China Mieville is an author whose work I should have devoured. He writes the sort of stuff that I like, I've even met him, but I've read very little of his stuff. I think in part it's just that his books are to big to read on a bus.
Enter the kindle, and The City and the City, as I decided to kick off with something stand alone. Previously, I've only read his children's book, UnLunDun, which is also a book about the nature of cities, so I think he may have a bit of a theme there.
The City and the City is the story of Inspector Tyador Borlu, a cop in Besel, investigating a murder. The complication is that Besel is not alone. It is part of a divided city, sharing its geographical identity with Ul Qoma, not along a single divide, but with the two cities sharing space, overlapping, with some areas belonging to one or the other and some being part of both, separate not by space or walls, but by a state of mind. As the case crosses the boundary of perception, Borlu must cope with the law of two cities, and the Breach between them.
This is a book that demands the reader buy into a pretty odd conceptual device, and one that could only really work in literature. To try to convey the separation between Besel and Ul Qoma visually would be at best problematic, at worst silly. In writing, however, out works, and the book approaches the question mostly in terms of the mindset of the residents of the city and the city. If nothing else, I can say without fear of contradiction that it is a book with a very new idea.
The concepts of identity are explored, without taking the easy course of making it strongly about racial prejudice. While racism exists in the setting, the focus is on the social construction of reality and the nature of cultural constraint.
Borlu is a bit of a cipher, but no more so than most detectives, and his emotions are convincing, which makes him thing true. His partners, in the two cities, provide a good link to either side, and the strangeness of Breach is effective at representing something both human and alien.
I am considering investing in the kindle edition of Perdido Street Station.
i've read most of Mievilles books, and The City and The City is possibly the one that, for me, strayed the closest to the edge of falling off the cliff into a morass of being too clever for its own good. As it was, I think he gets away with it, although I suspect that underneath the conceptual guff is a fairly standard episode of Wallander...
ReplyDeleteEmbassytown is fairly slim, as i recall.