This book was daunting. It was the first I read for this year’s BookTube Prize Quarterfinals, mostly because I was unsure about it and it was looooong, so I wanted to get through it right away rather than worrying about it for weeks. I’m one of the only reviewers in the bookosphere who hasn’t ever read any of Anthony Doerr’s work. I started All the Light We Cannot See, and it just didn’t manage to grip me enough to keep going with it. It’s apparently an excellent book and won awards, I just haven’t yet circled back. So I was pleased to finally be given a push to try his work.
This book is split between three time periods and five characters. Two characters’ stories are in ancient times (I’m not really clear on where or when). Two are present-day (though we do learn a bit about the personal history of one of these characters going back a few decades) and the third is in the probably not-too-distant future and takes place on a spaceship full of people who are trying to find a new planet to live on because Earth is no longer habitable. All these stories are connected to one another, mostly through a book that was written in the ancient times of the first two characters (Omeir and Anna), translated in the current times (or recent past) by Zeno (he’s directing a children’s adaptation of the book on the night his path crosses with the fifth character, Seymour) and then told to Konstance by her father on the spaceship she calls home.
I liked the slow connecting of all the stories, and I liked how their individual circumstances and experiences were shared. Each is well rendered and becomes sympathetic, even when their actions are at times not so. The discussion of how important nature is and how damaging human taming of it can be in the current timeline (this is where Seymour comes in) is timely and good to see being tackled in this manner. It continues on through into the future storyline, since the destruction of the planet is the reason for Konstance’s situation. I thought this worked well, and I felt like I connected most strongly to Seymour’s backstory.
There are some things that didn’t work so well, however. I felt like some stories drag at times. There were portions of most of the stories that could have been skipped or told briefly rather than dwelled on. I also wasn’t really sure if we needed the future portion of the story. I understand the purpose of it – taking Seymour’s perspective and following it through to its inevitable conclusion and the failure of the human race to put the global good above individual wants. But as a story it wasn’t as strong as the others, and the necessary sci-fi element to it was a bit jarring and seemed forced at times. It was also the story that was the most repetitive and that dragged the most. I wanted it to either be edited out, or at the very least edited down.
It’s a hard book to read both in terms of the scope of the book, the switches between different storylines and the underlying issues. It’s not a happy book, and it’s not an easy read either. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but due to the slower portions it had me feeling bogged down a bit at times. Had I not been reading it for prize judging I suspect I would have DNFed it. The conclusion of the book draws the stories together nicely, but also leaves many unanswered questions. It’s supposed to, I think, so I’m not really sure it could have been done differently, but it didn’t quite satisfy me either. I feel like the book was conceptually complex and ambitious, and mostly it worked, but it did have some flaws that are hard to pin down or suggest fixes for.
I’m glad I was given a reason to read Doerr. I can see how a slightly less epic story could be handled very well by his writing style and ability to present character motivation in a sympathetic light. I’m curious to try one of his other books at some point, because though this wasn’t my favourite book, there was enough here to make me wonder if a different story might just click better with me. Definitely a good start to my prize reading!
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope–and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness–with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.
Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.
Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of gravest danger. Their lives are gloriously intertwined, and Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own. Dedicated to “the librarians then, now, and in the years to come,” Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship–of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart. – Goodreads
Book Title: Cloud Cuckoo Land
Author: Anthony Doerr
Series: No
Edition: Hardback/Audiobook
Published By: Scribner
Released: September 28, 2021
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Speculative, Multiple Narrative, Sci-Fi
Pages: 626
Date Read: April 2-13, 2022
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.29/5 (83,918 ratings)