Welcome to the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's 2004 novel and the basis for the film by the Wukowski's and Tom Tyker.

I'm Dan Koyce, editor of the Slate Book Review, and I'm here in Slate's DC Recording Studio.

Joining me from Brooklyn on the phone is Megan Rourke, a slate cultural critic. Hi, Megan. Hi, Dan and Emily. And in New Haven, we have Emily Bazelon, a slate senior editor. Hi. Hello. Thank you both for joining me in this day, just a couple days after the attack of Sandy. So we've been improvising our get-together, and I'm glad that we've managed to get us all in the same meta room, even if we're not actually in the same physical space. Yes. As in all our audiobook clubs, we recommend that you listen to us after you read this book, because today we're going to be talking quite a bit about these six plots of Cloud Atlas, because for those who are listening, Cloud Atlas

tells six different stories over the course of hundreds of years, from the tale of a hapless

San Francisco notary's Pacific journey in the 19th century, to a story set in the primitive

far future in that same Pacific long after the collapse of society.

And I'm really excited to talk to you both about this novel, about all the different stories in it, about all the different voices in it, about how playful David Mitchell is with style.

I'm also really interested in your takes on the novel's philosophies, such as it is and its take on the future.

But let's maybe just start with a very simple question for both of you. And maybe we'll

start with Emily first. Which of these six stories did you like the best? Which one grabbed you?

And which one, if there was one, did you like the least? Huh. You know, I was thinking of them as like

the different strands of a big braid. So I sort of hate to choose among them.

But I have to say that I got more and more interested as the novel went on.

And so the way it's constructed, it's been compared a lot to Russian Matrushka dolls,

where you have one plot nesting within the next.

And in the middle of the book comes the most futuristic chapter, kind of many years after the fall of civilization.

And that's the part of the book where the story is all told in one big burst.

And I have to say, I loved that story.

I also, though, loved the story that both proceeds and follows that one, which is also futuristic. It's about

a dictatorship in North Korea in which there are, by that point in time, this like half genetically

created creatures called fabricants running around. And that story is told from the point of

view of a fabricant. and it's a story of

...