Review by Robert McCool
I reviewed this book once before, but felt the need to look again at this very complex novel. Some readers will not like it for its complexity and length. All I can say is that it’s worth the investment of time and thought it takes. I hope you give it a chance and become a fan of Doerr’s twists and turns.
Let's celebrate librarians
Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr's (“All The Light We Cannot See”) 2021 release, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner, ISBN 978-1-9821-8967-9) is dedicated to librarians past, present and future, with some of the novel occurring within a library in each time and location in five joined stories. I applaud Anthony Doerr's dedication to all librarians, as they have been most influential in my life too.
Books with multiple characters and different eras are not a new thing. Few characters have enough time to fully develop into heroes. But in this 622-page page-turner, all four protagonists actually live and breathe their separate lives: one in the 1453 siege of Constantinople by the Saracens, one in the present time of the 1980s, one in the 22nd century within a “generation ship” in outer space, and finally the main character in the “Cloud Cuckoo Land” story.
This is a novel about preservation. Mostly the preservation of an ancient book called “Cloud Cuckoo Land” from a time before our modern history began. This book has faced destruction many times but survived and influenced those who read it. This is in contrast with our Earth, which faces all kinds of destruction every day, yet we refuse to do what is needed to preserve our very small planet.
These engaging characters are Zeno, an octogenarian who, along with Seymour Stulman, lives in the 1980s; Omeir with his two oxen at the tall walls surrounding the great city of Constantinople in the distant past; and Anna inside those same walls, where she discovered “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in a moldering tower library.
There is one more person's story being told: Aethon, whose mishaps and adventures are the story in “Cloud Cuckoo Land”, originally written in ancient Greek. His is a ridiculous tale of transformation to a donkey, then a crow who seeks the golden castle in the sky where there is no war, plenty of food to eat, and the ability to be transformed back into his unfortunate human form. Aethon has a hare-lip which separates him apart from those around him. His story is funny at times and he is frustrated in the shape that he is. As a donkey he desires to be a great gray owl able to fly high enough to reach the golden city in the clouds.
Zeno spends most of his life in a library, where he is preserving and presenting a play written by Diogenes in ancient Greece, using local children as actors.
Seymour Stulman, in the same library as Zeno, is a budding teenage ecco-terrorist whose outrage over the death of an owl by land developers propels him into a self-destructive mission. He wants to make a statement that will be heard by everyone. This is the beginning of the book's take on climate change, deforestation, and destruction of other species. This too is a story of preservation.
Omeir is drafted into the Saracen's war on Constantinople. His oxen will help pull a massive cannon to the city's walls. Without proselytizing, Omeir's story causes us to consider the destruction of war, with human death tolls and the rape of the land.
Anna, an orphan, lives on the inside of those same walls of the great city, making a living by embroidering priest's vestments. At night she climbs the outside of a tower library in order to retrieve manuscripts that are sold to visiting scholars. This is when she discovers the heavily damaged “Cloud Cuckoo Land” book. She keeps the old book and works to preserve it, eventually reading it to a new generation of children.
In the distant future, Konstance lives in a generation ship in the 22nd century, on its way to a new planet, with our Earth on the brink of death. A generation ship is one that takes generations to preserve humanity, with the original families living, breeding and dying on the way to a promising planet. Her father intentionally locks her in a safe room while all the crew dies, leaving her all alone with an extension of the omnipresent main computer that dedicates itself to preserving Konstance's life. There is a library that she explores her small world with. The horrors of the last throes on her home world are a cautionary tale to those of us who live on the Earth and create new generations of people who will do what they want, regardless of the fragility of our Earth and what is in front of their faces.
I cannot begin to tell you about this book without stating that it left me thinking about it long after I set it down. I actually dreamed a segment of this story. That dream was as confusing as “Cloud Cuckoo Land” can be at times.
It's a long, long story about people that are roughly alike. It's a story about a book that changed lives.
