“A tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness…” Those are the words Anthony Doerr uses to describe this wonderful novel, and each thread in that tapestry is golden wire wrapped in color.
Told from the perspectives of young people, from four different centuries and centering loosely around a fictional manuscript written by an ancient Greek author, this book ties the stories of Konstance, from a space ship in the twenty second century to not only the ancient Greek, but also two teen agers on opposite sides of the siege of Constantinople in the fifteenth century, and a group of fifth graders in 2020, who wish to perform the play, Cloud Cuckoo Land, as translated by their friend, Zeno, a Korean war veteran. With his gentle and caring hand, Anthony Doerr lets us inside the world of the disfigured, the orphaned, the lost, the mentally challenged, the single mother, the unrequited homosexual, the war veteran, and even the hopeless parents in fear for their children on a dying planet. He weaves these stories so perfectly that we don’t even realize what he’s doing until we reach the surprising, inevitable conclusion.
It wasn’t easy to get started in this book, nightmares of studying the Odyssey and the Iliad threatened to make me abandon it, but to say by midway I couldn’t put it down is not an exaggeration. This author is a master, and a treasure, and this book is a love letter to books and libraries through history. I loved it.
I received this advance copy from NetGalley and the publisher. Cloud Cuckoo Land will be released on September 28, 2021.
