Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

Now is time to get the facts straight.

Chapter 1: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing

This takes place in the 1850s or so on Ocean Bay, New Zealand ish.  Adam is a notary who for some reason has been a passenger on the Prophetess, his virtue and lack of seamanship unwelcome to the crew.  He meets an eccentric doctor named Henry Goose and later befriends him.  The two have church and a disdain for debauchery in common, and Dr. Goose treats Ewing’s parasite once they’re back aboard the Prophetess and headed for San Fran.  Goose has been taken on board rather than waiting for the Nellie (echoes of Conrad?) to take him to Sydney.

The style is lots of ampersands and a nineteenth century vocabulary and syntax that calls to mind Cold Mountain.

Ewing’s nemesis is Mr. Boerhaave, a Dutch first mate whose bullying is accomplished through direct threats of violence and thinly veiled threats of violence. There seems to be no third rail to his communication.  Ewing’s albatross is the palindromic Autua, a Moriori stowaway, one of the last of a peace-loving tribe enslaved by the warlike Maori. Autua’s position as a man of peace in a place of war parallels Ewing’s position as a man of virtue in a place of sin.

Ewing’s journal ends midsentence

Chapter 2: Letters from Zedelghem

Robert Frobisher is a gifted, uncompromising musician, a manipulative, scheming person who has been written out of his father’s will and is on the run from London creditors after he escapes from the London hotel room he never intended to pay for.  The story is told in energetic prose through letters that Robert writes to his friend Sixsmith in the summer of 1931.

Practically shillingless, Robert’s plan is to take a ferry to Belgium where he hopes to win the favor of the enigmatic composer Vyvyan Ayrs and earn a job as his amanuensis.  His plan is wildly successful: he transcribes Ayrs’ tar-tar tattys into notes; he helps to write a new composition whose performance in Cracow reenergizes Ayrs’ career and inspires him to keep writing; he has an increasingly complicated affair with Ayrs’ wife, including one suspenseful, somewhat comedic scene when Ayrs visits his room twice in one night while she (Jocasta) is in bed with Robert (it is probably worth noting that Ayrs’ is very old, is barely ambulatory, and nearly blind, while Jocasta is in her forties).

Despite the success Robert has in establishing his name with some of Europe’s most well-known conductors and composers, his inclination toward criminality (or maybe to advantage, or simply impulse) compels him to steal some literary treasures from Ayrs’ library and sell them to Jansch, an unscrupulous English book-dealer likened to Shylock. After Jansch gets drunk as they celebrate their shady deal, Robert rolls him for all the money in his wallet.

In the course of Robert’s journey through Ayrs’ library, he comes across a volume of Ewing’s journal, which to his dismay, ends midsentence.  So he asks Sixsmith, who is apparently a former lover as well as best friend of Robert’s, to find him the rest of Ewing’s book. Robert’s promiscuity and deviousness give him a Karamazovian sensuality that makes him a blend of Fyodor’s narcissism and Ivan’s rebellious intellectual integrity.

The chapter ends with Robert choosing not to make his getaway but instead signing on for another six month hitch working for Ayrs.

Chapter 3: Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (up to p. 106)

In this story, Rufus Sixsmith (surprise!) is a scientist on the run from the corrupt forces of Seaboard Corporation, a nuclear energy conglomerate.  He is stowed away in a seedy apartment in Buenas Yerbas, CA, where he ends up stuck in an elevator waxing philosophical with the gossip journalist Luisa Rey, and spilling some personal stuff that will probably end up leading Luisa to some real reporting about problems with the plant, Swanekke 2, where Rufus was the only one of twelve scientists who did not yield to the thuggery and corruption of Seaboard’s CEO, Alberto Grimaldi.  We learn here that Caius, the place Robert had fled, is a college of Oxford (or maybe you knew that, but I didn’t), and that Rufus’s niece Megan had studied there in pursuit of her doctorate in physics. 

Luisa is somehow stuck where she is.  Her neighbor leaves her eleven year old son Javier home alone while she is either at work or having affairs with men who beat her and Javier, and Javier sneaks daily into Luisa’s apartment through her window.  She is trying to live up to the journalistic legacy established by her father, who had been one of only a handful of incorruptible cops on the BYPD before being blown up by a grenade in a post WWII battle with arms dealers and becoming a war correspondent in Korea and Vietnam.

At this point, she’s on the trail of an expose that nobody wants her to write, and the bad guys have tracked down Rufus Sixsmith and are on their way to take care of him.

Time frame – mid 1970s, post initial Three Mile Island protests and smack dab in the disco era when M*A*S*H reruns can be found on any channel, anytime.

Halfway through “Half-Lives,” so stay tuned.