Review: The City and the City by China Miéville (2009)

Besźel and Ul Qoma are two European cities with a unique geographic rivalry: physically, they occupy the same piece of land, the same dot on the map. Yet theirs is a relationship so ancient and convoluted that the people of either city cannot acknowledge the presence of the other right next door. Next to one Besź building can stand an Ul Qoman one, and two neighbors from cities apart may brush elbows, but neither will acknowledge it. Through a trained process of "unseeing" and "unthinking" the neighborhood, animosity and politics keep the people separate. In the middle of it all is Breach, a deadly secret police that exacts immediate vengeance on anyone who violates this doctrine. But when the body of a young woman is found in Besźel, and Police Inspector Tyador Borlú deduces that she came from Besź, he stumbles across a power struggle between the millions of indoctrinated citizens and forces that want to separate, unite, or destroy them all.

To call this book a cross between 1984 and a gritty detective novel would only get you so far. There's a lot going on in this story, and Miéville doesn't focus on what you might expect. That's his greatest strength, in my opinion: he layers the fictional setting smoothly and continuously across the background, so that you don't lose sight of the main characters. After all, it's not just an allegory, but also a story.

His focus on the present moment and space, while in perfect keeping with the theme of the novel, has its advantages and disadvantages. In spite of my better sense, I found myself wanting to know some more about Borlú's past, which is indicated to have some depth to it, but Miéville only plays over the surface of it. Likewise, the limited, superficial interactions of all the characters is, while intentional, disheartening. If you're more pessimistic than I, count this as a point for realism. But if you want an uplifting or fulfilling novel, look elsewhere.

However, these are only limited drawbacks. All the unique aspects of this book, the way it treats mass thought patterns and physical geography, are brilliant. If you've ever read Pierce Lewis on landscape, consider putting these two together. Landscape, says Lewis, consists not only of hills and rivers, but literally of everything. Without reducing everything to a simple feature of the world, we can therefore say that the physical patterns that surround us are as much projected outward as they are internalized, and we will never fully recognize how profoundly they affect us. A tree is as much a part of this total landscape as is your neighbor's garden gnome or your neighbor herself. This is the science of judging things at first sight, which will never go out of style.

And there you have The City and the City, an exercise in taking a second look at the world. I'm sure there are things I "unsee" in the way Borlú "unsees" that foreign country, Ul Qoma; you may find some, too. Just don't expect it to work out neatly or comfortably.