The City & The City

One of the rare books that Nigel and I both really liked. He likes sci-fi and I like crime novels, and this was both. We listened to it as we drove across the country and thought the narrator was excellent, too.

Second book by the author I quit after barely starting. His prose is definitely not my style. It only took a few seconds to known I would hate this book.

Beszel

Read 0:48/10:15 8%

This is a different kind of fantasy, a fantasy of dislocation and uncertainty, set in a near-contemporary time, in a place where two cities from different countries simultaneously occupy the same space (or do they?) and the events that bring the paradox into sharp relief and test the mettle of a police inspector and his ability to deal with the individuals who police the rule about not acknowledging one city while living in the other. Absolutely fascinating.

60 days later... fucking finally! I don't remember taking this long to read Perdido Street Station—but I don't know who to blame for it (me, probably; it's always my fault).

The City & The City is brilliant. China Miéville is brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that I have no idea how to rate this book. I'm fairly tempted to give this a 4-star rating, but it would be unfair. It's not the novel's fault I took this long to read it. Five stars it is then, I think? Everything so neatly done, the writing is impeccable—it takes us exactly where it wants us to be, and it's amazing. As an aspiring author myself, China Miéville is both inspiring and terrifying.

The concept of The City & the City is the hero of this novel. Two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma occupy the same physical space but are treated as two different geographical areas. Sometimes citizens of one city will see buildings, residents, events occurring in the other city but they are trained to ignore it. In fact, it is illegal to acknowledge or interact with anything from the other city.

Breaking this law is known as “breach.” There is an entire branch of law devoted to arresting and retraining citizens that commit this “crime.” That was the most fascinating part of The City & the City. It seems to me that making it illegal to acknowledge what your senses tell you is a kind of mental fascism, a 1984-ish thought police style of intellectual tyranny. The residents of the city have been indoctrinated to put up with ignoring or denying reality.

It took quite a while for me to get oriented as to what the arrangement of the two cities was and what it meant. In fact, if you read the book without reading the blurb on the back or any other synopsis material, you might be lost for several chapters.

The story is a murder mystery that incorporates the concept: a murder takes place in one city and the body is found in the other. However, the plot isn't that interesting as it plays out. It's surprisingly predictable coming from the mind of the writer who created such a wonderful premise. There aren't any especially memorable characters, even the lead investigator Borlu, isn't that well defined.

3.5

The author withholds a lot of information from the reader (information the pov character knows) so you have to “figure out” what's going on. Not a fan. But great world building and a decent plot.

Really loved this book. Mieville's take on a detective story was definitely interesting and brought something new to the table.

My only issue was the intentionally vague talk about Breach or how the cities worked early on. It detracted from the story and the mystery quite a bit because it was difficult to visualize or understand.

It can be an effective device and I understand why he did it, I just don't think it worked that well here.

I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about this book. There was so much going on, and so much left to our own interpretation (not necessarily a bad thing) that even by the end of the book I felt like I was swimming in its own ideas.Definitely worth a read if you're a fan of [a:China Miéville 33918 China Miéville http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1243988363p2/33918.jpg], but I would more highly recommend [b:Perdido Street Station 2. Der Weber 71268 Perdido Street Station 2. Der Weber China Miéville http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170757666s/71268.jpg 10823949] over [b:The City & The City 4703581 The City & The City China Miéville http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266894982s/4703581.jpg 4767909].

I seem to really love books about Cities and looking back at my “read” list they tend to live firmly in the Fantasy category, from [b:Neverwhere 14497 Neverwhere (London Below, #1) Neil Gaiman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348747943l/14497.SX50.jpg 16534] to [b:The City We Became 42074525 The City We Became (Great Cities, #1) N.K. Jemisin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585327950l/42074525.SY75.jpg 54760675]. This book manages to superimpose two Cities on each other and blends a 1960's Berlin divided, with a sort of end of century Prague feel, with modern settings. It is a police procedural in structure but it is very imaginative and rich so that the “whodunnit” is not even really all that important. I think i will revisit this one in a few years

Strange and mundane, swirled together but never quite mixed. I'm almost disappointed that the strange elements weren't just a little more magical... but then the city (and the city) wouldn't be just so unique.

I want another story with Borlu but I feel like following him any further would only serve to spoil the wonder.

I'm not sure what I read, but I loved it. Was it fantasy, sci-fi, a detective story? A metaphor for class, for truth and fiction? Who cares, it's all good.

In my opinion, one of the most skillful uses of beginning in media res to build curiosity and epiphany as the reader slowly discovers elements of this world that all of the characters find too obvious to comment on.

