Literary Ambition Over Entertainment

I read a book recently, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, quite ambius, had me thinking all the way through how clever

and what an achievement it was to link five different stories across five different time periods

from the first tale in the mid nineteenth century through the twentieth to a starwars future

and a post apocalyptic reenactment of the beginning. . .

It wasn't really philosophical in any way, at least the way i like my books, but it was an impressive

feat of writing bordering on scholarship.

That was frankly the thought that egged me on through the book.

it sagged in the middle terribly and after the fact i realised the connections between the tales
was not hermetic, in fact quite loose.

Such ambition and enterprise is also evident in Yinn Martell's Life of Pi.

The author sets up a good yarn,  a boy gets caught up on a life boat

with a tiger, an orangutang, a zebra in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

His tale of survival involves all of 300 paperback pages.

Needless to sayit sags in the middle no be small

When you get over how clever the author must be to think up such a scenario

and write a book of such length with such limited materialyou quickly find boredom

it is a relief when you get to the last page.