#46 [2022/CBR14] Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

My friend used to get (pre-Covid) backstage passes to an author series at the local university. Before the presentation in the auditorium, we got to meet with the author backstage. And there was even wine and appetizers! We always got a chance to talk with the author and get a signed book. It's really very cool and not something I would be able to get tickets to by myself. Anyway, maybe the first one I went to with her was with Anthony Doerr when he talked about All the Light You Cannot See. We'd read the book for book club, and it was very exciting to meet a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. I remember Doerr being interesting and friendly and his talk was excellent. So when I saw he had a new book out--even though the title was weird and the description didn't immediately grab me--I knew I would read it eventually. That is how I found myself reading Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021).

Cloud Cuckoo Land has a number of stories, all connected by a book--the story of Aethon who wants to be turned into a bird so he can fly to a paradise in the sky. Anna lives in Constantinople in the mid-1400's, stuck in a sewing commune with her sister. She longs for more and eventually learns how to read, but the siege of Constantinople is right around the corner.

Omeir lives in the same time period as Anna, and he was born with a cleft lip. Superstitions almost killed the newborn and his family was driven from the village, but he grew up with his loving grandfather, mother, and sisters and he always had a gift with animals. He is only a young teenager when he and the family's pair of oxen are conscripted to join the massive army marching toward Constantinople.

Zeno is 80 years old on February 20, 2020 when he is practicing a performance of the ancient story of Aethon with some children at the public library. Throughout the book we learn about Zeno's childhood, years spent in the war, and the people he's loved. But at this point he's an old man sharing his love of this story with the neighborhood children.

Seymour is only seventeen and is possibly autistic(?). He's been drawn into some dark depths of the internet and has brought a bomb and a gun into the library on the evening of February 20, 2020. 

Finally, Constance lives sometime in the future on a spaceship that is headed away from Earth and towards a new planet that is still hundreds of years away. She has her adoring parents and an unlimited, interactive library stored in the ship's computer. But when people start getting sick, her life changes dramatically.

I really enjoyed this book. I wasn't sure all the storylines would interest me, but Doerr does such a good job with his characters that I was drawn into each person's life and really felt like I understood them. I love the idea that a book can bring hope to people in such different circumstances, and I love the idea that a book could last so long. This is a very complex book with many connections and intertwined themes. I don't know how Doerr manages to create things like this. Recommended.

***SPOILERS***

The characters do all connect in some way. Anna finds the remnants of the story of Aethon in an old library in Constantinople and smuggles it out of the city. Many years later, after she dies, her husband Omeir brings it to a city of learning where it is protected. Zeno is a homosexual in a time when it is still very difficult to be out. He loves a man he met in a prisoner of war camp who teaches him how to translate the ancient languages. Zeno translates what he can of the story of Aethon and prints out his own small book, which he gives to the children at the library when they are working on the play.

Seymour goes to jail for his actions at the library. But when he gets out, he begins to work for a computer company that maps the entire world. It is his job to censor anything that they don't want seen, which includes: protests, death, ugliness, etc. He does his job, but instead of whitewashing everything, he puts little keys into the program, so that someone after him could see more than is allowed.

When Constance finds herself as the only person left alive on the ship, she becomes obsessed with that computer program and discovers the little keys that allow her to see "the real world." Also, her father has told her the story of Aethon, and when she is by herself she tries to remember it, so she has something to hold onto. Because Constance can eventually see where the spaceship launched, she gets suspicious. Eventually she tricks the main computer and breaks out of the spaceship to discover that they'd been living in something more like a biodome than a spaceship. They'd never left Earth. We eventually discover that one of the children in the library was the grandparent of Constance's father, and that's how he knew the story of Aethon. 

Nitpicks: I only had a couple problems with believability at the very end of this novel. First, I could not imagine that a child with almost no air left would be able to break through the walls of a "spaceship." Unfortunately, she would run out of air and die. Second, police would not let someone run out of a building during a hostage situation without stopping him. At the very least, a number of police officers would have died in that situation.

***END SPOILERS***