Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
In what is hardly a unique opinion, I fell in love with Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See when I read it a few years ago. I had the privilege of reading it while visiting St Malo itself, which perhaps gave me more of a biased experience, but I loved Doeer’s writing style and particularly the way in which he wrote characters in that novel. Having loved that novel, and having also quite enjoyed some of his short fiction, which I have dipped into, I have to admit some disappointment in reading Cloud Cuckoo Land. Although many of the strengths of All the Light We Cannot See are present in Cloud Cuckoo Land, particularly in Doerr’s ability to write compelling characters, overall it just felt as though this was a novel that needed to be much shorter and more concise in order to make the most of the themes and narrative threads throughout.
Cloud Cuckoo Land follows three main timelines, connected through a mysterious old text. The earliest narrative follows Anna, a young girl living in 15th century Constantinople as it is attacked, and Omeir, a young boy from the countryside, ostracised as a result of his cleft palate. Another narrative follows the lives of Zeno and Seymour in 20th century United States, exploring the context for the tragic day in which these two men with vastly different life experiences find their lives colliding. The final narrative follows Konstance, a young girl in the 22nd century who finds her community’s existence under imminent threat. Through all these narratives, the characters find purpose and meaning in texts and in libraries.
As I mentioned previously, Doerr has a particular strength at creating deep and engaging characters and the range of characters displayed in Cloud Cuckoo Land is a solid example of his consistency in this area. With each character, Doerr manages to give the reader an insight into their distinctive voice, motivations, and personality in a short space of time, ensuring that they engage quickly with characters that they will rarely be spending more than a chapter or two with at a time. Although I was not equally invested in the plotlines of each character, I was equally invested in the characters themselves and it was this which kept me reading even when I was struggling with the pacing of the novel as a whole.
Although there was a lot to enjoy about Cloud Cuckoo Land, I generally felt that it was too long for the themes it was emphasising to really be effective. There were many places which Doerr took the narratives which did not feel at all necessary for the overall point about the value of preserving texts and community spaces. Anna and Omeir’s narratives in particular had many moments which felt unnecessary both for the establishing of their characters and for the overall theme of the novel; their timeline felt the weakest and the least connected to the other narrative threads. My first thought when I finished Cloud Cuckoo Land was that this would have been an exceptional novella, or even three separate, but connected, short stories. There were definite moments of emotional impact, particularly in the 20th century narrative, but I found that they became lost in the midst of everything else that was happening in each time.
Overall, although I enjoyed being back in Doerr’s writing and with his characters once again, I found Cloud Cuckoo Land a struggle to read and really felt that it could have been much shorter. I am definitely still interested in exploring more of Doeer’s work: I already have one of his short fiction collections which I need to finish soon. However, this particular work of his did not connect with me in the way that All the Light We Cannot See did. I would (and often do) recommend All the Light We Cannot See, but I am not sure that I would recommend Cloud Cuckoo Land unless I felt certain that the person would enjoy this type of narrative. It is perhaps best read by those who enjoyed similar novels such as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, with its multiple timelines and characters.
Books by the Window 