Every line is rich with physical details, precise and exquisite: apricot flesh with “a little give to it like the firm thigh of a girl ” the voices of nuns as they read aloud “mixing so beautifully that the impression is not a tapestry of individual threads but a solid sheet like pounded gold.” Lauren Groff’s Matrix, about a group of nuns who build a utopian community in 12th-century England, is the most purely sensual book I’ve read all year. Constance Grady, book criticīy signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy.įor more newsletters, check out our newsletters page. Still, Doerr’s tribute to the perseverance of life and books in the face of apocalypse is moving - and no matter what, it’s quite a sight to open the covers of Cloud Cuckoo Land and watch that clockwork tick. The author moreover seems palpably uncomfortable when it comes to writing women, even when they are minor characters. It’s also much too long: In the time it takes for all five plotlines to cohere, a lot of urgency has drained out of the book, leaving the book’s long middle feeling circuitous, rambling, and badly in need of a point. They each seek refuge in the same book: a lost comedy from ancient Greece that keeps emerging into history through luck and happenstance.ĭoerr’s built an elegant structure. Each of our protagonists lives at what they understand to be the end of the world. But even before the satisfying conclusion, they’re united by a single theme. Flip the page again, and you’re in Korea during the war.ĭoerr’s clever plot eventually brings these characters and timelines together. Flip the page again, and you’re in 15th-century Istanbul. Flip the page, and you’re in the Midwest in 2019. We start on a spaceship in the 22nd century. There are five main characters in this book, and they exist on four different timelines. It’s not always clear what you’re looking at, but it’s undeniably impressive that someone was able to put all those cogs and gears together. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr Simon and Schuster Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony DoerrĬloud Cuckoo Land is so skillfully crafted that reading it feels a little like prying open a watch to admire the clockwork.
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