Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

I thought I was the only one who could not appreciate the genius of China Mieville. I was ashamed to admit I couldn't get into Perdido Street Station, and that it might reflect poorly on my own intellect.

Also, the fans seem rabid...

SP Miller - this isn't directed specifically at you. It's just kind of my thoughts on the question/s you bring up in general.

Before I say anything, I will say this. I have not read the book in question. Nor have I read anything by China Mellville. I am, however, reading The Road.

So. Here we go. I enjoy a traditional story as much as anyone else.

However, the reason why literary, to me, is an exciting genre, is that often times, writers defy the rules, and defy them in ways that most genre writers would shy away from. Not because they can't write like that, but because they've been taught not to - taught that it does not sell, will not entertain, etc.

This kind of writing is harder to get into, admittedly. But I think it's harder because people are coming in with the WRONG expectations. Why does a novel need a plot? Why does a story need a main character? Questions like these are fascinating to contemplate, and whether they fail or not, I think authors should be commended for going beyond the formula, trying to transcend the boundaries that have been set on "the way we are supposed to write."

I will give you an example. The first time I read the short story "The Nose," by the great Russian writer, Gogol, I did not get it. I did not get it, and I did not like it. It was for a class on the Russian Modernists, and most of the previous work that we'd looked at had been very literary and very serious. And here is a story about a guy who loses his nose! I could not make head or tail of it. I had read nothing like it before. But then, I realized it wasn't supposed to make sense. I realized he was writing an absurd story. And upon rereading the story with this mentality, I loved it.

My point here is that a reader's expectations can have a dramatic impact on how he/she perceives the story. If you go into a book expecting conflict, tension, strong likeable characters from page one, then when a book fails to deliver, you are disappointed, and when you fail to adjust your expectations, when you cling to them, and the novel/story continues to fly in their face, it becomes more and more aggravating. So maybe the question is whether you are approaching it in the right way, and whether you might have enjoyed it more if you tried coming at it from a different angle.

You mention The Road so I will use that as an example. I have not finished reading it, but unless the ending is extraordinary, it will not make its way into my list of favorite books. It is a very good book - powerful, well written, and enjoyable. But as I said, it will probably never fall among my favorites.

With that said, when I look at the trailer for the movie, I feel like groaning. I feel like they are hollywoodizing it. I can see it now. Man shoots the guy who goes for the kid, and then they spend the rest of the movie running away from the dead dude's friends and ultimately there'll probably be some final showdown or some such nonsense. Granted, I don't know, maybe that makes it into the ending of the book.

But even if it does, the vast majority of THE ROAD wasn't about that at all. Not from what I've read, at least. It's not about action or gun fights or epic music playing in the background during a chase scene. It's about subtlety. You might say its kind of plotless. But my response would be, LIFE IS PLOTLESS. And that's what the book is trying to depict. Life in this apocalyptic world. Life, as a father and a son, both of whom would probably rather be dead than alive - keep going on and on... For what? Each other? To reach the coast? Who knows? Maybe it's fear of the black and formless oblivion that awaits that's keeping the father from blowing his son's head off and then following suit. And you know what? To me, that's all the plot this book needs. And if the movie makes conflict where there is none, makes a plot where there isn't one, then it might be a damned good movie, but it will be missing the point of McCarthy's story. That the plot isn't in the conflict between the man and some revenge driven gun-toting crazies. The real plot is the boy, the man, and the ruined world.

All I can say is, I don't think it's a bad thing when writers subvert form, break rules and conventions, and challenge us to adapt. Challenge us to read something different.

Talking about this reminds me of a great essay by Carole Maso titled "Rupture, Verge, and Precipice
Precipice, Verge, and Hurt Not."

Essay

I haven't read Perdido Street Station as yet, but I do remember when it came out. It was one of two SF/fantasy novels that year that everyone was talking up, the other one being Mary Gentle's Ash (a single volume in the UK, split into four in the US). This was for imaginative range, for ambition, for sheer size (PSS is about a quarter million words, Ash must be pushing 450k). I just knew that those two would be dominating the awards a year later - and they did.

I haven't read Ash yet either - I'm saving that for a long-haul flight. I bought them both in a W.H. Smiths deal - two fiction paperbacks for £10. Since Ash had a RRP of £9.99 that means I paid a penny for Perdido, the least I've ever paid for a new book.

Just finished this book a few weeks ago. Apparently it's very highly respected, but, well....it should tell you something that it took me six months to finish it.

And not just because this doorstopper was 700 pages.

I mean, it was interesting, but when a book goes for 200 pages and you have no idea what the main thrust of the plot is, that's pretty bad, am I right?

