Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

I will be posting about several great LibraryReads selections for September 2021

and one worth waiting for is CLOUD CUCKOO LAND by Pulitzer Prize winning author Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See).  Once again Doerr crafts a story told by multiple narrators, although in his newest work they live at different times and in different places. Anna and Omeir are alive in the Middle Ages - about 1453 – living around Constantinople so the siege and eventual capture of the Byzantine Empire's capital by the Ottoman Empire is a key event in their lives. War also enters later in the more contemporary story line – stretching through the Korean War and environmental awareness and protest in the 1970s and beyond for Zeno and Seymour. A third story thread involves Konstance who is a passenger on a spaceship in the future, heading away from Earth to find a new planet to inhabit. Adding to the complexity, short passages from an ancient Greek text are interspersed. Overall, the writing is exquisite (e.g., “September closes around August like the pincers of a claw”). Doerr’s skill at drawing parallels and weaving together the disparate stories will keep readers enthralled despite the length (640 pages – but honestly, barely noticeable in digital format). He raises deep questions about grief and healing, about hardship and selflessness, asking, “Why is it so hard to transcend the identities assigned to us when we were young?” and observing through one of his characters: “That’s what the gods do … they spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come.” I was not at all surprised to learn that CLOUD CUCKOO LAND received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Highly recommended.