I Read Anthony Doerr’s ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’.

I probably felt the way you do right now about this book’s title. There is absolutely no way that this is going to be engaging or alluring or captivating. This sounds like it’s going to be filled with hijinx (my least favorite), with at least one character who thinks they’re twice as funny as the author thinks themselves to be. It sounds like whimsy, it sounds frivolous. When I noticed that the author was actually one who received the Pulitzer Prize for one of their previous novels, though, that’s when I felt a bit differently.

This book deals beautifully with the concept of the eternal nature of storytelling. We continue to come back to a seemingly innocuous story (named ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’, the source of the book’s title) by Antonius Diogenes about a man who wished to be turned into a bird, but instead was turned into a donkey and a fish, undergoing trials and tribulations, and a wide variety of experiences before he finally fulfills his goal and gets a chance to read a book with all of the knowledge in existence. This simple story holds several analogs throughout the book as you draw the lines from the ancient tale to the lives of the readers who are affected by this story. Also, more importantly, Cloud Cuckoo Land becomes a character in itself, an immortal beacon from before any of the characters that we are introduced to were born. Ancient even to the most olden of the characters we interact with. And in each of the timelines that span hundreds of years, this story gets uncovered in a way that feels to the individuals like a unique treasure, a story that only they could have found in their own way, in their own private excursion into the ether.

Over the course of the book, in ebbing and flowing perspectives, we get a chance to experience the way that we can be influenced by the idea of Who We Are Supposed to Be in the world and the ways that we can surprise ourselves, the ways that we can evolve and break that glass ceiling by stretching ourselves beyond our predestined roles. Whether it’s surviving a war, learning that your life is just an ellipsis for another generation, engaging in cat burglary to avoid blackmail or leaving your family as a greater means to a broader end, each of the characters in this book are taken from their Comfort State and jostled to a point of despair, see something they were not ready to see, and been confronted with The Bottom. These circumstances force each individual to grow in a painful but illuminating way. Answers reveal themselves through humility, through perseverance, through failure. These characters go through the fire.

The language used in this book is exquisite. Doerr can write immaculately, not only constructing a story that’s worth following (and a story within that story), but also animating characters with separate motivations. He constructs different time periods that breathe and pulse with vitality. Of all the things I love about the story in this book, of all the nuances I grew to warm to from the characters, what I loved most about this story is how it was written. And I think of all the meta entanglements we have with this book, it’s the fact that the actual story that I had in my hand, written by the author that lives in my timeline, in my universe, is the one whose story I loved the most. I read at a pretty fair pace, setting aside time every free morning that I have to sit with a book for at least a half hour, most times getting through 50–80 pages in an hour (depending on the book). But with this one, the way it’s broken up into small chapters which are then segmented into even smaller fragments based on the character whose time period we’re experiencing combined with the nourishing, elaborate and artistic style, it’s a book I could not put down, picking it up during hockey intermissions, revisiting it after work, getting through just a few more pages before heading off to bed. And the way that I took to this book is exactly the way that Konstance, Zeno and Anna took to Cloud Cuckoo Land, and the fish within the beast, the book with endless knowledge, the donkey and his endless pulling of the cart. Just one more page. Just one more section.

When a book is good, it’s easy to shed light on why you want others to check it out while still remaining metered about why some people might not find it their cup of tea. When a book is great, it’s easy to inject that same energy into a recommendation but with more fire, with more passion. However, when a book is outstanding… when a book has that certain je ne sais quoi that makes it “yours”… it comes with a certain speechlessness. When a book or an album or a film gets you in just the right light, no amount of gushing will ever do it justice. I highly recommend this book, as it’s definitely one of the best novels I’ve read in a while. Despite its volume, despite its complex structure (at least at first, before there’s anything to take stake of), and despite its elaborate language, I would say this is a pretty quick read if it engages you from the outset. Definitely a book I will be recommending to those looking for a new book to read (even though saying the title is pretty cringey).