Book notes: Cloud Cuckoo Land

By Anthony Doerr.

I got this book as a Christmas gift from my father in law. It was a 2021 National Book Award finalist. At the time of this writing, 4.5 stars on nearly 26k reviews on amazon.com.

The blurb on the cover says “Wildly inventive” and I agree. This epic novel has nearly 600 pages. It starts off with 5 different character narratives: Konstance, Zeno, Seymour, Anna, and Omeir, whose stories span 600 years, and early on I was wondering “how is he going to tie all of this together by the end of the book”? It turns out the story is actually about the “life” of an old Greek tale written by Antonius Diogenes at the end of the first century. The tale is about an old man who was a donkey for a year, a sea bass for a year, and a crow for a year, who goes to Cloud Cuckoo Land and has to make a decision whether or not to stay. The tale is rediscovered as an old written text just before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The characters all interact with the tale in some way.

“What you already have is better than what you so desperately seek.” This is the moral from the tale, and plays out many times in the book: The Argos mission, Zeno coming to terms with himself, and Omeir returning home from the war (though he didn’t particularly seek the war).

Both this book and “All the Light We Cannot See” feature historical walled cities that were under attack. Constantinople in this one, San Malo in WWII in the other one. I like a bit of history and geography in my fiction. Fun fact, Constantinople fell in 1453, but wasn’t renamed to Istanbul until 1930. (People just liked it better that way.) Both books also feature a young boy and girl with separate narratives that finally meet in the end and dig each other. I saw Omeir and Anna coming from a mile away.

The tale tells us there can’t be life without death, peace without war. All the characters suffer in some way, some literally through war experiences. At one point in the book the “death anxiety” message is so strong you wonder if all the main characters might just die tragically and meaninglessly at the end. Especially when Zeno realizes the point of the tale is to keep going for entertainment’s sake, what happens when the tale ends? Presumably the fabled sick niece dies, right?

In an age with so many mass shootings, the empathy and understanding the book builds for Seymour’s character is interesting. We have to watch out for our youth and what information and influence they get on the Internet. Seymour wasn’t wrong to be upset about the environmental health of the earth.

Highly recommended. The last 150 pages of this book flew by. Such a cleverly-woven story!

Topics and questions for discussion

1. Consider Sybil: sinister, benevolent, or neither? I’m going with benevolent. Doing her best within the limitations of her programming.
2. What does Cloud Cuckoo Land represent for each character? Konstance: living it. Zeno: love for Rex. Seymour: Bishop’s camp and Mathilda. Anna: that island. Omeir: Constantinople.
3. What does your futuristic library look like? Probably some kind of immersive virtual reality where information can swoosh around. Bummer though because I really enjoy the paper book experience.
4. How do Anna and Omeir’s losses of Maria, Moonlight and Tree affect them? They mourn the loss and then re-asses their situation. What would happen to them if they didn’t meet? They were lucky for each other’s companionship, otherwise they would likely die.
5. How does Seymour change his thoughts on environmental justice later in life? In his teenage years, Seymour has a strong sense of action, we have to do something now, and everyone who isn’t acting is part of the problem. Later in life he realizes people aren’t necessarily bad for not acting.
6. Would you accept a spot on the Argos mission? Nope! We’ve got to make it work here.
7. What was a meaningful story to you from your childhood? What impact did it have on your life? I remember reading Watership Down in middle school. I couldn’t verbalize it then, but I enjoyed the teamwork and adventure. Funny that you could learn so much from a group of rabbits. I re-read it again recently and greatly enjoyed the build up to “Silflay hraka, u embleer rah”.
8. To gain access to Cloud Cuckoo Land, why did Zeno translate the riddle answer as “nothing”? Konstance learns something similar with Sybil… all the world’s information doesn’t contain your experience and wisdom. The answer was meant to shock; all the world’s information would actually be a big help.
9. What does Omeir mean when he says “All my life, my best companions cannot speak the same language as me”? Oxen and Anna. What role does Omeir’s empathy play in the story? Got the cannon to Constantinople. Others noticed his animal husbandry skills, it took all the animals to move the big cannon. Helps keep Anna alive at the end. (And she to him.) His final act is to keep the tale alive.
10. Why does Seymour put hidden doors in Ilium’s system? Do you agree? Seymour doesn’t want to completely hide the truth. Environmental justice was his thing after all. Most people would agree.
11. How would your perception of the novel change if Aetheon chose Cloud Cuckoo Land? It would certainly make for a worse story, though in real life most people probably take Morpheus’s blue pill.
12. Which of the characters homecoming story do you relate to the most? Tough one. Probably Zeno’s story of personal discovery. That personal journey of being comfortable in your own skin.
13. Why did the author bookend the story with Konstance’s narrative? She spent most of her narrative in Cloud Cuckoo Land, so it seems appropriate.