This one's long overdue, but oh well.
I've finished reading The City and the City a while back, and was really impressed, though it resonated mostly on an intellectual, rather than emotional level. Which was either an inevitable side effect of the way it was constructed, or indeed the whole point of the book. It starts out with a pretty fantastic premise, and then, as the plot develops, the mysticism is gradually, almost imperceptibly chipped away. When you reach the final act, there's almost a sense of disapointment in how... realistic the entire affair has become, but still - there's never a big reveal, any sort of "Ha-hah! And in reality, this is what's been going on". It's still an evolution, and the best part is that things are not revealed as being different than previously described - they're instead simply being described in ever greater detail. The book doesn't change its course, it's the reader who is forced to gradually abandon his overblown preconceptions.
Another cool thing is that the mercurial aspect of the twin cities is carried through the entire novel. At first I felt this itch at the back of my brain, because I couldn't quite place the city on the map. But with time (and information), it turned into another kind of frustration - one born out of being unable to visualize the actual layout of the cities - the way they intersected, and the way their boundaries worked (or didn't).
But the best part, at least for me, was that once I resigned myself to the tedium of truth, everything clicked into place. Again - there's no twist. It's just that everything could be now interpreted differently, in retrospect. And you could actually come to the conclusion that there were absolutely no supernatural elements to the story whatsoever. You didn't have to, but the door was at least half-open. And I absolutely adore such stories, to the point where I cooked up a ridiculously convoluted theory* about The Prestige where you could completely dismiss the Tesla part of the plot. It's also why I really love Like Minds, which I have to admit is a middling film at best.
And now I've moved on to Lords of the Horizons which I was really disapointed with for the first 10 pages, and now can't seem to put down for even a moment. So much hilarious Ottoman trivia!
* unfortunately, it collapsed under its own weight; still like the movie though
I've finished reading The City and the City a while back, and was really impressed, though it resonated mostly on an intellectual, rather than emotional level. Which was either an inevitable side effect of the way it was constructed, or indeed the whole point of the book. It starts out with a pretty fantastic premise, and then, as the plot develops, the mysticism is gradually, almost imperceptibly chipped away. When you reach the final act, there's almost a sense of disapointment in how... realistic the entire affair has become, but still - there's never a big reveal, any sort of "Ha-hah! And in reality, this is what's been going on". It's still an evolution, and the best part is that things are not revealed as being different than previously described - they're instead simply being described in ever greater detail. The book doesn't change its course, it's the reader who is forced to gradually abandon his overblown preconceptions.
Another cool thing is that the mercurial aspect of the twin cities is carried through the entire novel. At first I felt this itch at the back of my brain, because I couldn't quite place the city on the map. But with time (and information), it turned into another kind of frustration - one born out of being unable to visualize the actual layout of the cities - the way they intersected, and the way their boundaries worked (or didn't).
But the best part, at least for me, was that once I resigned myself to the tedium of truth, everything clicked into place. Again - there's no twist. It's just that everything could be now interpreted differently, in retrospect. And you could actually come to the conclusion that there were absolutely no supernatural elements to the story whatsoever. You didn't have to, but the door was at least half-open. And I absolutely adore such stories, to the point where I cooked up a ridiculously convoluted theory* about The Prestige where you could completely dismiss the Tesla part of the plot. It's also why I really love Like Minds, which I have to admit is a middling film at best.
And now I've moved on to Lords of the Horizons which I was really disapointed with for the first 10 pages, and now can't seem to put down for even a moment. So much hilarious Ottoman trivia!
* unfortunately, it collapsed under its own weight; still like the movie though
1 comment:
I've just bought polish edition thanks :-)
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