Impressions: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Book Category: Adult Fiction
(includes spoilers)
Just a list of thoughts after finishing the book. Gonna try this out going forward… if I can. :)
I listened to the audiobook, so my spelling is suspect.
Leaving name spellings as I imagined them while listening. They haven't been consistently corrected.
the way different storylines had higher up aspirational heavenly destinations or locations.
Seymour (nature, the tree with the owl)
Zeno (creating one via the play with the kids, as well as imagining life with Rex after Korea)
Anna (the broken down monastery place, was it called the priory?)
Omir (Constantinople)
Constance (the planet they were supposedly heading towards, and Argos itself)and in each of the storylines, they returned home, like how Ethon did in the ancient Cloud Cuckoo Land Story, returning to an ordinary life.
elevating oridinary life. This is particularly interesting to me because my life is ordinary and I also think it’s very special and worth loving.
and Ethan, Constance's dad, he questioned why he left earth, just like Ethon had to wrestle with that, right?
I also thought about the "last copy of the book", like how Doerr wrote that Rex had that thought, and I thought about how that book was almost at the edge of being lost forever then was resurrected over and over again
did each of the storylines include a survival of a girl in particular? Like, in the 2020 time, we see how Rachel's survival led to Constance, and Natalie's survival led to the Cloud Cuckoo Land translation being preserved? Which led to Constance's survival?
I also thought about how each of the storylines had an "end of the world" narrative, but the worlds actually survived, too. They were just different. Remember how the women around Anna kept saying it was the end of the world? And it was around 1450. Which, btw, was on the cusp of the apocalypse of native people on this continent where I live. And over 1/3 of my DNA is from ancestors who survived that apocalypse... along with over 1/2 DNA of people who colonized this land.... :)
also since i didn't realize that Constance was actually spelled Konstance in the book, I kept thinking about how Constance and Constantinople were similar. Constant... hmm.