What do you think?
Rate this book
This Census-Taker
For readers of George Saunders, Kelly Link, and Karen Russell, This Census Taker is the poignant and uncanny new novella from award-winning and bestselling author China Miéville. After witnessing a profoundly traumatic event, a boy is left alone in a remote house on a hilltop with his increasingly deranged parent. When a stranger knocks on his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation are over—but by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? Is he the boy’s friend? His enemy? Or something altogether other?
210 pages, Hardcover
First published January 5, 2016
About the author
China Miéville
145 books14.3k followersA British "fantastic fiction" writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" (after early 20th century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird who consciously attempt to move fantasy away from commercial, genre clichés of Tolkien epigons. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He has stood for the House of Commons for the Socialist Alliance, and published a book on Marxism and international law.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,281 reviews
July 10, 2017
That’s the last one of the Hugo finalist novellas I had set out to read! The author describes his genre as “weird fiction,” and I won’t argue here. This is a strange book that leaves way too many open questions, and refuses to fit into any single genre. And these are things I normally like! I really admire books that manage to pull it off, but this one didn’t do it, at least not for me. The writing is beautiful, and there are elements I enjoyed – the magical keys, the idea of three books, the whole metaphor with animals in bottles – but overall it felt very disjointed. I know, it makes sense to be disjointed – it’s from the point of view of a confused and traumatized young boy. But still, it was hard to get into. At last, I did get into the story, and then it ended! Honestly, the last 10 pages or so felt as if the story was about to begin.
July 14, 2019
”I knew that, by whatever means he’d killed it, it was not to eat. I wanted to cry; I stood still.
He had it by the neck. Its brown body was bigger than a baby’s. Its shovel head lolled and its nasty hook beak twitched open and closed to snap faintly with each of my father’s steps. The bird’s broad feet dangled on the ground and bounced on stones as if it were trying to claw itself incompetently to a stop.”
There have been wars. Civilization has fallen backwards and stalled in place. People are getting by, but others have lost everything and are on the verge of losing what little life they have remaining. ”A haggard man used one of the huts as a home. He lay on a sagging mattress, his head on his pack, surrounded by rubbish--paper, porcelain shards, food remains, and unidentifiable debris. His hand was over his eyes. He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing.” There are also orphaned kids living together in town who band together for mutual survival.
The boy’s father is a key maker. He makes keys to fit old machines. He makes keys to change the weather. He makes keys that turn the locks on hearts. There is a mysticism about what he does. Superstition has become almost a religion, but like Voodoo, it only works if you believe.
The boy lives on the hill. He is an uphiller. He has seen things. He knows things about his father that others need proof to believe.
There is the hole in the cave, a deep hole. A hole that might go to the center of the earth. When his mother disappears, the boy has nightmares. ”I thought of my mother’s hands hauling her up. Of her climbing all grave-mottled and with her face scabbed with old blood, her arms and legs moving like sticks or the legs of insects, or as stiff as toys, as if maybe when you die and come back you forget what your body is.”
But his father insists his mother is still alive.
When the man who counts people arrives, he might be the only chance the boy has to find out the real truth about his father.
This is a very strange novella, with many of the Kafkaesque aspects of being trapped into circumstances that seem inescapable. I was frequently confused for the first third of the book, but after reading numerous China Mieville novels, I knew I just needed to hang in there, and eventually this world he was creating would become more substantial, and the clouds would part enough for me to see the ground. By the end of the book, I wanted more. I wanted to fold the book out like an accordion and find the rest of the story. I wanted the lost notebook with the feverous scribbles of the where, what, and when. I can see it in my mind’s eye, written in faded red and blue ink whose words map out the future.
There are Gothic elements to the book, the shapes in the shadows, the menacing unknowable, which also helps ratchet up the ever heightening sense of terror. I felt my own tension increase as I, too, tried to find a way that the boy could escape a fate too unmentionable to put into words. This is not the place to start when reading Mieville, but it is a fascinating new wrinkle in an already outstandingly creative career. This book shows Mieville’s ability to stretch his already prodigious talents into worlds beyond where he has already been before.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
He had it by the neck. Its brown body was bigger than a baby’s. Its shovel head lolled and its nasty hook beak twitched open and closed to snap faintly with each of my father’s steps. The bird’s broad feet dangled on the ground and bounced on stones as if it were trying to claw itself incompetently to a stop.”
There have been wars. Civilization has fallen backwards and stalled in place. People are getting by, but others have lost everything and are on the verge of losing what little life they have remaining. ”A haggard man used one of the huts as a home. He lay on a sagging mattress, his head on his pack, surrounded by rubbish--paper, porcelain shards, food remains, and unidentifiable debris. His hand was over his eyes. He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing.” There are also orphaned kids living together in town who band together for mutual survival.
The boy’s father is a key maker. He makes keys to fit old machines. He makes keys to change the weather. He makes keys that turn the locks on hearts. There is a mysticism about what he does. Superstition has become almost a religion, but like Voodoo, it only works if you believe.
