rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2010-06-27 11:27 am
rachelmanija) wrote2010-06-27 11:27 am
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The City and the City, by China Mieville
I adore The Scar and Perdido Street Station for the gonzo worldbuilding, the overheated invention, the absolutely convincing details of their fascinating settings, the larger-than-life characters, and the sense of liveliness and fun that sits in odd tension with Mieville’s often determinedly-brutal treatment of his characters.
I don’t find Mieville more didactic than an awful lot of authors, but other readers often find him so-- largely because, I think, he’s promoting a point of view which jumps out because it’s out of the American mainstream, whereas books which push more US-mainstream values like “normalcy and happiness is one man and one woman getting together” or “social justice is achievable by individual effort” don’t appear didactic because those values are so ingrained into that mainstream that they become invisible as didacticism, no matter how hard the authors push them.* Your mileage may vary.
* I just realized that my point echoes a crucial element of the conceit of The City and the City. Well, it’s a very rich and interesting conceit, with multiple implications.
I seem to know more people who absolutely loathe Mieville’s work than like it, with the exception of Un Lun Dun, which up till now was the one book of his that I didn’t like. (Twee.) So this review is even more YMMV than usual.
The City and the City rests upon an absolutely marvelous conceit, which is not a surprise twist but becomes clear in general terms within about the first 20 pages. I mention this because most reviews treat it as a giant spoiler, which I think does the book a disservice. Nonetheless, YMMV, so I’m putting it under a cut. In my opinion, nothing under the cut is truly spoilery.
The novel is a police procedural told in a world-weary voice by a world-weary cop. The voice was a little inconsistent—it directly addressed readers who were unfamiliar with the setting, explicitly explaining how it worked, which led me to expect that there would be some in-story explanation of who those readers were supposed to be. There wasn’t. The cop sometimes uses British slang, which probably would have been less jarring if it was used more, in which case it would have become an invisible convention. Its occasional use startled me every time, considering that the manuscript was presumably translated from his own language. He also had a remarkably educated vocabulary, but only occasionally, so that too seemed inconsistent. (Or possibly “machicolation” is a much more common term than I realize.)
It is a heavily crosshatched street -- clutch by clutch of architecture broken by alterity, even in a few spots house by house. The local buildings are taller by a floor or three than the others, so Besz juts up semiregularly and the roofscape is almost a machicolation.
But those are all minor quibbles. My big problem with the book was that the voice, plot, and characters didn’t fit the absurdist/surrealist/satirical premise, which was like something out of Jorge Luis Borges or Thomas Pynchon, and begged for a similarly lush or gonzo style—the exact style, in fact, that Mieville is really good at. Instead, it’s deliberately flat and underplayed. The cop has few traits. Most of the characters have few traits. The two cities themselves are not very vivid or detailed compared to what I’ve seen Mieville do in other books. The conclusion is deliberately anticlimactic.
Subtlety is just not Mieville’s strong suit, and I say that in all fondness. This premise applied to the wild inventiveness of his New Crobuzon books, or even given an extravagant plot, characters, and voice—which I know he can do—in an otherwise realistic setting would have worked marvelously. As it is, the premise and its working-out is fabulous, and everything else is dull.
The two cities are co-existing in the same space. Not, although maybe you could read it that way, in any sort of cross-dimensional way—they are simply considered two cities because the inhabitants of each learn to “unsee” (ignore) the other, except when they formally cross the border. Of course this is completely unbelievable in any realistic sense, and is basically absurdism or surrealism, a thought-experiment or a metaphor externalized—as I wrote, I think using a relatively realistic mode for the rest of the book was an enormous mistake-- but if you accept it for the purposes of the book, it’s played out very convincingly and intriguingly.
I don’t find Mieville more didactic than an awful lot of authors, but other readers often find him so-- largely because, I think, he’s promoting a point of view which jumps out because it’s out of the American mainstream, whereas books which push more US-mainstream values like “normalcy and happiness is one man and one woman getting together” or “social justice is achievable by individual effort” don’t appear didactic because those values are so ingrained into that mainstream that they become invisible as didacticism, no matter how hard the authors push them.* Your mileage may vary.
* I just realized that my point echoes a crucial element of the conceit of The City and the City. Well, it’s a very rich and interesting conceit, with multiple implications.
I seem to know more people who absolutely loathe Mieville’s work than like it, with the exception of Un Lun Dun, which up till now was the one book of his that I didn’t like. (Twee.) So this review is even more YMMV than usual.
The City and the City rests upon an absolutely marvelous conceit, which is not a surprise twist but becomes clear in general terms within about the first 20 pages. I mention this because most reviews treat it as a giant spoiler, which I think does the book a disservice. Nonetheless, YMMV, so I’m putting it under a cut. In my opinion, nothing under the cut is truly spoilery.
The novel is a police procedural told in a world-weary voice by a world-weary cop. The voice was a little inconsistent—it directly addressed readers who were unfamiliar with the setting, explicitly explaining how it worked, which led me to expect that there would be some in-story explanation of who those readers were supposed to be. There wasn’t. The cop sometimes uses British slang, which probably would have been less jarring if it was used more, in which case it would have become an invisible convention. Its occasional use startled me every time, considering that the manuscript was presumably translated from his own language. He also had a remarkably educated vocabulary, but only occasionally, so that too seemed inconsistent. (Or possibly “machicolation” is a much more common term than I realize.)
It is a heavily crosshatched street -- clutch by clutch of architecture broken by alterity, even in a few spots house by house. The local buildings are taller by a floor or three than the others, so Besz juts up semiregularly and the roofscape is almost a machicolation.
But those are all minor quibbles. My big problem with the book was that the voice, plot, and characters didn’t fit the absurdist/surrealist/satirical premise, which was like something out of Jorge Luis Borges or Thomas Pynchon, and begged for a similarly lush or gonzo style—the exact style, in fact, that Mieville is really good at. Instead, it’s deliberately flat and underplayed. The cop has few traits. Most of the characters have few traits. The two cities themselves are not very vivid or detailed compared to what I’ve seen Mieville do in other books. The conclusion is deliberately anticlimactic.
Subtlety is just not Mieville’s strong suit, and I say that in all fondness. This premise applied to the wild inventiveness of his New Crobuzon books, or even given an extravagant plot, characters, and voice—which I know he can do—in an otherwise realistic setting would have worked marvelously. As it is, the premise and its working-out is fabulous, and everything else is dull.
The two cities are co-existing in the same space. Not, although maybe you could read it that way, in any sort of cross-dimensional way—they are simply considered two cities because the inhabitants of each learn to “unsee” (ignore) the other, except when they formally cross the border. Of course this is completely unbelievable in any realistic sense, and is basically absurdism or surrealism, a thought-experiment or a metaphor externalized—as I wrote, I think using a relatively realistic mode for the rest of the book was an enormous mistake-- but if you accept it for the purposes of the book, it’s played out very convincingly and intriguingly.
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I think you're probably right here. Miéville's lack of mercy towards his characters is one of the things I admire about him as a writer. That said, particularly in Perdido Street Station, I do remember there being a lot of sociological cant that sat oddly amongst the rest of the story--much like "machicolation"--which I think could have been pruned without detracting from the larger points. Though maybe that, and "machicolation", and the characters in TC&tC lacking traits are all intentional? I kind of actually suspect so, given the intentionality of everything else Miéville does in his books.
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The Iron Council was the one where I started skimming the political rants.
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no subject