China Mieville is the author when it comes to cities. I've found some of his other works tedious going because he puts so much love and adoration into his settings that he can't help but nudge the plot out of the way to show you his cool setting. Luckily, when it comes to The City & The City, Mieville had a brilliant idea: the detective novel provides a perfect frame for him to show off his city without it fighting for attention with his plot. Because there's a mystery to investigate, the details of the setting become critical to the plot, and can be properly showcased. Inspector Borlu is perfect for the job of tour guide – the archetypal detective, he neither truly inhabits his life, but clinically examines his surroundings, and his arms-length remove from the city sets up the theme nicely.Of course, where The City & The City shines is in the titular cities and there are (at least) three: Beszel: a prototypical Eastern European Olde Country; Ul Qoma: nouveau riche and glitzy; the combined physical reality that contains both, transposed on top of each other, not to mention Orciny – the mythical third city that lies in the interstitial space. The idea is just so cool. And then the more I thought about it, the more I reflect on life, and that, my friends, is what makes a good book into a great book. The central conceit is this: Ul Qoma and Beszel occupy the same space. I at first thought that this requires science fiction or fantasy, but Mieville employs neither here. Instead, he simply invents a political system where Ul Qoma and Beszel refuse to notice each other, even when physically located in the same place. They speak different languages, follow different rules and have different cultures. This was a stretch for me at first – more of a stretch than imagining a magical system, to be honest. But then I started thinking of real-life split cities, like Jerusalem, where adjoining spaces belong to different governing bodies, speak different languages and in general refuse to acknowledge each other (even though in the book this exact example is brought up and belittled). And then I started thinking more generally and more close to home: I live in a neighborhood that walks the fine line between diversity and gentrification. Could it not be said that there are the neighbors, whether I know them or not, that I acknowledge more – that, because I see similarity in the way they dress, talk and hold themselves, I am more likely to make small talk? When I talk about buying a house, there are blocks – right next to highly desirable blocks – where I would never live, because of the style of the houses and the presumed personalities of the neighbors (and the imaginary line dividing real people from the loathed undergrads.) And then I reflect on the recent political events and it's hard to argue that the same laws apply to everyone in the city, even in one physical location. So I spent a lot of time thinking about what these imaginary-but-real divisions in my life are, and what to do about them, since there is no all-powerful Breach in real life.This ability to write a book that is intriguing prima facie, but that has used speculative fiction to explore deeper truths about real life is the exact reason that I read speculative fiction. The back of my copy of the City and The City compares it to Orwell and Kafka, but honestly, I think it transcends that and can only be compared to the true master: [a:Ursula K. Le Guin 874602 Ursula K. Le Guin https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1244291425p2/874602.jpg]. And to say it holds up well in the comparison is a compliment of the highest order.

With nearly 5,000 reviews for this book on goodreads, I'm going to follow my usual policy for popular books and not say very much; I doubt that I have anything worthwhile to add. I will say, however, that I, personally, greatly enjoyed this book, which I found to be a decent crime/political mystery wrapped in a fascinating and well-realised setting. The other books of Miéville's that I've read have been much longer, but this book shows that he can work with shorter - and less overtly fantastic - material as well.

Best of Mieville so far. The police procedural plot is predictable, but the concept of divided city is one of the best ideas I've ever read in sci-fi. Scale of Mieville's imagination is a bit scary sometimes.

Well, well, well - my first China Miéville novel and I'm smitten! This was some seriously good writing.

I started out with the Audible version and started it five or six times. Each time, at about 90 minutes, I realised that I didn't really get what was going on; my concentration had lapsed. This was going to be one of those books that I'd actually have to read, wasn't it?

Turns out yes, it was. Just that. The last time this happened was with Catch 22, and reading that with my eyes paid off big time.

Okay, used paperback bought from Amazon. There's something about used paperbacks that I really love: the smell of the aged paper, the creases, it all adds to the experience.

The premise of the novel I found super intriguing. I hadn't picked up on some of the literary cues about the second city when listening, but did so when reading. ‘Riiight, I see what's going on here'. And the whole Breach thing - so redolent of the KGB in Stalinist Russia.

It's a concept and a story that will stay in my mind for a while I'm quite sure. I gave it four stars rather than five because the the last 60 or so pages felt a little rushed and James Bondy, but only a little.

Just wrapped it up. It's a very good detective novel though I think it's political allegory sort of falls apart by the end (or at least to the wayside). Lands in a disappointing ambiguity about the role of police and borders, seeing them as both fully artificial and hostile but also necessary because the alternative is total anarchy. I maybe expected something a bit more given Mielville's clear interest in leftist politics, but it was really closer to a Dan Brown novel but where the conspiracy is actually just a sad man with something to prove.

Though it started off a bit slow, and I got confused many times during this story, I was still enraptured by the shifting narratives, told by one person, and the many mechanisms that were invented, mentioned, or simply existed because it did. I'm sure once if I were to read through this twice, more things would be understandable. Yet, I think I'll just let it be a mystery. It is way more fun that way.

