Roller-coaster of a ride

David Mitchell has fast established himself as a novelist of considerable authority and power. His first novel, Ghostwritten, was published as recently as 1999, and Cloud Atlas is only his third. Anyone who read his remarkable debut, or its successor, number9dream, will instantly recognise the characteristic moves and bold gestures of this amazing extravaganza. His novels have a gleefully kleptomaniac air, moving from the most tawdry thrills to thunderous, visionary spectacle; they are unlike anything else, and you emerge from them dazed, amazed, unsure of the exact nature of the overwhelming experience. Cloud Atlas is a tremendous novel, but I’m not entirely sure why.

Ghostwritten had a very original structure, one evidently congenial to Mitchell. Each chapter was set in a different part of the world, and was connected to the others only tangentially; perhaps the hero of the previous story walked through a sentence in a subsequent episode. Slowly, these frail connections built up, until it started to seem as if one were witnessing the unfolding of a vast millenial conspiracy, and perhaps the end of the world.