Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is a novel composed of six interlacing narratives, each one
housed within the next, so that the first is a book read by a character in
the second, the second a series of letters cherished by a character in the
third, the third a populist novel being considered by a publisher in the
third, and so on. To fully realize this Russian-doll experiment Mitchell
divides each tale in half and places them, sandwich fashion, at opposite
ends of the book. Thus the opening narrative is the last to be concluded,
the second the penultimate, etc. At the centre of the novel lies the indi-
visible doll, an unbroken post-apocalyptic tale wrapped fivefold. Despi-
te this symbiotic, intra-textual concept, further emphasized by
the unifying themes of recurrence and predation, each narrative stands
as a novella in its own right.

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing is an eighteenth century mari-
time romp in diarised form. Ewing, an American notary, waits upon re-
pairs to his ship on the Chatham Islands where he hears a detailed and
brutal account of the indigenous people. Aboard the tyrannically captai-
ned schooner he discovers that his medical companion is more foe than
friend, more dupe than doctor and that the treatment he receives for his
apocryphal brain disorder is devised to kill not cure. Ewing narrowly
escapes loss of life and property and the infamous Arsenick Goose
flies off to filch elsewhere.

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery assumes a populist prose
style to rework the classic 'intrepid journalist takes on ruthless captain
of industry' formula. It is 1970's California and Luisa Rey discovers that
the much hyped local nuclear power plant is not as safe as it seems. Un-
like two of her moral allies she survives the inevitable car chases, ex-
plosions and fisticuffs to deliver the equally inevitable, all-vindicating
report to the authorities.