I hope to go back to this one, but the story and characters seem meant to be more remarkable than they actually are. The exalted mundanity became overwhelming in time, which may be why Doerr’s short fiction is more successful.

I may go back to this, but the narrative voice is so cold to the characters that it’s hard to care about their lives or the increasingly overblown plot.

McMahon weaves together the looming 1850’s issues of Darwinism, slavery, and civil war well, and the scientific and historical elements of the novel are engrossing. Still, with all those elements the brief novel feels underdeveloped in the end—everything could have used more elaboration.

Reading this in preparation to teach a course on monsters next fall.

I’ve been meaning to get to Higgins for a long time, and was reminded to by an old copy of the NY Review of Books recently.

Gorgeously written, and unlike many critics I don’t think that Mitchell’s ventriloguism is either hollow or schizophrenic-as much as the novel apes muliple genres, there’s a dominant, unifying voice. However, Cloud Atlas is so similar in both execution and themes to Ghostwritten that it isn’t as impressive as it would be without that earlier novel. Perhaps that’s the trouble with experimentation-while more familiar styles mask their own similarness under convention, the innovator is expected to produce a vastly different work each outing.

A bit treacly, so far; hopefully the story will pick up as it continues.

Gorgeous writing about land and nature, and an honest, unsentimental story of native culture. The narrator’s emotional turmoil is a bit heavyhanded, but overall a rewarding read.

Shipwrecks and wild animals, what’s not to like? The religious conceits of the novel never pay off in any significant way, but the story is still a pleasure.