Mieville's prose was kind of sloppy, too, and could've used some tightening up, as well as cutting out all the various anecdotes about casinos and weather stations and such that contribute nothing to the plot.

And I still have no idea why it's called "Perdido Street Station" when the actual station has almost nothing to do with the story.

All in all, it just seemed very first draftish to me. No doubt China Mieville is very talented, but I hope the Scar (which is sitting on my bookshelf right now) is more polished than Perdido Street Station.

I thought it was Ok, except it creeped me out a bit.

I read it because I liked City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer, and Perdido Street Station came up as a 'if you liked that you'll like this' sort of thing.
But I didn't like it as much.

Still, it only took me a few days to read it. If I'd have kept it 6 months the library would have had something to say about it!

China is such a good name though.
I wouldn't mind being called China. It's exotic.

I really enjoyed the book. The prose was a little bit purple in places and it did occasionally drag, but I loved the imagination that went into building the world - it all felt very solid and real, and the different races populating the city were all very well thought out.

I think Mieville is guilty of infodumping, which slows the plot down somewhat. The Scar is a lot more streamlined - I assume he learned lessons from this book, which I think was his first full length novel.

I figured the book was called Perdido Street Station because the station was at the centre of New Crobuzon, and also formed the location for the "final showdown"

I don't think I'd call it a doorstopper. It's pretty standard length for fantasy, if not a bit shorter. The prose is very loquacious, to be sure, but he uses it skillfully. He describes those things that few do, he doesn't focus on beauty or majesty, he focuses on the grotesque, the things that we try to ignore yet inevitably far better catch our attention. He isn't the prettiest writer, nor is he the lightest, but there is a place for him in the fantasy market and I greatly respect his work. I prefer the third book, though, "Iron Council", because I appreciate the politics in it.

Oh, and @Lillie, he was actually named for Cockney rhyming slang. China plate = mate (or friend, if you're not up on your British slang). So his name means 'friend'.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/unsolving-city-interview-with-china.html

In which the author is interviewed about his fictional world building on a website involved with both real world building and narrative.

crunchyblanket said:

and also formed the location for the "final showdown"

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But it didn't....

They get to within sight of it, and then stop, while Isaac basically admits it was a feint for the Construct Council. Unless Mieville went very meta about how the title of the story is arbitrary and meaningless by making his title arbitrary and meaning, to symbolize the futileness of life or something.

Ophiucha said:

I don't think I'd call it a doorstopper. It's pretty standard length for fantasy, if not a bit shorter.

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Perhaps we don't have the same copy. Mine is the trade paperback, which is 710 pages and shaped like a brick.

I don't even know what to say to this thread. I thought Perdido was frickin brilliant.

n3onkn1ght said:

Perhaps we don't have the same copy. Mine is the trade paperback, which is 710 pages and shaped like a brick.

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Yeah, 710 pages in my copy, too. But it's a fantasy book. The Eye of the World is definitely over 800 pages, 720 pages for A Game of Thrones, about 680 for Name of the Wind, 1200 or so for Lord of the Rings, 740 or so for Sword of Shannara, 670 for Mistborn. I mean, three fourths of the books I read are fantasy or science fiction, so I suppose I am more used to it (and to be fair, I hate some of these beastly tomes), but given that it is a fantasy novel, it definitely doesn't stand out.

Ophiucha said:

Oh, and @Lillie, he was actually named for Cockney rhyming slang. China plate = mate (or friend, if you're not up on your British slang). So his name means 'friend'.

Click to expand...

I've only just seen this.
Thanks, I didn't know that. I'm not entirely conversant with cockney rhyming slang past the usual apples and pears stuff. Not my neck of the woods, I'm afraid.

Still a good name however he got it.

Since reading the book it's sort of been in my mind on and off. This thread put it back there, and it reminded me of something I thought when I first read it.

And you'll have to forgive me because I don't remember the names of the characters, it's been a couple of years since I read it.

So many bad things happened. So many lives were ruined in the course of that book, most of all the woman with the beetle head (and it was her fate was one of the things that creeped me out so much). Well, I got to thinking about it and it all came down to one event, and it's something we never even see, that we are only told about some way through the book. And that was the winged bloke who lost his wings raping the woman.

If he hadn't done that he wouldn't have lost his wings, so he wouldn't have gone to the city and asked the bloke to make him fly. Then he wouldn't have got all the beetles and stuff, the dream creature larvae wouldn't have been stolen and none of the terrible things would ever have happened.

I find my self thinking of that chain of events sometimes. Even now.