The best thing about Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land is also the very thing that makes it difficult to read and, and, after you’ve read it, to gestalt and remember it as a single work of art.
What’s the best thing? That it intertwines three stories that are united due to their characters’ relationship with an ancient text (which itself is a work of fiction) entitled Cloud Cuckoo Land.
One story takes place in the 1440s in Constantinople in the late Byzantine era, as Muslims are using gunpowder to destroy the walls that have protected this Christian city for more than a century.
Another story takes place in the more-or-less current day. A young boy, drawn into a violent online cult, murders a Korean War Hero who, now in his 80s, only wishes to volunteer his time to encourage children to read. As the Korean War Hero dies, a number of those children are performing Cloud Cuckoo Land in play form.
The third story takes place in the distant future. It’s science-fiction. The Earth has been ruined. A few settlers are launched, sent to colonize a distant planet.One family includes a young lady named Konstance.
Not surprisingly, different writing styles are used to tell the three stories.The Byzantine story calls on the writing of an action-adventure-romance, or an historical romance. At times, it feels as though it’s right out of The Count of Monte Cristo.The contemporary story uses a smart contemporary style; it’s snappy.
The sci-fi story uses a clipped style that cleanly describes what little there is to describe. For the most part it’s a very clean world out there in space.
Of all three stories, the one I became caught up with more than the other two was the Sci-Fi story, especially when a pandemic breaks out on board the spaceship which brings the presence of death so much closer than it was earlier. The young lady named Konstance is constantly visiting the library, spending her entire life looking back on what life was like on planet Earth, thinking how nice it was before everything was ruined. And I thought: Is that what we have to look forward to? I found it so sad.
I am of two opinions about this novel. It’s a bold experiment. In the end I don’t think it works. But in a larger sense, what I think about this book doesn’t matter that much. Anthony Doerr’s stylistic versatility, and his ability to write a great novel is unquestioned. Someday Cloud Cuckoo Land will be viewed as just his warmup act.
