’t alienate, but draws the reader into the characters’ worlds and inner lives.

A book with such an intricate structure and use of language risks accusations of tricksiness and empty formalistic fiddling. But the form beautifully highlights interconnections that span time and place. There is heart and passion at the centre of this book as it explores the effects of colonialism, corporate tyranny and subjugation of all kinds. Mitchell recognises the complexities of individuals: prejudiced and unsavoury characters become capable of helping others or creating sublime work, while colonised Maoris can be brutal exploiters in return.

These weighty themes are always shot through generous doses of humour and satire, ranging from broad swipes at the publishing biz and the state of the railways to a fine Dickensian twist to names — meet scheming quack Dr Henry Goose and gangster Dermot ‘Duster’ Hoggins. Perhaps the hard-boiled parody of the Luisa sections doesn’t really hit the spot that would take them beyond standard thrillerdom. But even here, Luisa’s exaltation on hearing ‘Cloud Atlas Sextet’ at the Lost Chord Music Store connects you again to the wonders elsewhere in this book.

Those familiar with the genres will recognise a few motifs — the Brave New World, the post-apocalyptic fable, the hard-boiled hack. We also get the Victorian travelogue, the cad-about-Europe story and a touch of Ealing farce. But Mitchell draws them together to fashion a “wyrd,” original and multi-layered novel. I can imagine revisiting ‘Cloud Atlas’ and finding more with each reading.

Rosanne Rabinowitz’s published fictions include stories in The Third Alternative, Visionary Tongue and Roadworks, plus contributions to The Slow Mirror: New Fiction by Jewish Writers and Deep Ten anthologies. Her work is currently showcased in Midnight Street 4 (www/midnightstreet.co.uk), and a story is due to appear in Café Ole: Too Hot to Handle (Independent Persons Press). She has also written reviews for TTA, Interzone and of course, www.laurahird.com. Rosanne lives in South London with a rather demanding 17-year-old cat. Sometimes she works as a freelance sub-editor; other forms of toil have included stints as a life model, oral history researcher, part-time mental health worker and full-time dole claimer. A graduate of the Sheffield Hallam MA in Writing, Rosanne has completed one novel and is working on a second.

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.