A review by eiion
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

But books, like people, die.  They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death. 

 A truly unforgettable book, that sticks in my mind like gum to hair - I don't think it'll ever come out. I'm not sure I want it to.

 Anthony Doerr, from looking at his other work, specializes in short stories, and you can tell. Cloud Cuckoo Land follows five different characters, spread out across vastly different time periods, settings, and experiences.

Omeir and Anna, children surrounded by a war and sucked into it in 1400s Constantinople, who find an old book written in Ancient Greek.
Seymour and Zeno, a teenage terrorist and an old war veteran with a passion for Greek literature in 2020 USA, both who find comfort in translating an old Greek story, trying to make sense of its out of order pages and damaged words.
Konstance, a young girl isolated in a spaceship decades in the future, with the world at her fingertips who remembers pieces of a story her father spoke to her.

Five people, five stories, all bound together by the same book.

The world as it is is enough.

It's so raw and so powerful. It's one of those books you can read again and again, but it won't ever be as touching as it was the first time you read it. I cried tears of just pure emotion because everything made me so sensitive, whether it was sad, heartwearming, sweet, hopeful, or surprising. And every time, I took a break to cry, then picked it right back up as soon as my vision wasn't blurry anymore.

It can be tough to get into. Following all the storylines isn't necessarily easy for some people, you might find yourself flipping back and forth to be reminded of timelines, dates, or settings, and some characters seem less consequential than others. What really matters isn't that you understand how they all connect (that comes later); what matters is that you understand why each of their stories are important to them, and important to us. If you let the book speak to you, it will sing instead, and it's truly a masterpiece.