The City & the City by China Miéville

The City & the City has been on my to-read list for years now and I'm glad I finally read it. Right before we started this blog I read a few of Miéville's books and for the most part really enjoyed them. They're usually described as "weird fantasy" and are unlike anything else. So what I liked here was that we're handed a bit of a routine detective type story in a genuinely bizarre fantasy setting... but as the story progresses Miéville continually plays against reader expectations by showing that maybe this isn't a fantasy story in the sense that it could only happen in another reality.

The story starts out as a mystery novel in which Detective Borlu has to find the killer of a young murdered woman. The "fantasy" element here is that it takes place in the city of Beszel which takes up the same physical space as the city of Ul Qoma. They are two completely separate cities but they occupy much of  the same space. While in one city the citizens cannot acknowledge anything they see or hear that belongs to the other city. To do so would be a "breach" and is considered a very serious crime. The cities are so different that the citizens are able to learn to "unsee" those elements around them that aren't a part of their respective city. They are also afraid of the mysterious people of the Breach that will show up to apprehend anyone that commits a "breach". So what is it that actually separates the two cities? I can't really say without giving away spoilers.

The book works on several levels... first the detective story is pretty solid. As a fantasy novel it is different from anything else I've read. And the whole metaphor of citizens "unseeing" what is around them that isn't a part of "their" city  was thought provoking (especially as someone living in Los Angeles, where different sociological/economic groups live in the same space but pretty much in different worlds). I'll give this one an A. (Also, it mentions Harry Potter strangely enough.)

Mystery Book # 91 - The Chill by Ross Macdonald

The Chill is the eleventh book in the Lew Archer mystery series... but having not read the previous ten books in the series wasn't a problem since Lew Archer is the stereotypical private detective in the mold of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Macdonald's pulpy noir style isn't as sublimely ridiculous as Chandler's but it is still effective. The main thing here is a tightly constructed mystery where everything fits together perfectly in the end.

At the start it seems like this will be a missing persons case as Archer is hired to find a runaway bride. But within a few chapters the woman is found quite easily thanks to extremely knowledgeable witnesses... then there's a murder which may or may not have been committed by the woman.  Archer is on the case and we're introduced to quite a few suspects and a whole conspiracy involving previous deaths. In the second to last chapter it all starts coming together as the connections between all the characters are finally revealed. It is almost too much information to keep straight since there are so many characters here... but then on the third to last page the final huge detail is revealed and everything clicks in place beautifully as the last piece of the puzzle is put in place.

It may not be great literature and in time I'll probably have forgotten about most it, but I was entertained and the final reveal of the killer was quite shocking yet made perfect sense. A-

Book # 176 - Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Well it only took me two months, but I finally finished reading Infinite Jest. It will probably take another week or so for my brain to digest it a bit further. I'm not completely sure yet how I feel about the "ending" either. Brilliant or incredibly frustrating? I'll probably settle on both. For a book with a word count of 543,709 (we're talking War and Peace territory) you'd expect maybe some kind of resolution to the main plot points. But no... instead you've gotta read through the text again looking for little clues on how it is maybe resolved. Or look on the Internet to see people's theories on what happens next. And after reading these theories there are definitely clues throughout the book on what happens but I don't think quite enough to connect all the dots. I still have no idea where the "master" tape was... but the clues are convincing enough to let me accept that a certain character is the one to have first found it and distributed it... but again for that matter the book barely just hints at that conclusion. So yeah I don't know.

The bulk of the "story" revolves around two different locations in a slightly futuristic Boston. The first is the Enfield Tennis Academy where Hal Incandenza is a student whose parents founded the school. Of course there are a ton of other characters there and there is a lot of discussion about tennis, drugs and growing up. Next is the Ennet House, a recovery house for former drug users. The main character here is Don Gately, a reformed thief and addict that is now on the staff of the house. And yes there are a ton more characters that live here and we get several tragic back stories and endless discussions about drug and alcohol abuse. There's also another story line about a video called "Infinite Jest" that reduces the viewer to a state where all they can do is watch the video endlessly over and over again.

The end-notes are also worth mentioning. There are something like 380 of them. They take up 100 pages and are super tiny print. Some of the notes are 10 pages! Flipping back and forth in the text just makes the book even that much longer to get through. Also Frankenstein and The Brothers Karamazov are mentioned. I guess I have to give it an A. There's a passage somewhere in there (which I probably couldn't find again) about how some books are written so that the reader will question their own reading comprehension abilities but also question whether or not the author is actually putting in all the information that should be there. I'd say that's Wallace's way of saying not to worry about the story... there's so much other stuff here.