Oh boy. Going into this, all I knew about the premise of this story was that it was about two cities, Besźel and Ul Qoma, somehow coexisting in the same geographical space. Having assumed that this would be caused by some supernatural phenomenon, I was shocked to find out within the first 100 pages that the bifurcation between the cities was purely psychological, that citizens of Besźel and Ul Qoma were trained from birth to systematically ignore each other under penalty of severe punishment. On its face, this serves as a pretty powerful albeit obvious metaphor for the class divides in modern urban life. Unfortunately, from this point on it becomes clear that China Miéville is more interested in meticulous “worldbuilding” than he is in actually exploring the interesting thematic implications of this setting.

This “Emperor's New Clothes” society is completely preposterous, and the more Miéville fleshes out the history, politics and granular details of how people live their daily lives in Besźel and Ul Qoma, the less I'm able to take anything that happens in the novel seriously. This wouldn't even be a problem if the story was presented as a satire or with a decent helping of wit, but Miéville plays the whole thing almost entirely straight. Almost all the characters we follow are completely psychologically in thrall to the society's structure with very little acknowledgement of its absurdity. Moreover, even this would have been something I could accept if the detective story this world was built around wasn't so stale and predictable, populated with one-dimensional archetypes that come off as brainwashed drones. And if all that wasn't enough to sour me on this novel, I couldn't even get behind Miéville's prose - halting and stilted, with a sense that he's trying to cram as much information and qualification into every sentence as possible.

I've seen comparisons of this novel to Borges, but the Borges version of this would have been a 6-12 page short story with exactly enough information to understand the core concept and its thematic implications rather than a 300+ page slog in which I have to learn about the differences between Besźelian and Ul Qoman traffic laws. This novel is a great illustration of how overrated “worldbuilding” is as a literary device, even in genre fiction. All that lavish detail and none of it is remotely as moving or interesting as the simple fact of the novel's basic premise.

Perdido Street Station was such a momentous reading experience when I was younger. It was flawed, with its occasionally unconvincing characterization, the pacing, the occasional clunkiness of the dialogue, but the way the city lived, the atmosphere, elevated it above itself. The City & The City has a hell of a premise. It has the occasional sentence that makes me envious. Occasionally I feel for the characters. But on the whole, it is unconvincing. I don't buy it. I read a line and I think, you know, that feels forced, that feels written, something someone put in this character's mouth more than what the character would say. I don't buy it. I buy his architecture and his conceits, some of his turns of phrase, but not his characters or his plots.

I've seen interviews with China and he's such an insightful, articulate speaker who clearly has a tremendous amount to offer. I have Kraken on my shelf. It might be a bit before I get to it, but I will, and I'm going to be in it with the hope of being enraptured, because China so clearly has the capacity, somewhere, to be properly enrapturing.

This book, the first by Miéville that I have read, reached into my mind and my guts and grabbed me in a way few books have. I have found myself driving and walking around my own city and suddenly seized by a frisson of vertigo, of uncertainty as to where I was. While trying to turn left at a rather odd intersection, in a lane which (you would have to see it to know what I mean) has always felt neither here nor there, I had a brief moment of panic. All because of The City and the City.

I don't mind; I'm not complaining. It is quite marvelous to find myself thrust into such an amazing and mind-bending book. And besides, when the fireworks are over, I am still left looking at my own city in a wholly new way, seeing it divided–we don't see them, they don't see us–as indeed it is and has always been.

My first Miéville, definitely not my last. Consider myself hooked. A mysterious setup that feels like scifi and fantasy but reveals itself to be complicated human psychology. Enforced perception and un-perception, superposition of spaces into one two three jurisdictions. Painting a familiar picture of opposing cultures, living side by side, yet not living with each other.

The fifth star is missing because the end of the crime-story felt like a bit of a let-down after all the build-up. When complicated details have to be communicated out loud as confessions at gun-point, it feels a bit forced. But everything else, amazing!

Reading something from an author you have no idea about is always a gamble. And this author I found through a friend who read a different book that from reading to cover text seemed to be a bit too difficult to start off. So I searched and just bought this one and it was an amazing surprise.

Well written, very interesting story from the first page to the last. Not a pure detective story and not some pure fantasy stuff, but a really good mix of both that just hit right on the spot for me.

Highly recommended.

El primer libro que he leido de Mieville. La historia de estas dos cuidades, que habitan el mismo tiempo y espacio, pero que sus habitantes han sido condicionados a no reconocer a la otra y que derepente se ven conectadas por un asesinato, me tuvo fascinada por varios dias.

Me debo una segunda lectura de este libro para confirmar que, en efecto, la magia que experimente la primera vez, sigue ahi. Pero, mientras esa segunda lectura para refrescar memoria y para confirmar que en efecto, es una historia maravillosa, se lo recomiendo a cualquiera.

<3 detective novel set in the most ambiguous of spaces. imagine the doublethinking involved in ‘unseeing' a whole coexisting city. (what if we do this already?) thank you to everyone who recommended this one for #bookclub4m :)