China Miéville is probably my favorite author of the twenty-first century, and when I saw that he recently released not one, but two new books, I was both excited and a little hesitant. Miéville had a run–from 1998’s King Rat through the Bas-Lag trilogy through 2009’s The City and the City of some of the most inventive, immersive, unapologetic fiction I’ve read. Fabulous stuff. As his star ascended, there seemed to be a lack of editing focus in his later novels, and some of the taut mystery seemed to fade.
2016’s This Census Taker is a novella, and perhaps barely that (the book also includes the first chapter of his other new novel, The Last Days of New Paris, to be reviewed her probably later in the summer), but it marks a return to the Miéville that I’ve been missing. This is a fever dream of a story, told through the eyes of a boy who lives on the side of a mountain who suspects that his father is a murderer. The boy flees, returns, and struggles with how to navigate an uneasy existence until a man appears who claims that his job is to count the members of a mysterious diaspora.
That’s it. And little beyond that becomes concrete, but the notes hit by the story are unfailing and the boy’s inner life is rich, if stricken with a constant and, at least from his perspective, understandable anxiety. Little is resolved, but that’s not the point: This Census Taker is an exercise in tone and perspective, deeply creative and perhaps more than slightly disturbing.
Most of all, as an unabashed fanboy of Miéville, it may mark a return to the creativity and directness of his earlier works. That would indeed be a treat.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
Resist explanation. Miéville has always been great at this, dropping readers in media res and trusting them to learn as they read. To do that well takes such courage as an author, such belief in both their own skills and in their audience. When it fails, readers are left not caring and, quite often, perplexed to the point of insult; but when it succeeds, the mysteries of the text remain as questions to ponder, and the writing remains as well, pulling at you long after you’ve finished reading. That’s something I’d love to have happen in my own writing.