Cloud Atlas: Rey and Cavendish

I have to admit that I set myself up to think of the “First Luisa Rey Mystery”  as outlandish, overdramatic, and superficial.  While reading the story I was surprised that I actually kind of liked it.  Sure, it was a little coincidental that Luisa never got caught or killed—especially that Bill Storm didn’t keep trying to kill her after narrowly missing.  And how fun that Sixsmith is actually in this story.  So far we’ve only encountered the successive stories inside each story, but not a character from the previous one.  But I suppose Sixsmith needed a little limelight for himself since he was merely the recipient of Frobisher’s letters.

I like the characterization of Lester Rey.  It seems natural that he’s dead, because someone so legendary can’t be alive in a story like this.  That’s how he becomes a legend, through death.  He, like Luisa, escapes death a few times, both during his short-lived stint as a cop and his gutsy career in journalism.  I don’t necessarily like the characterization of Alberto Grimaldi.  He’s a little one-dimensional, your standard greedy conniving power monger.  The editor of Spyglass is built up that way too.  Grelsh is explosive, unforgiving, and curt, and works to maintain that image.  From what I quickly looked up about noir fiction, I didn’t notice any commentary on stock characters, but good old Wiki did tell me that the protagonist usually isn’t a detective but is drawn in due to his or her closeness to the crime or victim.  That fits Luisa.

I really can’t say I have any sympathy for Timothy Cavendish.  I think he’s selfish and a little bit slow.  Maybe I don’t like him because most of the other characters in his story don’t.  Maybe because he slings slurs at almost everyone he meets and is afraid of a Rastafarian man.  Too WASP-y for my taste, I guess.  I thought it was pretty funny when he landed himself in a nursing home.  I had an inkling when Noakes entered the picture.  The last few pages are a darkly comical commentary on nursing homes.  Cavendish is beaten on the butt by a gardener with a stick, the workers actually talk to him like a child, and he sulks that “only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge [my] existence.”  As Flava Flav says, so dramatical.

One of the reviews on the back of the book says this novel resembles the Russian dolls that nestle inside one another.  I can see that, with Ewing’s story encompassing all other stories as the novel’s beginning and end, and the rest of the stories fitting in likewise.  But it works inversely; the previous story shows up in the successive story (Ewing’s in Frobisher’s, Frobisher’s in Luisa Rey’s, Luisa Rey’s in Cavendish’s, etc). So by the time we get to the “middle” story, all of the previous stories will be indirectly hidden inside.  I like the way Mitchell plays with form.  I think I like the form at the expense of the characters, though.

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