#3: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Best of the Millennium
September 24, 2009 | 1 book mentioned 13

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coverI read Cloud Atlas with two contradictory impulses: first to let loose a yodel, dance a fandango, wrestle an alligator, seize strangers by the hair and hold them firmly until they, too, read this shockingly beautiful Matryoshka doll of a book; second, to pout alone in the darkness under my desk. My first reaction was as a dazzled reader who saw each movement of the book as David Mitchell one-upping himself with his genre-bending (historical, mystery, science fiction), his sublime prose, his broad and breathtaking ideas. The other was as a writer who was intimidated almost to petrification by the mere idea that such a book exists and was written by someone of my generation. It is hard not to make sweeping pronouncements after having lived this book, and, still under its spell three years after I read it, I would say: yes, yes, yes, this is the way novels should be written, with such electric ambition, with such exhilarating sweep.

Read an excerpt from Cloud Atlas.
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is the author of Fates and Furies, Arcadia, The Monsters of Templeton, and the story collection Delicate Edible Birds.

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Best of the Millennium

#2: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Best of the Millennium
September 24, 2009 | 1 book mentioned 7
The Known World, Edward P. Jones' gorgeously written novel, turns the world of race relations as we know it upside down. The lines that divide the races in his antebellum are not so much blurred as crooked, doglegged, and doubling back on each other. And race is only one vector: family, power, history. and love are also in play here. Jones' refashioning of antebellum history is profoundly subversive and profoundly satisfying. In his telling, our nation's story is one of contradictions and cruel ironies, halting progress and lost opportunities. I hope that someone, some day, will write a novel just as good about race relations in our current vexed era. If they do, I imagine they will conclude that Mr. Jones had it right all along. The Millions review of The Known World. The Known World tops The Millions Prizewinners list. More Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far) Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers
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Best of the Millennium

#17: The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Best of the Millennium
September 21, 2009 | 1 book mentioned 4 2 min read
I think of Jonathan Lethem as the poet laureate of gentrification.  This is true in the literal sense -- in the case of the subject of this piece, The Fortress of Solitude, and to a somewhat lesser extent with his follow up to it, You Don’t Love Me Yet -- in that he writes about neighborhoods in transition: Gowanus in Brooklyn and Echo Park in Los Angeles.  But Lethem is also an author gentrifying genre fiction – noir thriller and sci-fi – as he did in his earlier novels Gun with Occasional Music and Girl in a Landscape.  Perhaps it’s a kind of reverse gentrification, in that case. The Fortress of Solitude is the tale of Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude, friends across the color line in the evolving neighborhood of Gowanus or Boerum Hill, as it would come to be called.  Their racial difference hangs over every interaction in the book, despite their shared tastes in comic books and music.  Split into multiple parts, divided by something that already seems incredibly ancient – a liner note – the book is shot through with pop culture, punk rock trivia and super powers.  At its best moments, the book perfectly describes a time and a place in near constant transformation, and in realizing two great characters, in Dylan and Mingus.  At its worst, it leaves itself open to charges of a kind of forced exotification, as the adult Dylan seems to have collected artifacts of African-American culture – most notably an African-American girlfriend – as one might the relics of a lost civilization. You have to admire Lethem’s bravery -- he fearlessly addresses race in a way that most white writers wouldn’t dare.  At the same time, he embraces his geek origins, blending together hip-hop, punk, graffiti art, avant guard film and comic book culture into a dazzling pastiche.  While it will likely be his earlier book Motherless Brooklyn that solidifies his reputation, The Fortress of Solitude remains his “biggest” novel to date, a book that tries to stand next to the other greats of the decade.  That it doesn’t entirely succeed does little to diminish Lethem’s stature as one of the decade's great writers. Read an excerpt from Fortress of Solitude. A Fortress of Solitude literary soundtrack. More Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far) Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers
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13 comments:

  4. Sorry, it’s a fine novel…but number 2 best novel published since 2000? This ranking of the top books of the new millenium is just turning out to be bizarre.

