The City and the City, China Miéville

The City & the City is a total mind-fuck -- in the best possible way. It's a mystery novel set in two cities that share the same physical space (grosstopical space, in the language of the book), but are in fact in different countries. The mystery is not what's interesting about this book (in fact, I found it confusing and ultimately unsatisfying), but the fascinating conceit of these two overlapping cities nearly makes up for anything that's lacking in the plot. The citizens of each city must constantly "unsee" the people, buildings, vehicles of the other city. The idea of living in a city where you must studiously ignore something like half of what surrounds you seems like an incredible allegory of urban life. Besides urban life in general, I kept wondering what actual places informed the cities. Istanbul was the first place that came to mind. Also the states of what was Yugoslavia (which some clues in the book suggest may be the approximate location of the fictional cities). The idea of a city overlaid on a city felt very familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint from where.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

I loved this book.

In the Country of Men, Hisham Matar

Although I told myself -- and my reading public (ha!) -- that I wasn't going to limit or pressure myself into reading only books from countries I hadn't read before, I was starting to feel like I'd been reading too much in familiar territory. The prior 6 books I read were from countries I'd read before -- one was even a book I'd read before. Somewhere in the middle of that run, I started, then set aside, a book from a country I had not read. So, when I finished My Brilliant Friend and was on the fence about whether I should go straight into the next book of the Neapolitan Series, I decided instead I should check off another country from my list. To that end, I pulled out In the Country of Men, which I had picked up several months ago to represent Libya.

One thing this book brought to my attention is I don't know much of anything about Libya or its history. At some point I must have learned it had been an Italian colony (as a student of Africana Studies, I had to know all the African countries' colonial histories, though my coursework tended to emphasize sub-Saharan Africa), but that knowledge was long gone when I read this book. (Oddly, because I remember as a child thinking the name Tripoli sounded Italian, which of course it's not, but this association seems like it could have served me mnemonically.) I had no idea that it had a Roman history (which, again, should not have been so surprising, given all the Roman ruins I have personally visited in Morocco). I have what I have to admit is only the barest knowledge of the Gaddafi era. So, anyway, when I started this book and discovered it was set in the wake of the 1979 revolution, my initial reaction was, "Oh, they had one that year too?"

My ignorance of Libya aside, this book did a really good job of getting into the mind of a child who does foolish things that have potentially terrible consequences out of naivete, attention-craving, desire to please. I found the narrator's 9-year-old self often infuriating, but also utterly believable. Kids do dumb and mean things despite themselves. As you get into the narrator's head, you see that he has compassion, he just can't seem to show it. My frustration with him got in the way of my enjoyment of the book, though it was a times really lovely.

My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

The last of the Neapolitan novels only came out a few months ago, but I feel like I'm late coming to Ferrante. Last year, she was everywhere and the near-universal praise of her books left me unsure whether I wanted to read or avoid them. My dad gave me the first three volumes, as well as her The Days of Abandonment, some time ago and they've been sitting on my shelf, largely forgotten, since. Last Friday scanning quickly for something to read, I first pulled out The Days of Abandonment, then wondered why I was putting off starting the Neapolitan novels and pulled out My Brilliant Friend instead. Some books are better than others for reading on the train, or other places where there are lots of potential distractions. Just before starting Ferrante, I tried for 2 days to read The Book of Disquiet on my commute, but I decided it was more of a weekend-in-a-cabin read than a subway read. My Brilliant Friend was totally absorbing. I read it from platform, to subway, to street during all my commutes for the last week. I read it for 2 hours in my doctor's waiting room despite the pop soundtrack in the background (something I would normally find exceedingly distracting). At the same time, I had no particular urge to read it once I was at home. (I did in fact finish it right before bed last night, but mostly to get it out of the way and start a fresh book this morning.) It's not usual for me to find a book so absorbing and yet not to want to lie on the couch and read it all day during the weekend. In the case of My Brilliant Friend, I think this has mostly to do with the simplicity - for lack of a better word - of the story. This isn't a criticism! There were life-changing events, there was drama, and yet it was somehow very quiet. I wasn't compelled to keep reading for hours to find out what happened next. Instead, I was content to put the book away when I got home and to be instantly reabsorbed in the book when I pulled it out on the subway the next morning.