Mitchell's Style

David Mitchell worked incredibly hard to create a book filled with innovative literary techniques, but throughout the entire story I found myself wondering what his real intentions are. Obviously he wants to challenge the reader as he changes plots and syntax so abruptly, but is he as concerned with the actual substance of the novel as he is with creating all of his twists and connections?  Quite often during many of the stories, especially the Sonmi and Adam Ewing tales, I found myself reading without absorbing anything because I didn’t find the story to be very enticing. Now, I am not denying that I am probably just really missing the point here, but for some reason I feel something is absent from the novel.

Mitchell is extremely concerned with showing off his abilities to manipulate the plot with his changes in style, but the book would be even more enjoyable if he had fewer characters and a more developed narrative. Considering how many pages each story uses, it is pretty easy to sum up their entire tale in just a couple paragraphs. It seems to me that Mitchell is more concerned with his own mastery of each genera and language, than the actual substance of the story.

Furthermore, it took at least a few pages in each story for me to regain the ability to really understand what the characters were saying, and for an author that’s really risky. For example, Sloosha’s Crossin’ is my favorite story, but if I were reading it for leisure I would have set the book down after the 2^nd page, never to pick it up again. But, if Mitchell had cut back on some of the syntax, then his story becomes clearer, and he opens up more room to create an even more interesting storyline.

Now that Cloud Atlas is nearly 10 years old, I am curious to see how Mitchell would change the story, if at all. As the concept of having really twisty plots has popularized, I believe the book could become irrelevant because the storyline is not strong enough to hold its own against similar novels.