Laith
Book Club for March __________
It's not often that I run across a book for which I can provide a definitive litmus test, but this is one of them. The City & the City lives and dies by its premise, and it's fascinating: There exist two side-by-side city states, Beszel and Ul Qoma, their borders overlap significantly. We're talking adjacent buildings that are in separate cities, even the individual floors of some of those buildings and the streets outside crosshatched between them. Their separation is achieved by social conditioning; the citizens of both cities are taught to ignore the other, to unsee their neighbors and the foreign city they live in. In such a place, what would happen when a murder is committed in one city and the body is dumped and discovered in the other?
If I've got you asking questions like, "how does that work?", "how is that enforceable?", you'll really enjoy where this book goes. Which is great news for me, because this work is otherwise difficult to categorize; there are fantasy and SF elements, but simultaneously it's a grounded speculative crime story. It's difficult to describe, but one of the big strengths of the book is in how Miéville blends the fantastical elements to complement reality. A city where you have to ignore half the people living in it seems like an impossibility at first, but as that reality is illustrated you cannot help but to see the parallels in modern urban living, to think about the unhoused and mentally ill that ride with us on public transit, who we walk past on the street with a similar sense of unseeing.
The book is at its best when it's being symbolic, when it's alluding to the absurdities of our own reality; unfortunately, these moments peter out as the novel goes on. They often come early on, as Miéville is describing the cities without revealing the concept of unseeing. The reveal of the crosshatching and the following exposition were the pinnacle of the book for me. Miéville explores exactly the kinds of things that I wanted to be explored, he shows how it all works, right down to the traffic codes.
As it goes on, the sense of place and the mystery of the setting are subsumed by the murder plot and the surrounding conspiracy. You'll notice that I haven't given up the details for it, and that's a purposeful omission, it's not hard to grasp and not interesting to solve. In fact, the novel ends on its weakest note, with the focus entirely fixed on catching the murderer; I found this subplot mechanical and predictable, the interest in developing the world undercutting the pace and coherence of the investigation.
Miéville managed to tickle the lawyer part of my brain, the part that loves a nice jurisdictional dispute and has been reprogrammed to turn everything into an IRAC. I blanket recommend this to my legal compatriots for one reason alone, it's such an interesting thought experiment. The setting is more than enough reason to read this, and despite my complaints the murder mystery is competent, just a little boring and predictable.
Book Club for March __________
It's not often that I run across a book for which I can provide a definitive litmus test, but this is one of them. The City & the City lives and dies by its premise, and it's fascinating: There exist two side-by-side city states, Beszel and Ul Qoma, their borders overlap significantly. We're talking adjacent buildings that are in separate cities, even the individual floors of some of those buildings and the streets outside crosshatched between them. Their separation is achieved by social conditioning; the citizens of both cities are taught to ignore the other, to unsee their neighbors and the foreign city they live in. In such a place, what would happen when a murder is committed in one city and the body is dumped and discovered in the other?
If I've got you asking questions like, "how does that work?", "how is that enforceable?", you'll really enjoy where this book goes. Which is great news for me, because this work is otherwise difficult to categorize; there are fantasy and SF elements, but simultaneously it's a grounded speculative crime story. It's difficult to describe, but one of the big strengths of the book is in how Miéville blends the fantastical elements to complement reality. A city where you have to ignore half the people living in it seems like an impossibility at first, but as that reality is illustrated you cannot help but to see the parallels in modern urban living, to think about the unhoused and mentally ill that ride with us on public transit, who we walk past on the street with a similar sense of unseeing.
The book is at its best when it's being symbolic, when it's alluding to the absurdities of our own reality; unfortunately, these moments peter out as the novel goes on. They often come early on, as Miéville is describing the cities without revealing the concept of unseeing. The reveal of the crosshatching and the following exposition were the pinnacle of the book for me. Miéville explores exactly the kinds of things that I wanted to be explored, he shows how it all works, right down to the traffic codes.
As it goes on, the sense of place and the mystery of the setting are subsumed by the murder plot and the surrounding conspiracy. You'll notice that I haven't given up the details for it, and that's a purposeful omission, it's not hard to grasp and not interesting to solve. In fact, the novel ends on its weakest note, with the focus entirely fixed on catching the murderer; I found this subplot mechanical and predictable, the interest in developing the world undercutting the pace and coherence of the investigation.
Miéville managed to tickle the lawyer part of my brain, the part that loves a nice jurisdictional dispute and has been reprogrammed to turn everything into an IRAC. I blanket recommend this to my legal compatriots for one reason alone, it's such an interesting thought experiment. The setting is more than enough reason to read this, and despite my complaints the murder mystery is competent, just a little boring and predictable.