I recently read a very intriguing book – The City & The City by China Mieville, published by Del Rey/Ballantine Books – which unfortunately I cannot freely recommend.
Basic premise: two physical cities occupy the same location, but due to reasons lost in the past the citizens of each city are ‘unable’ to see the other city. When a crime is committed that breaches that boundary between cities, our hero, Inspector Tyador Borlú, not only solves the crime, but also explores, at great cost to himself, what the actual boundary is and what it really means to breach that boundary.
This is a book about perceptions, about voluntary blindness, about what happens when we choose to create our own reality. It also explores the idea of us vs. them, and what happens when the boundaries separating us & them are breached. In recent months the Lord has had me meditating on perception vs. reality; this book was timely in prodding along my reluctant journey in that direction. It also provoked several great discussions with my dh about the roles – both legitimate and destructive – that boundaries serve in our lives.
My reservation in actually recommending The City and The City is due to Mieville’s extreme use of gratuitous swearing. Neither the author nor the characters are believers, and the book revolves around the seamy side of the crime world, so some swearing would perhaps not be unexpected. Because Mieville’s curse words of choice do not include taking the Lord’s name in vain (something I just can’t stomach!), I was able to gloss over the liberal cursing as I read. However, I deeply regret the excessive swearing, as it renders an intriguing and possibly valuable book into a near miss.
4 comments:
I am curious, what separates the two cities? What is the actual boundary?
There is no physical boundary. The cities are actually intertwined; some neighbourhoods are one city, some are the other, but some are a mixture of both, with neighbouring houses belonging to opposing cities. The boundary is simply a blurring of reality - an 'unseeing', if you will. Citizens from both cities pass on the sidewalks, without acknowledging or even really seeing each other. In a very real sense, the other does not exist.
And it is that element of voluntary blindness that stirs such questioning of MY reality. What do I deny the existence of, by choosing to pretend it is not? Does that in truth cause it to not be? In a practical realm, my children have been grappling with the difference between forgiving and forgetting. If I say, "that's ok" and then pretend the offense never happened, have I forgiven? If I forgive, and then try to forget something because it stirs up too many unpleasant feelings, have I truly forgiven, or am I just creating a new reality for myself?
I have been on the receiving end of 'blindness'; I have been looked through as though I am a vapour. Devastating. Have I ever done that to another? God forgive me if I have....
As I was reading your description of boundaries in the book, I thought it most intriguing. When you spoke of forgiving and forgetting and the seeming incompatibility, or rather the unexcusability.. one of he other.. or maybe it is their mutual exclusivity...incompatibility...
anyhow, I could relate, I knew what you meant... I wonder how that kind of thing works too. The verse "love covers a multitude of sin" came to my mind.
God's kingdom, in a way, is a whole new reality
Often a seemingly peculiar way of seeing things, even the bad things, things we need to forgive and/or forget.
This leads me to ask another question: I am curious, "What was the crime in the book?" .. if it doesn't give away the plot too much...
The crime was a murder, with a body from one city 'breaching' the boundary and appearing in the other city. And, no - it doesn't give away the plot. We discover that in the first few pages... :-)
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