LitPicks - April '10

Urban Mysterioso: Cities lend themselves to the mysterious—their enormity, anonymity, and teeming diversity make them ideal settings for surrealist novels. Authors tinker with time and space to create mystery and intrigue—as these works so wonderfully show.

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works




When You Reach Me
Rebecca Stead, 2009
208 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Here's another young adult novel that makes the leap to over to adult fiction. (See The Book Thief and The Magician's Elephant.) Rebecca Stead has taken a realistic story of school-age friendships, woven it into a mystery, and wrapped it around fantasy. It's a delightful tale for any age.

Precocious young Miranda (are child heroines ever not precocious?) lives with her single mother in Manhattan. Her favorite book, which she reads obsessively is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. It is L'Engle's subject of time travel that informs this story. Even Miranda's knot-tying hobby echoes the twisting and warping of time itself.

Miranda's mother is invited to appear on a TV quiz show, her best friend is pummeled by a school bully, and a homeless man on the corner makes walking to and from school a scary transaction. In the midst of all this, mysterious notes start appearing in secretive places, suggesting an intimate knowledge of Miranda's life—including certain events before they happen.

By the end, Stead pulls together the multiple plot strands to everyone's surprise and enlighten-ment. It all seems simple enough.

But the story's solution hangs on the possibility of time travel—and that exploration provides a layer of sophistication that's mind-bending and fun. To travel back in time, for example, means you would arrive before you leave. Can you get your head around that one? Well, Miranda does ... finally.

I love this book ... and traveling forward in time, I see lively book club discussions about time and time-travel, parenting and friendship.

See our LitLovers Reading Guide for When You Reach Me. . . .

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The City and the City
China Mieville, 2009
400 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
One of the strangest, most intriguing books of 2009. Also, one of the most acclaimed. Although rooted in realism, The City and the City manages to skirt fantasy without slipping into the genre. It's devilishly clever—and a compelling read.

What begins as a typical police procedural—a murder investigation of a young woman—evolves into a surreal psychological, political thriller. Beszel and Ul Qoma—two separate cities somewhere in the Balkans—exist not merely side-by-side, but within, around, and on top of one another. Yet neither city recognizes the other.

The citizens of both "unsee" those of the other city, even though they pass one another on the streets...and even though their buildings sit "grosstopically" beside one another. An entire vocabulary enables citizens to keep it all sorted out—from "unseen" and "grosstopically," to "cross-hatch" and "breach."

Complicating the investigation is the fact that the woman, whose body is found in Beszel, turns out to be from Ul Qoma. Besz Inspector Tyador Borlu must conduct his investigation in both cities—a crossing-over that is physical and psychological. Borlu must now "see" what he has always been prohibited from seeing...and "unsee" all that he has known before. What he uncovers is the possibility of yet a third city, one that exists secretly in the cracks between the other two.

It is a strange and wonderful mystery, the fantastical without fantasy. Its theme of "the other" has particular relevance to real world divisiveness—in the Balkans, or the city of Jerusalem, or wherever ethnic and cultural hostility exists. Reading TC&TC makes one see the absurdity of hate.

Be sure to see our Reading Guide The City and the City.

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To be determined . . .

The Quincunx
Charles Palliser, 1989
788 pp

By Molly Lundquist
I'm taking a chance here. First, The Quincunx is not a true "classic," in terms of age. Second, it's long (800 pages)...at times overly complicated...and other times downright tiresome.

But it's a rare reviewer who would tell you to stay away from it. You will get sucked in...you will lose sleep...you will skip meals...you will miss work and ignore your family. You will be depraved.

Heavily influenced by Charles Dickens, Palliser uses every trick in Dickens' books—even appropriating the great author's middle name for his hero—to create his brilliant, imaginative novel. Palliser out Dickens Dickens.

Set in the 19th century, The Quincunx is a mystery. The story follows the fortunes—or lack thereof —of young John Mellamphy as he seeks to restore himself and his mother to their rightful inheritance. Threatened by mysterious enemies, mother and son flee to London and there begin a downward spiral into poverty. This is Dickens' London, and Palliser, building on 12 years of research, paints a vivid portrait—from speech patterns and apparel to sewer tunnels and fog.

London's Byzantine nature reflects the mystery at the heart of the story—a twisted puzzle that John struggles to make sense of. Betrayal follows betrayal, one villain more unsavory than the last. Who are these people and why are they intent on his destruction?

Still, each disaster reveals more pieces of the puzzle, bringing John closer to a solution, to knowledge of his own identity and his rightful place in the world.

Warning: the ending is inconclusive. "Postmodern" as said in Lit Biz—it denies reader expectations and the desire for good to vanquish evil. Like John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman ... or Dickens' own Great Expectations, this book doesn't seek to satisfy our longing for happy endings; that would be easy. Instead, the book settles for possible outcomes, pretty much like life itself. Oh, well.

Happy ending or not, The Quincunx is a compulsive read. And if reading it for a book club, consider dividing it in two.

A Reading guide for The Quincunx is in the offing ... soon.

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