The City in The City
Call me an idiot – you won’t be the first – but it wasn’t until half way through China Mieville’s The City and The City that I realised I’d grown up in Beszel/Ul Qoma.
This was even more annoying because, for most of the (otherwise very pleasant) time spent reading the novel I’d been thinking to myself: “I’m really, really enjoying this, but I don’t believe that people would really behave like this.”
Here’s the basic premise. Beszel is a city in the near East. At first I had it pegged for somewhere near Istanbul/Constantinople but I think it must be further north and west. It doesn’t really matter, what matters is that Beszel is not alone. At some undetermined time in the distant past Beszel and another city, Ul Qoma, diverged from an ur-city (or transposed themselves across the same space). Beszel and Ul Qoma may share the same physical locality but they do not intermingle. They are kept sharply divided by custom and law – the people of each city steadfastly “unseeing” and “unhearing” their neighbours as they wander the same streets – preserving distinct fashions, permitted colours and different economic fortunes.
And where law and custom fail, there is “Breach” – the third power, hugging the shadows but enforcing the division of the two cities with an iron will and almost miraculous powers.
Now I didn’t literally grow up in Beszel or Ul Qoma – but I did grow up in a community almost as completely divided. As a boy I lived in a town that had streets that were entirely catholic and streets that were entirely protestant and no one crossed between them and, in those places that were “crosshatched” we eyed strangers and established “who” they were by subtle signals. And we shopped in different shops and ate in different restaurants and drank in different pubs.
And the separation couldn’t have been any more complete if the Breach had existed.
Suddenly all the behaviour of the residents of Beszel/Ul Qoma made perfect sense. Not only did I grasp “unseeing” – I realised I’d grown up practising it.
And then, of course, it clicked that there were cities like this all over the world. There were places like Belfast – the Middle East and the Balkans – anywhere where divided cultures and peoples rub together but remain apart.
And then it occurred to me that practically every city dweller practices some form of “unseeing” as we walk past the homeless in shop fronts, the drunks in the street, the gangs of roaming kids – we all practice the art of avoiding eye contact – of being aware of that which is there but at the same time we are busy wishing away.
So why did it take me so long to “click” -
Well, as fantastic creation as Beszel/Ul Qoma is, and it is a truly mind-bending city it is only the background for a story police procedural story that is so full of twists, turns and intrigue that (for the most part) would have stood up perfectly well had it been set in Belfast or Jerusalem rather than the fantasy.
I have to confess that, although I’ve started every one of China Mieville’s other novels, I’ve never managed to finish them. The Scar and Un Dun Lun and Perdido Street Station gaze down balefully at me from my bookshelves – each one with a bookmark somewhere between page 100 and 200 where my admiration for Mieville’s writing finally lost the struggle I was having with plots that didn’t grab me and characters I didn’t care about.
That’s absolutely not the case here. There’s still plenty of linguistic invention and Mieville’s obvious intelligence shines through on every page but it all works in the service of a much more accessible and (for me) entertaining experience than I’ve had with his other books.
The City in The City is a much shorter, more focussed book that Mieville’s other books and it seems to me better for it. Perhaps this is my natural bias against fantasy acting in post hoc justification of my preference for this book over others, but The City in The City but while Mieville’s other books have very definitely been fantasy, albeit atypical fantasy, this book felt much more science fictional – although quite how I’d define that I’m not entirely sure. True there’s no explanation for the divergence of the two cities but in the fine structure this feels like a plausible extrapolation rather than a work of pure imagination.
I don’t want to spoil the enjoyment of this book for anyone by going into the plot – but if you’ve never read Mieville before, I’d certainly recommend this as a jumping on point. It’s a fantastic book with a really satisfying denouement. I wouldn’t mind going back to either Beszel or Ul Qoma.
I completely agree. The previous books had their moments, but they’re ponderous, and the political creeps in a bit too much, and at points Mieville strains the patience of the reader all so he can show how clever he is. The City & the City manages to compress his strengths in to an excellent format without going the overly-meta-fictional way of Paul Auster.