.jpg "UK 1st Edition Cover")
Perdido
Street Station
By
China Miéville
Published
by Macmillan in 2000
Perdido
is Miéville's second novel. Perhaps foregrounding the general theme
of the setting, Perdido is Spanish for; lost, missing,
abandoned, astray, idle, irreparable, tainted. The world setting
itself needs some mentioning as it seems larger than the book can
contain, bursting with the writer's love and enthusiasm. It certainly
feels like something Miéville has spent a great deal of time
thinking about; the world is like a living breathing thing that goes on
after you've shut the book, countless stories seem to write
themselves as you read, thinking of half mentioned characters and
places and where it all might lead.
The
setting isn't the only strong point in the novel, the
characterisation of major and minor players is rich and engaging.
Also, a point that would't normally need to be made, but Miéville
can write believable female characters (although as a male perhaps I
should ask for a second opinion on that) something that cannot always
be said of his contemporaries. Quite often in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy
genre one tends to find the female characters as 2-d stereotypes or
fantasy figures, a favourite Sci-Fi author of mine, Iain M. Banks, is
particularly guilty of this. However, Miéville's female characters are
well-written and aren't pandering to anyone. Despite this there are
times were the dialogue just *clunks* and I think this is because
Miéville is enjoying himself too much with the language. I think
that sometimes it's a risk for an author to get too enamoured with
his project, with the setting, and so forth. However, this is a minor
quibble and, if I'm honest, it does fit with the Steampunkish
(pseudo-Dickensian cockney villain) theme. It's just a bit jarring on
occasion.
Another
note about the characterisation in the novel. The non-human
characters are especially vivid and understandable in terms of
culture and motive. Obviously their 'alien-ness' isn't played up
(like in a Sci-Fi dealing with first contact f.e.) because we are to
imagine this city (New Crobuzon) as a melting pot of species. Thus,
instead it feels like a description of outsider cultures being
ghettoised. One of the ideas that didn't work for me, and it's quite
a biggie as it's a plot hook, I'll try and describe this without
giving any spoilers, it's reification of creativity. That is, making
it have thinglyness, specifically as food, anyway, that's probably
too much already. Just to say, like some of the dialogue, it took me
right out of the book and into pondering. Not always a bad thing
perhaps, but it did grate with me.
Perdido
has some excellent ideas and a plot that really zips along, as well
as the superb characterisation, which makes us really care about what
happens to Isaac, Lin, and the others, but it doesn't quite get out
the description of genre fiction and become the literary equivalent
speculative fiction. However, amusingly, Miéville doesn't really fit
into a straight genre classification. Perdido
might be Sci-Fi and
Fantasy, because it's not quite 'Steampunk' either. Actually, I'm not
sure about the emphasis on science, because although a plot device
it's not a core concept of his story. It doesn't infiltrate all manner
of descriptions (i.e. Arthur C. Clarke's massive 'what-if?' science descriptions) in the novel, but the social aspect does. The
experimentation with ideas about how different cultures form the
social and political organisations is a key concept in the story, as is their
getting along together (or the failure therein). I'd therefore
suggest calling Miéville a writer of not science but of Social
Fantasy and place him
alongside Ursula Le Guin in terms of style. Albeit, at this stage of
only having read one of each of their books, lesser to her.
