Traversing genre is a dangerous act; few writers can shape-shift successfully.
One thinks of Ian McEwan's recent foray into dystopian fiction with Machines Like Me, which received mixed reviews (these very pages dismissed it) and hostility from genre writers who felt he was treading on their lawns. Or perhaps Doris Lessing who, after winning acclaim as a great chronicler of postcolonialist Africa, embarked on Canopus in Argos: Archives, a five-novel science-fiction sequence, in the 1980s. The reaction was equally as mixed for the future Nobel winner.
Anthony Doerr is clearly made of sterner stuff. Cloud Cuckoo Land isn’t just vastly different from his previous work, the bestselling, Pulitzer-winning All the Light We Cannot See: the new novel is a multi-genre epic that scales time and space – from the siege of Constantinople to cosmic space travellers.
On the surface, Cloud Cuckoo Land is split into three sections: one set during the siege, one set in modern-day Idaho, and one set on a spaceship in the next century. These sections are further split into subchapters from the perspectives of their respective characters. The sections jump between time and genre as the author explores the lives of some of these characters. All of this plotting and genre-bending gives the impression that not only is Doerr’s plate full, but there’s gravy flowing on to his lap and bones strewn about the chair legs.
The strongest of the novel’s sections is the one set in the present day. Zeno is an octogenarian scholar attempting to stage a high school theatrical adaptation of Cloud Cuckoo Land, an ancient text by Antonius Diogenes that Zeno has successfully translated into English. Seymour, a student at the school, is an awkward social outcast who, it is strongly suggested, lays on the autism spectrum.
Zeno and Seymour’s storylines interweave as, on a day that Zeno is rehearsing his play with a group of students, Seymour enters the school with a Beretta.
While I will admit it seems somewhat misjudged and perhaps intensely problematic to cast a neurodivergent child as a school shooter, the Zeno and Seymour sections contain the book’s strongest plotting and best writing. This becomes even more obvious whenever the book switches to the Constantinople sections which, frankly, have the same effect on the flow of the novel as a stick flung into the spokes of a bicycle.
The dual narratives of Anna and Omeir, one a young woman inside the city and the other a young soldier on his way to besiege it, are almost entirely devoid of action. Anna waits, Omeir walks. Their sections, however, become noticeably fewer and inconsequential to the overall arc as the novel progresses. Perhaps even Doerr himself realised the inherent weaknesses of these sections.
Despite the vast disparity between each of the sections, you are never on a weaker section for long until one of the stronger sections swoops in and takes you away again
Then we have Konstance on board the Argos, a spaceship travelling at 7,734,958k/h towards Beta Oph2. The Earth he and his companions have left is apparently a ruin. The journey they have embarked upon will encompass generations, whole lifespans played out on this disc flying through space.
This is, by far, Doerr’s riskiest plot line but it is one that he manages to integrate fairly well. It is far from the most solid piece of science fiction, and at times reads like a literary fiction author attempting to do sci-fi, but most of his ideas and concepts in these sections suggest a familiarity with the genre and some pretty perfect pastiche.
Given the breadth and scope of Cloud Cuckoo Land, I cannot recommend it to puritans – you have to be a little bit of a masochist to derive enjoyment from such a convoluted work. Doerr's decision to keep all of his chapters short and sweet (rarely does any chapter last longer than a couple of pages) can become somewhat exhausting as, in one run of perhaps 30 pages, you switch between so many characters and plots and genres that it can feel like the literary equivalent of late-night channel hopping.
Despite its physical density, the novel itself is rarely dense. Doerr writes with utter clarity and, though there is a whole lot of it, the plot is, technically, masterfully done. It's surprising how much the novel just chugs along. Despite the vast disparity between each of the sections, you are never on a weaker section for long until one of the stronger sections swoops in and takes you away again.
With Cloud Cuckoo Land, there may actually be some truth behind the concept of something being too big to fail. And you definitely won’t read another contemporary/historical/science-fiction/war novel like it.
