The Cloud Atlas
by Liam Callanan

List Price: $22.95
Our Price: $3.95
You Save: $19.00 (83%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of The Cloud Atlas

Book Review: "I always asked that He make me aware"
Summary: 5 Stars

Told in the first person as a type of confessional, the main protagonist Louis Belk is now an elderly priest who sits by the bedside of Ronnie a Yup'ik shaman. Ronnie is dying from too much drinking; he's a failure, a drifter who feels that all the knowledge of the world is contained in the skies, and "in an atlas of the clouds." As he watches his friend die, Louis begins to reflect on his own life as a top-secret bomb disposal specialist during World War 11 in Alaska. The focus of the story is on Louis's adventures in wartime Alaska where half-naked palm readers, rampaging drunken sailors, and lunatic captains rave in darkened Quonset huts. Where chaplains swear like stevedores and Eskimo women "can tease your entire past from your hand."

While in Alaska, Louis is placed under the command of the sadistic and bitter Captain Gurley - having already lost a limb diffusing his first bomb, and embittered at being stationed in Alaska - he has an obsession to discover and collect all such bombs in the future. As the novel progresses Gurley gradually descends into a type of madness. He fumes rages and spits, as though having an incurable, old-fashioned "Edgar Allan Poe-type of madness." Gurley also has leather-bound atlas filled with maps and neat Japanese script, which Lily a beautiful young Yup'ik wants.

Lily, born to a native Alaskan and a Russian father "a mother made of snow and the father made of fire" has a mysterious capacity to read people's lives; she works as a palm reader and prostitute. Louis gradually falls in love with her, before he suddenly realizes that she's already having an affair with Gurley. Lily is convinced that the atlas that Gurney possesses holds the secret words of her lost love. Though his encounters with Lily, Louis comes to question his faith, beliefs and his capacity to be a fighting soldier. As a Christian, Louis seeks to reconcile his religion with the chaos around him and through a miasma of fear he seeks answers with the local priest Father Pabich. The young soldier has spent his life trying to "get back to the precipice, chasing after intimacy and knowledge."

By setting the story in Alaska and infusing the narrative with local characters, Callanan does a terrific job of showing how the native Yup'ik live. And he shows, with a storyteller's thoroughness, the dichotomies and even similarities that exist between mythical native customs and modern Christian faith. Callanan also does a tremendous job of combining an historical narrative of a little known incident in war history, with a quite moving and emotional love story. The story takes many twists and turns as the triangle between Lily, Gurney and Louis is gradually played out with lives that are betrayed and secrets revealed. The Cloud Atlas is a rich, startling, and beautifully nuanced novel, and is a must read for any fan of historical fiction. Mike Leonard May 04.

Summary of The Cloud Atlas

The narrative turns back to young Belk's career as a bomb disposal specialist during the war. When Belk witnesses a bizarre balloon explosive kill several soldiers at Fort Cronkhite outside of San Francisco, he is summarily shipped to Alaska to join a top secret military unit dedicated to uncovering the mystery of what turn out to be Japanese balloon bombs (Callanan based this story on an actual Japanese program that was largely covered up by the US government during the war). Belk's commanding officer, Captain Gurley--a cross between Conrad's Colonel Kurz and Melville's Ahab--is a disgraced former OSS man with a Princeton pedigree and an artificial leg. The leg is a permanent reminder of his failure to defuse his first balloon bomb, and it fuels an obsession to discover and collect all such bombs in the future. In possession of a captured leather-bound atlas filled with maps and neat Japanese script, Gurley is also convinced that the Japanese are about to launch far more deadly cargo on the balloons, perhaps spies or plague virus. Meanwhile, Belk and Gurley become embroiled in an explosive love triangle with the local fortune teller, Lily, a woman with an uncanny ability to read people's lives but unable to understand her own destructive passions or escape her demons.

In unfolding this complicated story, Callan manages to keep the development of Belk, Lily, and Gurney in an almost perfect balance with the telling of a well-paced and compelling war-time narrative. Callanan enriches the novel with details of 1940s bomb disposal procedures and provides a thorough anatomy of Japanese balloon bombs. He also establishes Alaska--a place seemingly caught between American and Yup'ik culture--as a space for American magical realism, where spirit animals and Catholic mysticism can cohabitate. As a first effort, The Cloud Atlas is all silver lining. --Patrick O'Kelley

Historical Books

• Books > Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction