Cloud Atlas

I was disappointed, considering the hype this book, and especially its movie, has gotten. About three quarters through I was ready to abandon it, but I stayed with it and it managed to redeem itself somewhat. It is a collection of novellas of different prose styles and timeframes, each interrupted by the next, and then resumed later. There is a pretext of the stories being interrelated, but there is no substance to the interrelation. It was simply an invented literary device that worked poorly. Two of the stories are pretty good: The intrigue adventure of Luisa Ray, and the comedic escape of Timothy Cavendish from a home for the senile. The others are not bad, but are seriously degraded by having to be read on the unexpected installment plan.