  5. I prefer Ghostwritten as well. I stopped dead at the sci-fic section of Cloud Atlas, which I thought too artificial — but maybe I’ll give it another shot someday.

  6. Yeah, I thought this was going to be number one. Or maybe I just knew that it was my personal number one and therefore hoped? Glad to see it in in the top five, though.

  7. Dunno, I think there’s something too self-conscious about Cloud Atlas’s virtuosity – too ingratiating. Some of the sections work well – didn’t like the science fiction bits because I think they’re overly derivative, especially the central section which (as the author freely admits) owes a great deal to Riddley Walker without repaying the debt by doing anything that Russell Hoban didn’t.

    He is very good, no doubt, and I hoover all his books up as soon as they’re published… but I (unfashionably) prefer Number 9 Dream…

  8. Even allowing for the inherent (and I assume intended) humour of announcing the “best books of the millennium” in the middle of 2009, Cloud Atlas is a strange choice. I guarantee that half the people who voted for it will be embarrassed about it in a few years’ time. If indeed they remember the book at all. It is often quite entertaining, but it is ambitious in only the narrowest and most modish sense, in that Mitchell writes in a number of different styles. This is the literary equivalent of a fashion designer of the 80’s being praised for producing the largest shoulder pads.

    In any other terms you might choose it is, frankly, not that great. And certainly not original. There isn’t a single one of the six stories in the book that can’t be found elsewhere (and better). The detective thriller is just plain bad. And the moral message that wraps the whole thing up manages to be both condescending and childish. To the expression of wonder that this book was written by someone of our generation, I can only reply, “what other generation would bother?”

    Really, Cloud Atlas’s place on this list epitomises the problem with the whole enterprise: how many of these books will last even into the next decade, never mind the next 991 years? How about you just retitle this feature “The Last 15 Books We Remember Reading Of The Millennium (So Far)”?

  9. @ Tom B — I actually liked the sci fi parts of CLOUD the best — which surprised me. Don’t remember which off the top of my head, maybe e.g. the music one, but some of the others I found nearly unreadable.

    GHOSTWRITTEN totally contrived, but I totally bought the contrivance. And loved the idea of the little communicable narrative spark/genie that was passed on from character to character.

  10. Pingback: Fiction Writers Review » Blog Archive » Powell’s Puddly Awards

  11. I must say, I loved Cloud Atlas, and am thrilled to see it on here. While it’s true that any one of the stories that make it up has been outdone within its genre, it has to be read in the context of the greater whole. Each story shows up in some form in the next, which in some way calls into question the veracity of the one outside it. But then the stories also depend on what came before for their depth of meaning and emotional core, and outlast that which comes after them. It’s not only a structural trick, upending the directionality of narrative, it’s an epistemological one as well. And for the author to pull it off without it seeming irrelevant or external to the greater narrative set this book apart from other works with a similar ambition.

  12. Pingback: Cloud Atlas Reviews |

  13. I agree, best book I’ve ever read in my life, next to 100 years of solitude . I listened to the audio book too, and it was so good, perfect narration!

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Best of the Millennium Notable Articles

Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers

Best of the Millennium Notable Articles
September 25, 2009 | 1 book mentioned 85 3 min read
One thing I know after working on The Millions for all these years is that the site has some incredibly knowledgeable and avid readers, the sort of book people I loved working with back in my bookstore days and who are the lifeblood of literary culture. And so, even as we were polling our distinguished panel of writers, editors, and critics, we wondered, what do Millions readers think? We polled The Millions Facebook group to find out. The list our readers came up with was very interesting, and deviated in noticeable ways from that of the Pros. Before I get into the details. Have a look at the two lists below (Links in our panel list go to the writeups we published throughout the week.  Links in our reader list go to Amazon): Panel Readers 1 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 1 The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz 2 The Known World by Edward P. Jones 2 2666 by Roberto Bolaño 3 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 3 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 4 2666 by Roberto Bolaño 4 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 5 Pastoralia by George Saunders 5 The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6 The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6 Atonement by Ian McEwan 7 Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald 7 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon 8 Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson 8 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 9 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro 9 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 10 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 10 White Teeth by Zadie Smith 11 The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz 11 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami 12 Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg 12 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 13 Mortals by Norman Rush 13 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 14 Atonement by Ian McEwan 14 Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald 15 Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis 15 Empire Falls by Richard Russo 16 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 16 Runaway by Alice Munro 17 The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem 17 The Master by Colm Tóibín 18 Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link 18 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 19 American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman 19 Unaccustomed Earth ** by Jhumpa Lahiri 20 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 20 Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke      While everyone seems to agree that The Corrections is a great book (it was the panel winner by a landslide), Millions readers put seven books ahead of it, and anointed Oscar Wao the top book of the decade.  Our readers have always loved Oscar, so that wasn't a huge surprise, but it was also interesting to see that the readers had a high opinion of  Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, rectifying probably the biggest snub on our panel list, (along with White Teeth).  But then, the readers snubbed The Known World, so who knows. With a massive field of potential books, snubs were inevitable. Left off both lists were both of Jonathan Safran Foer's novels, David Foster Wallace's Oblivion (his only fiction of the decade), and Denis Johnson's much praised Tree of Smoke. Voters were also dying to include Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. It was ineligible because it was published in Spanish in 1998, but it makes one wonder, what books will seem like shoo-ins for this type of exercise 10 or 11 years from now but are completely under the radar (or still untranslated) today? Moving back to the books that did make the list, I also loved that the readers included Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a book that I've been hearing about from our readers for years, and Half of a Yellow Sun, a book that's always had a lot of support in the online literary community.  Also intriguing is the appearance of mega-best seller The Kite Runner. Finally, if we try to look for a consensus among the two lists, several titles appear on both, but the two with the most support across the entire spectrum of respondents are 2666 and Cloud Atlas, which, if you had to pick just two books to define the literary decade now coming to an end, would make for very interesting selections indeed. We'll be publishing follow-up pieces in our Millennium series over the coming weeks, so look for those. I also wanted to thank our panel and Millions readers for taking the time to participate in the series. If you enjoyed the series and value the coverage that The Millions provides, please consider supporting the site.
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Best of the Millennium

#19: American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman

Best of the Millennium
September 21, 2009 | 1 book mentioned 1 2 min read
Starting Lynne Tillman’s American Genius, A Comedy, I was led to assume by the confessional intimacy of the voice that this would be a story on a scale small enough to match the closeness its first-person narrator’s tone made me feel to her. But then I began to notice how many physical locations she was taking me to on a given page, or even in a typical supple and quicksilver sentence, and how many temporal locations, and how many of the novel’s vast range of themes and motifs she was advancing, and how many different -- often contradictory -- attitudes toward a given assertion she was adopting or testing out. Another way to describe this narrator’s propensity to make an assertion and then to iterate a number of alternative and mutually opposing points of view about it would be to say that the novel she inhabits, even at the level of a single sentence, is polyphonic, that its central voice contains many voices. So, while tracking her protagonist’s mental and physical peregrinations in time and space to and from the mysterious retreat-like communal living space that is the novel’s core location, Tillman composes and arranges in syntactical harmony a great many people and places and things: mothers and fathers, dogs and cats, the Empire State Building, Eames chairs, textile mills, China and Poland, 1733 and 2006, John D. Rockefeller and Jean Genet, coumadin, lanoxin, chocolate pudding, farting, murder, the Revolution and World War II, shoes, bikes, cars, a lost brother, a City upon a Hill, worry that does not hinder exuberance or vice versa. In American Genius, a Comedy, Tillman becomes, in effect, a dozen Ellingtons conducting a monumental symphony played by an orchestra consisting of a single multifarious instrument. Read an excerpt from American Genius, A Comedy. The Millions review of American Genius, A Comedy. More Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far) Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers
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