Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land is, quite simply, the best novel I’ve read in a long time. (Thanks to Hunter Rawlings and David McCullough for recommending it to me.) All the way through I kept asking myself How does he do it?
Part of the answer has to do with his skill in structuring the half dozen narrative lines of his story. (None is a sub-plot; they are all independent stories that intersect in surprising ways.) In a interview with Joshua Mohr , "The World the Book Can Build," Doerr gives away one secret about structuring the story - ,the number 24:
“I built hundreds of outlines and naps and laid lots of strips of paper out on the kitchen counter. Ultimately relying on the number 24 – the number of books in the Iliad and Odyssey, and the number of letters in the ancient Greek alphabet – helped me to commit to a certain shape.”
The interview can be found in Poets and Writers for November / December 2021. The first part of the interview is available here.
Outstanding question: It’s easy to imagine how Doerr got to Aristophanes and Apuleius, but how did he find his way to Antonius Diogenes, whose long-lost tale still manages to shape this novel? Does Doerr keep a copy of Photius’ Bibliotheca on his bedside table? Whatever the answer, Cloud Cuckoo Land has never been more enjoyable than in Doerr’s novel.
Part of the answer has to do with his skill in structuring the half dozen narrative lines of his story. (None is a sub-plot; they are all independent stories that intersect in surprising ways.) In a interview with Joshua Mohr , "The World the Book Can Build," Doerr gives away one secret about structuring the story - ,the number 24:
“I built hundreds of outlines and naps and laid lots of strips of paper out on the kitchen counter. Ultimately relying on the number 24 – the number of books in the Iliad and Odyssey, and the number of letters in the ancient Greek alphabet – helped me to commit to a certain shape.”
The interview can be found in Poets and Writers for November / December 2021. The first part of the interview is available here.
Outstanding question: It’s easy to imagine how Doerr got to Aristophanes and Apuleius, but how did he find his way to Antonius Diogenes, whose long-lost tale still manages to shape this novel? Does Doerr keep a copy of Photius’ Bibliotheca on his bedside table? Whatever the answer, Cloud Cuckoo Land has never been more enjoyable than in Doerr’s novel.