China Mieville's very strange brain...

[alobear]

Perhaps a book of short stories by China Mieville wasn't the most sensible choice of audiobook for a week when I would be alone in the flat...

Amazing stuff, though - but, boy, is that guys brain a strange place!  The collection is called Looking For Jake, and that's the name of the first story.

The only thing that linked all the stories together was the fact that they were, to a greater or lesser extent, inconclusive.  They were mostly set in present-day or near-future London, with some kind of twist to reality that made everything creepy or weird, and generally a fairly ignorant narrator who could only give a certain amount of information.  None of them had a definitive conclusion, either, rather leaving you hanging in an agony of suggestion.  I mostly got the gist of what was going on, but never in enough detail to give proper closure - genius, but very unsettling.

My favourite was the only one with a happy ending - it was about a near-future where Christmas had been privatised, so people had to buy an expensive licence in order to celebrate Christmas with any of the traditional trimmings.  Inspectors cracked down particularly on Aggravated Sub-Arboreal Giftery.

Comments

[prunesquallormd]

The only non Bas-Lag Mieville story I've ever read was set in a future London where the reflections from all the mirrors had taken over. It was called The Tain. Good but odd, so classic Mieville :)

[alobear]

The Tain was the last story in the book I listened, and was probably my least favourite of all of them. I've had issues with the idea of hostile reflections ever since Twin Peaks, so it kinda freaked me out.