ILF BOOK CLUB: Entry the First: The City & The City

[odontophobia]

Quick suggestion: can we have an ILF book club suggestions thread and a thread to discuss the current book? I want to read through the thread for suggestions, but I don't want to run into any spoilers when the discussions start since I don't have time for this one.

Should we start a new thread for each book and keep this the general ILF book club thread?

[MrNovember]

Quick suggestion: can we have an ILF book club suggestions thread and a thread to discuss the current book? I want to read through the thread for suggestions, but I don't want to run into any spoilers when the discussions start since I don't have time for this one.

Should we start a new thread for each book and keep this the general ILF book club thread?

If that works for people then that would be great

[D.o.S.]

First four chapters knocked out at the laundromat. So far so rad.

[popvulture]

Yeah I'm really enjoying the reread. DISCUSSIONS IMMINENT?

[odontophobia]

I'm really enjoying this book.

Spoiler edited for clarity.

SPOILER : show

i dig the the vibe where there is enough familiarity with the newness of it all but that there is something to make it feel similar enough to the world we know.
so there's this vibe where it feels fresh and unknown while maintaining some semblance of "i get it exactly."
definitely not a book to read while you're tired because you'll be required to go back and reread whatever you had read.

waiting on more comments from you before going any deeper in case people are a bit behind.

[Invisible Man]

Yeah haven't cracked it yet. Have some job apps due Monday and some other general CRITICAL NONSENSE to knock out stat.

[Invisible Man]

I'm really enjoying this book.

Spoiler edited for clarity.

SPOILER : show

i dig the the vibe where there is enough familiarity with the newness of it all but that there is something to make it feel similar enough to the world we know.
so there's this vibe where it feels fresh and unknown while maintaining some semblance of "i get it exactly."
definitely not a book to read while you're tired because you'll be required to go back and reread whatever you had read.

waiting on more comments from you before going any deeper in case people are a bit behind.

We're good to dive in--only have a week to work with. There's not much to give away in the first four chapters, anyway.

But yeah, I'm struck by that, too. Especially considering the familiarity of the procedural form, you can get away with more...seems that's one of the guilty pleasures of genre fiction (playing with tropes is allowed or encouraged because you're already writing within a recognizable framework).

I'm really curious to see if that gets subverted. I suspect it will, what with the big plot device of having two separate but coexistant spaces overlapping. Also hopeful that it turns out to be more of a critical narrative device than a political stance. If the purpose of the political/ideological/geographical split between cities exists to drum up some have/have not thread, for example, I'll be a little bummed.

[odontophobia]

yeah.

my wife really likes crime stuff but also loves weird stuff. i feel like this is often times like a combination of gritty crime television if we let it get murakami weird.

but his exists in a unique space, so far as I can tell this far into the book. it's not like it's straight noir. it's noir, again, so far as i can tell, in the context of magical realism. so there's the familiarity of being grounded in our reality while simultaneously being otherwordly. this book is 100% in my wheelhouse thusfar.

but yeah -- the familiarity of genre fiction, of noir, allows the use of the sad-sack detective who has some substance abuse issues and has a couple of lady friends -- that's the part that makes this book feel like cheers, everybody KNOWS it. that helps with the crosshatching and makes it a bit easier to swallow.

[gnomethrone]

I wish the little blurb on amazon hadn't given away so much. It would have been cool to be much more confused for these first chapters instead of just kinda waiting for the reveal. Still really enjoyable tho.

[chews khat]

[popvulture]

If the purpose of the political/ideological/geographical split between cities exists to drum up some have/have not thread, for example, I'll be a little bummed.

Not really, or not that I can remember. There's definitely a nod to Israel / Palestine, but for the most part the book just feels like an inventive take on Noir.

Re: the Amazon description giving a lot away, that really sucks—I loved being confused for the first several chapters and starting to understand the duality.

[PeteeBee]

Yeah I'm really enjoying the little glimpses across to the other side.

