Mitchell

Big On Road

No quite sure what I think about Mitchell. I know that I really enjoyed reading Ghostwritten, and Cloud Atlas was very addictive and clever, but I'm not sure I was left with very much afterwards. Cloud Atlas is almost a set of perfectly conceived pastiches, rather than a bold new voice dazzling with relevant content and exciting form.

It's as if the writing is dressed up as very modern and literary, lots of intersecting narratives and fragments etc, but at heart it's traditional English literature with a central moral message and a nice neat ending.

That said, it's probably just snobbery really. His prose is utterly incredible, rhythmic and deceptively simple; meaning is everywhere. Gotta be a good thing for writing from Britain, even if he is moving back to Japan.