Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

SYNOPSIS

Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has ever known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.

Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.

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A fantastical novel of the preservation of a beloved story that makes its way through the centuries and a love letter to any reader and librarian out there, Cloud Cuckoo Land was a heartrending delight.

Let me be honest with you, this story took a little while to grow on me but before the end it had somehow become one of the most meaningful stories I’d ever read. I don’t know that I’ll ever stop thinking about this book in some way, shape, or form. It sticks with you this one. It ripped my heart out and stomped on it and I thank it for that service. Anthony Doerr managed to make a book about the preservation of stories to be thrilling, romantic, funny, and sad all in equal measure. The different character point of views over multiple timelines should have been confusing but the way it was laid out worked perfectly to keep you in line with the story and how they all connect to one another. I find different views/timelines to be a weakness in many books but Doerr mastered it here. This book makes you think about how simple stories, passed down from generation to generation can connect us and impact our lives in so many different ways. How can you not relate to a book like that?

We start at the end and slowly move back through time. With Konstance, we are with her on an interstellar ship, headed to a new planet, and we’re in isolation, writing down pieces of a long forgotten story. Flash to the Lakeport library, where Seymour is about to plant a bomb, unknowing that there are children rehearsing a play based on an ancient tale, on the second floor. Then with that excitement to get us hooked, we’re taken back to the 15th century to Constantinople where Anna is just discovering her love of reading with an old manuscript. We stay with Anna through the siege of her city while she takes comfort from the horrors by reading a fantastical tale of a man that turns himself into a donkey. Then follow Omeir as he and his oxen are forced to join the Ottoman army that is laying siege to Constantinople and how a story of a man-turned-donkey eventually saves his life. We then catch up with Seymour as he becomes dis-enchanted with our world and starts to follow the wrong people until one day, he takes it too far and plans to bomb a library to punish a corporation for their wastefulness. And then, my personal favourite, we get to walk through decades with Zeno during the horrors of war and the struggle of being gay in a time when it was very much NOT accepted until he finds meaning in his life by translating a story of a man-turned-bird.

Every point of view had such meaning and purpose (except maybe the unnecessary travel monologues from Omeir). The characterization was so ethereal and intricate that I felt I lived those lives. I was under siege with Anna, I felt the miles of gruelling travel with Omeir, I discovered love and loss and meaning with Zeno, I experienced frustration and fear with Seymour, and I was taught resilience and hope with Konstance and each one of those lessons will stick with me. Zeno and Konstance were the two that really stuck out to me. Zeno’s entire life felt like it was building towards something yet he never felt that he was important. His actions through every bit of his life impacted generations to come yet in the moment, he never realizes how important it is to just be who he is. Konstance as well started off as just a clueless kid but she was so clever and I rooted for her in every single page of her story.

The plot itself was simple yet managed to weave its way into so many subplots. The wacky story of a man who turns into multiple animals in the search of something greater isn’t anything to write home about. But it brings such comfort and joy to almost an occult level to those that read it. Even though it isn’t a renowned and important document, the love its readers have for it allows it to find its way to preservation through hundreds of years. Through soggy pages while escaping a siege to being copied down on food wrappers, the lengths readers go to to restore this fascinating and wonderful story is sublime. What WOULDN’T you do to own your favourite story, have it on your shelf to visit time and again, share with your children, and have it preserved through time?

This was a five star read for me and, be warned, I sobbed my way through to the end. Anthony Doerr has managed to master emotion and connection in every character he writes and this book was no exception.

Some of my favourite quotes:

“How do men convince themselves that others must die so they might live?”

“By age seventeen he’d convinced himself that every human he saw was a parasite… he realizes that the truth is infinitely more complicated, that we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is to be human.”

“The world as it is is enough.”