I found the cafe scene interesting, just thinking about how they have two completely separate societies who share space and interact on a practical level as they maintain stark distinctions at a sociopolitical level, as well as this other civilization that somehow also shares the space invisible to them. Like there is a main class, a group of people who are "other," and then another group who are unspeakably "other."

[odontophobia]

Yeah I'm really enjoying the little glimpses across to the other side.

I found the cafe scene interesting, just thinking about how they have two completely separate societies who share space and interact on a practical level as they maintain stark distinctions at a sociopolitical level, as well as this other civilization that somehow also shares the space invisible to them. Like there is a main class, a group of people who are "other," and then another group who are unspeakably "other."

is this post chapter 4 or am i dense?

note: didn't read the amazon blurb or the back of the book (i don't do that for this express reason).

just started chapter 5 today.

[PeteeBee]

I don't think so, unless I seriously misunderstood how the kindle works haha. I think I'm in the middle of chapter four still... it was just a brief scene when the investigator is putting up wanted posters. I'll look for a quote of what I'm talking about in like an hour.

edit: here is the quote I'm thinking of, it's in chapter two somewhere.
"A common form of establishment, for much of Besźel's history, had been the DöplirCaffë: one Muslim and one Jewish coffeehouse, rented side by side, each with its own counter and kitchen, halal and kosher, sharing a single name, sign and sprawl of tables, the dividing wall removed. Mixed groups would come, greet the two proprietors, sit together, separating on communitarian lines only long enough to order their permitted food from the relevant side, or ostentatiously from either and both in the case of freethinkers. Whether the DöplirCaffë was one establishment or two depended on who was asking: to a property tax collector, it was always one."

I think it just struck me because I've been trying to steer conversations in life towards examining who we consider "other" and how these groupings happen. I don't necessarily have a great thesis about this quote, but I thought it was interesting with the book hinging on these two overlapping cities/universes and the way they interact.

[odontophobia]

I don't think so, unless I seriously misunderstood how the kindle works haha. I think I'm in the middle of chapter four still... it was just a brief scene when the investigator is putting up wanted posters. I'll look for a quote of what I'm talking about in like an hour.

edit: here is the quote I'm thinking of, it's in chapter two somewhere.
"A common form of establishment, for much of Besźel's history, had been the DöplirCaffë: one Muslim and one Jewish coffeehouse, rented side by side, each with its own counter and kitchen, halal and kosher, sharing a single name, sign and sprawl of tables, the dividing wall removed. Mixed groups would come, greet the two proprietors, sit together, separating on communitarian lines only long enough to order their permitted food from the relevant side, or ostentatiously from either and both in the case of freethinkers. Whether the DöplirCaffë was one establishment or two depended on who was asking: to a property tax collector, it was always one."

I think it just struck me because I've been trying to steer conversations in life towards examining who we consider "other" and how these groupings happen. I don't necessarily have a great thesis about this quote, but I thought it was interesting with the book hinging on these two overlapping cities/universes and the way they interact.

oh oh oh. yeah yeah. i remember that now. sorry, just confused myself as to what you were talking about.

I do love the last line about the property tax collector.

[Invisible Man]

And that's sort of what I meant in an earlier post--I hope the book is clever about having two locations and doesn't pit them against one another in really obvious ways. If PTB wants some critique of otherness (and it seems like it's definitely there, or at least on its way), I hope it has something to do with 'seeing' or language or some low-level mysticism instead of straight-up class warfare.

Pretty interested, too, to get more descriptions of crosshatched areas. Not for nothing the Mieville writes playing in those spaces in terms of a kids' game. Id bet that every one of us played something similar (how far will you go to transgress X boundary). If this becomes a story of liminal spaces or thresholds...well, the interesting part of those is usually the act of passing through (think about how satisfying it is to get onto platform whatever or Diagon Alley in Harry Potter's world). So I'm interested to see who gets through, and why, and what those transgressions have to do with 'transgressive crime' like the murder that's driving things along.