I once read that Toni Morrison made it a point to read at least one detective novel a year. It was her feeling that detective novels taught her to write, to keep the plot moving forward and keep the reader interested. I didn’t know The City & The City was a detective novel when I first downloaded it, but if one were to classify this novel into a genre, it very much belongs alongside the work of Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, and, really, the work of Paul Auster, while also somehow straddling a line with the speculative fiction of Kurt Vonnegut and, as China Miéville intimates, Bruno Schulz.
So, that pretty much locates where I find this novel. For this blog, I want to look at just two things that Miéville is doing in The City & The City that are particularly well done: Chapter Endings and Raising the Stakes.
Let’s start with Chapter Endings.
Chapter Three ends with Borlú and Corwi looking at the body of a dead girl (they later find out is Mahalia Geary, an American involved in a “city between the city” and part of an archeological dig). The girl was dumped in a skateboard park and seemed to be covered in flakes of rust.
"Corwi sat, rather stiff, waiting for me to say something. All the rubbish had done was roll into the dead woman and rust her as if she too, were old iron."
What is this ending doing? Well, it’s being fucking brilliant is what it’s doing. In this quiet moment, circled around the first murder victim, Miéville finds a moment to show how the “rubbish” fails to conceal Mahalia. This small piece of information, showing the use of the “Chekov’s Gun” rule, will disappear and then reappear toward the end of the novel when the detective, Borlú, is piecing together Mahalia’s murder.
Chapter Five ends with a classic cliffhanger (withholding information). Corwi walks into Borlú’s office with more information about the girl that has been murdered.
"Our scribbled notes, her details, estimated and now others in red, no question marks hesitating them, the facts of her; below her various invented names, there her real one."
Obviously, her "real name is the “page turner end" to a chapter -- always a good trick for a writer to have up their sleeve. Here, Miéville ends with information about the victim that the Corwi and Borlú know, but that the reader does not: the real name of the victim. I found this stress of information to be a particularly effective way to end a chapter and keep the momentum moving forward into the next chapter.
And then when we talk about “raising the stakes” for your characters, Miéville is a wonderful example of this. First, he does this in the form of an anonymous caller. The stakes are raised for Borlú when he it becomes known that he is not dealing with just one murder victim. “But if Marya was... if she was killed, then some people I care about may not be safe. Including the one I care about most, my very own self."
The stakes are raised again in the following chapter. Borlú and Corwi head to a sketchy neighborhood to interview Drodin, a local thug. “‘She was into... No, she wasn’t into anything, she was obsessed. With Orciny’” (original emphasis). This mention of “Orciny” and how characters respond to this adds a sense of foreboding. As a reader, I don’t know what “Orciny” is, but I don’t have to. I know it’s very bad because of how Miéville has introduced this through dialogue. This introduction of new places, people and things unique to this world through dialogue is something Miéville does sneakily well.
Throughout the novel, Miéville continually raises the stakes and finds ways to end most chapters so that the reader is propelled into the next. However, Miéville is doing a ton of other very interesting things. I know I said I was going to mention just the two things, but I find myself needing to note Miéville’s use of language. Particularly the word, “fuggy.”
Fuggy is a cool word. So, take note of it and use it as often as possible.
If this were going to be a longer piece, I would also want to discuss the layering of place and the sort of ways in which he makes this unique “double” (triple?) city function and how this multifaceted city is an easy metaphor for how the Jews lived in ghettoes in Eastern and Central Europe as well as North Africa or maybe how it’s a metaphor for any place where two or more cultures are existing next to each other, (i.e. Israel and Gaza today) though not necessarily mingling with each other, or maybe how the past and the present sometimes coexist, but not really.
I also feel the need to state that I checked out the website that appears a few time in the novel: www.fracturedcity.org. I was disappointed to find that it redirects to www.randomhouse.com. I was hoping for some sort of city map or maybe a faux city directory or something. Basically, I was looking for another layer to this text that just doesn’t exist. Which is okay. There is a lot to unpack in The City & The City. It’s all still fuggy to me. Maybe I need more space to defug it.
So, that pretty much locates where I find this novel. For this blog, I want to look at just two things that Miéville is doing in The City & The City that are particularly well done: Chapter Endings and Raising the Stakes.
Let’s start with Chapter Endings.
Chapter Three ends with Borlú and Corwi looking at the body of a dead girl (they later find out is Mahalia Geary, an American involved in a “city between the city” and part of an archeological dig). The girl was dumped in a skateboard park and seemed to be covered in flakes of rust.
"Corwi sat, rather stiff, waiting for me to say something. All the rubbish had done was roll into the dead woman and rust her as if she too, were old iron."
What is this ending doing? Well, it’s being fucking brilliant is what it’s doing. In this quiet moment, circled around the first murder victim, Miéville finds a moment to show how the “rubbish” fails to conceal Mahalia. This small piece of information, showing the use of the “Chekov’s Gun” rule, will disappear and then reappear toward the end of the novel when the detective, Borlú, is piecing together Mahalia’s murder.
Chapter Five ends with a classic cliffhanger (withholding information). Corwi walks into Borlú’s office with more information about the girl that has been murdered.
"Our scribbled notes, her details, estimated and now others in red, no question marks hesitating them, the facts of her; below her various invented names, there her real one."
Obviously, her "real name is the “page turner end" to a chapter -- always a good trick for a writer to have up their sleeve. Here, Miéville ends with information about the victim that the Corwi and Borlú know, but that the reader does not: the real name of the victim. I found this stress of information to be a particularly effective way to end a chapter and keep the momentum moving forward into the next chapter.
And then when we talk about “raising the stakes” for your characters, Miéville is a wonderful example of this. First, he does this in the form of an anonymous caller. The stakes are raised for Borlú when he it becomes known that he is not dealing with just one murder victim. “But if Marya was... if she was killed, then some people I care about may not be safe. Including the one I care about most, my very own self."
The stakes are raised again in the following chapter. Borlú and Corwi head to a sketchy neighborhood to interview Drodin, a local thug. “‘She was into... No, she wasn’t into anything, she was obsessed. With Orciny’” (original emphasis). This mention of “Orciny” and how characters respond to this adds a sense of foreboding. As a reader, I don’t know what “Orciny” is, but I don’t have to. I know it’s very bad because of how Miéville has introduced this through dialogue. This introduction of new places, people and things unique to this world through dialogue is something Miéville does sneakily well.
Throughout the novel, Miéville continually raises the stakes and finds ways to end most chapters so that the reader is propelled into the next. However, Miéville is doing a ton of other very interesting things. I know I said I was going to mention just the two things, but I find myself needing to note Miéville’s use of language. Particularly the word, “fuggy.”
Fuggy is a cool word. So, take note of it and use it as often as possible.
If this were going to be a longer piece, I would also want to discuss the layering of place and the sort of ways in which he makes this unique “double” (triple?) city function and how this multifaceted city is an easy metaphor for how the Jews lived in ghettoes in Eastern and Central Europe as well as North Africa or maybe how it’s a metaphor for any place where two or more cultures are existing next to each other, (i.e. Israel and Gaza today) though not necessarily mingling with each other, or maybe how the past and the present sometimes coexist, but not really.
I also feel the need to state that I checked out the website that appears a few time in the novel: www.fracturedcity.org. I was disappointed to find that it redirects to www.randomhouse.com. I was hoping for some sort of city map or maybe a faux city directory or something. Basically, I was looking for another layer to this text that just doesn’t exist. Which is okay. There is a lot to unpack in The City & The City. It’s all still fuggy to me. Maybe I need more space to defug it.