I start this review with an apology to the reader; I hardly know how to begin to review such a book. An apology is needed all the more because this is such a remarkable book that I couldn’t hope for this review to even begin to do it justice. This kind of novel is one of those crafted by a consummate master-storyteller, with layers upon layers of stories, stories that link into stories and run along parallel shining threads until they loop across each other, and run back and forwards in time, but never losing the reader, never flagging, always fresh, enchanting and creating their own worlds within worlds. (In some ways, reading this novel reminds me of the experience of reading Khaled Hosseini’s And Then The Mountains Echoed, with something of the same intricacies, though the take and tone are significantly different.)
The reader is introduced to this sentence that then appears over and over again in the novel:
Stranger, whoever you are, open this to learn what will amaze you
– and this line ushers readers into a world of enchantment of course, but also ushers its characters through all sorts of portals in time, space, and narratives. In contemporary libraries, in concentration camps decades ago, in ancient Greece, people read or hear this sentence and resonate with it, and it opens up opportunities to them all, to travel in their minds via stories. In parallel with this, is also the story of Aethon, a simple shepherd in ancient Greece who grew tired of being a shepherd with all the mud and cold and rain, and dashed off in search of his personal quest, to become an owl,
Aethon: Lived 80 Years a Man, 1 year a Donkey, 1 year a Seabass, 1 year a Crow.
The wonder of Doerr’s novel is that so little suspension of disbelief is needed even when the fantastical is recounted – the skill and craft of the storyteller transports the reader effortlessly away from the so-called real, the mundanities of the immediate present, to a whole host of characters and lives across centuries and continents – which of course is precisely what a good book is always supposed to do.
We have 5 key characters: Zeno of Lakeport, Idaho, whose story runs from the 1940s to the present day and from Idaho to Korea, and 17 year old Seymour also of the same place, Lakeport, Idaho; Omeir, the cleft lipped child of the Rhodope mountains of Bulgaria whose pair of twin oxen (Tree and Moonlight) take him on an adventure when they are conscripted; Anna in mid 15th century Constantinople who is orphaned, poor, much abused, but thirsty for knowledge and learning.
And then there is Konstance, who lives in a sealed capsule, heading for the planet Beta Oph2, 4.2399 light years away from Earth. The journey is estimated to take 592 years,
We are the bridge generations, the intermediaries, the ones who do the work so our descendants will be ready.
p210
When we first encounter Konstance at the start of the novel, she is 14, and the mission is in its 65th year. She is on board The Argos,
an interstellar generation ship shaped like a disk. No windows, no stairs, no ramps, no elevators. Eighty-six people live inside. Sixty were born on board. Twenty-three of the others, including Konstance’s father, are old enough to remember Earth.
p113
All these storylines come together in the novel and in all these lives, is the importance of books and stories and narratives, as not just life-enhancing, but sometimes, even life-giving or life-saving. As Doerr writes,
This book, intended as a paean to books, is built upon the foundation of many other books.
p623
Yes, this is a book of over 600 pages to tell the stories of so many centuries and characters and places, all reading Antonius Diogenes’ story of Aethon, The Wonders Beyond Thule, of which just a few papyrus fragments of text remain; and apparently The Wonders Beyond Thule
was itself a copy of a copy of a text discovered centuries before by a soldier in the armies of Alexander the Great. The soldier, Diogenes said, had been exploring the catacombs beneath the city of Tyre when he discovered a small cypress chest. On top of the chest were the words Stranger, whoever you are, open this to find what will amaze you, and when he opened it he found engraved onto twenty-four cypress-wood tablets, the story of a journey around the world.
p623
And so in taking us on this journey in Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr also involves the reader into these intertexualities, where books talk to books and texts talk to texts, and stories take fragments from one another and patch themselves into ever new stories. And if some of this sounds outlandish, at least it cannot be accused of being disconnected, as Doerr makes sure everything ties up together at the end. The reader practically becomes part of the cast, rolled into the audience, who are co-creators of the original story, who rewrite and fill in gaps and perform the stories, giving them new life, new relevance, new purpose. This novel really is a paean, not just to books, but to the story-lover, to fairy tales, to the salve and gift of narrative in the lives of humankind.
All that said, the last part of the book flags a little, the magic perhaps grows more predictable, and the storyteller is obliged to find some way to wrap up the tales somehow; but if the last chapters are not quite as delightful as the most part of the novel, it is nevertheless attempting to provide closure as satisfactorily as possible. A very ambitious book, which will reward the indulgent reader, but which may not quite satisfy the ultra critical one.
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