I finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr last night. It was an excellent book.
Mr. Doerr took the multiple-plot-lines-that-merge-over-time device he used in All the Light We Cannot See to a new level. I enjoy this type of storytelling, and with five threads—two set in Anatolia in 1452-1453 AD, two set in Idaho between 1930 and 2020 AD, and one set on a starship in the far future—there’s plenty to track. Luckily, the threads gather in on themselves and become strong enough on their own to keep the reader active.
I enjoyed something else Mr. Doerr did: he demonstrated a wanton disregard for the artificial boundaries of genre. Is Cloud Cuckoo Land historical fiction? Science fiction? Fantasy? Contemporary? YA? General fiction? Literary Fiction? Yes to all of these, and more. Before the book was released, I read a portion of a review that criticized this aspect of Cloud Cuckoo Land, but as a reader with eclectic taste (and therefore a writer with eclectic output), I can’t express my gratitude enough for a story that ignores modern publishing convention in favor of singularity.
Mr. Doerr made eloquent use of verb metaphors. Here are several examples from the first 100 pages of the novel:
“Gulls wheel around the dome of the Hagia Sophia like prayers gyring around the head of God, and wind rakes the broad strait of the Bosporus into whitecaps…”
“The girls slip through the doorway, boiling with the mystery of it, and the flames rise, and Grandfather shivers.”
“Parachuting through the air around him, blown out of the firs, are hundreds of pine needles bundled in twos.”
“Father and daughter smile, playing their familiar game, and Konstance, wriggles inside her blanket, anticipation rolling through her, and the roots drip, and it is as if they drowse together inside the digestive system of a huge and gentle beast.”
Notice how he created imagery by describing action. The economy of this technique struck me several times while reading. The author said so much with so few words. Such sentence construction is craft I appreciate and admire.
In the end, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a tribute to books. Stories—regular, everyday, fantastical fairy tales—do more than entertain. They soothe angry wounds. They walk with the lonely. They bind up and heal.
The novel is also a tribute to those who safeguard books. In fact, Mr. Doerr’s dedication is written to librarians of all eras. I’ve already expressed our family’s love of libraries and librarians, so I won’t drone poetical, but it was nice to see such affection reflected back from the pages of Cloud Cuckoo Land.
I recommend Cloud Cuckoo Land to anyone sixteen and older. Younger YA readers may not be ready for some of the themes and plot points (or the few bits of profanity). Older readers should put this on their TBR list.
p.s. – The Idaho town in which much of the novel is set is fictional, but I pictured a specific location every time the story switched to a Zeno or Seymour thread. If you’ve read the book and are familiar with Idaho, what do you picture?