The boy lives on the hill. He is an uphiller. He has seen things. He knows things about his father that others need proof to believe.
There is the hole in the cave, a deep hole. A hole that might go to the center of the earth. When his mother disappears, the boy has nightmares. ”I thought of my mother’s hands hauling her up. Of her climbing all grave-mottled and with her face scabbed with old blood, her arms and legs moving like sticks or the legs of insects, or as stiff as toys, as if maybe when you die and come back you forget what your body is.”
But his father insists his mother is still alive.
When the man who counts people arrives, he might be the only chance the boy has to find out the real truth about his father.
This is a very strange novella, with many of the Kafkaesque aspects of being trapped into circumstances that seem inescapable. I was frequently confused for the first third of the book, but after reading numerous China Mieville novels, I knew I just needed to hang in there, and eventually this world he was creating would become more substantial, and the clouds would part enough for me to see the ground. By the end of the book, I wanted more. I wanted to fold the book out like an accordion and find the rest of the story. I wanted the lost notebook with the feverous scribbles of the where, what, and when. I can see it in my mind’s eye, written in faded red and blue ink whose words map out the future.
There are Gothic elements to the book, the shapes in the shadows, the menacing unknowable, which also helps ratchet up the ever heightening sense of terror. I felt my own tension increase as I, too, tried to find a way that the boy could escape a fate too unmentionable to put into words. This is not the place to start when reading Mieville, but it is a fascinating new wrinkle in an already outstandingly creative career. This book shows Mieville’s ability to stretch his already prodigious talents into worlds beyond where he has already been before.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
January 24, 2021
Truly, madly, deeply
It’s hard to resist the lure of labels and the urge to uncover the truth. But labels obscure as much as they reveal. The truth of a good story isn’t in whether it happened as described, but in the more profound and elliptical lessons it teaches us, whether we realise it or not. That’s why fairy tales, myths, and legends persist through millennia, across the globe, sometimes as sacred texts. What I drew from this may not be the same as what you draw from it.
Miéville has famously said he plans to write in every genre. Sometimes that manifests itself in books that blur and blend genres. I’d say this is Kafka for the older end of YA, both in the telling, and the vague menace of sinister authorities, compounded by the looming fear of what might be in the hole in the cave.
Image: Untitled artwork by Valentin Pavageau that fits aspects of this story (Source)
There’s a sprinkling of fantasy and thus mystery.
“I didn’t know if I’d seen anything real, because the hill will throw up its nightmares.”
The story is slippery, sometimes shocking, and ultimately unknowable. Perhaps irrelevant. It opens thus:
“A boy ran down a hill path screaming. The boy was I. He held his hands up and out in front of him as if he’d dipped them in paint… I shouted, ‘My mother killed my father!’”
Keys
“In Keying, No Obstacle Withstands”
Apart from casually mentioning that neighbours include “weather-watchers, hermits and witches”, the magical aspect comes mainly from the keys the boy’s father makes. Customers ask for:
“Love, money, to open things, to know the future, to fix animals, to fix things, to be stronger, to hurt someone or save someone, to fly - and he’d make them a key.”
But they play no real part in the story: we never “see” the magic or know the consequences. Maybe they’re a fantasy or fraud, rather than fantastical. Instead, the key we might want, and never get, is the one that unlocks the full truth of the story itself.
Image: Keys, by Arsenic in the Shell (Source)
Note the language
Miéville always seduces with words, but here, he largely eschews unusual vocabulary (I didn’t notice a single instance of “palimpsest” or “puissant”, of which he’s so fond). However, the contrasting meanings of another favourite, “cleave”, silently seep through the pages: push and pull, mother and father, a hole and a bridge, us and them, two cities, two languages, “Two wars! One inside, one out”, truth and lies, life and death.
“You can be I or he or she or we or they or you and you won’t be lying, though you might be telling two stories at once.”
The careful switch of the unnamed narrator's pronouns for himself (he, I, you), sometimes in a single sentence, stand out. Mostly, “he” experiences emotions at the time, and “I” has the benefit of hindsight.
The second person is used only twice I think, both at times of cleaving:
“You watched her go. That was the last time you saw her.”
And when ostracism forces closeness with the one he fears:
“x held your hand tight while you stared at them”.
In a story where truth, understanding, and memory are always cloudy, this adds another veil.
Occasionally, Miéville uses articles in unexpected ways: “the Bridgetown” (definite article, one word, no capital letter), and most notably in the title, although the reason for that one does emerge.
Image: A bridge town, by surrealist photographer, Erik Johansson (Source)
The narrator, the writer
“You’ll write it not because there’s no possibility it’ll be found but because it costs too much to not write it.”
The more the narrator explains about writing this story, the more puzzling it becomes. It’s not in the language he grew up speaking. Secrets and ciphers are important. The exact circumstances of where he’s writing, and whether the compulsion is his own or from external sources, are ominous.
Is there a mystical, magical aspect, or is he mad, or coerced?
“You never put anything down except to be read.”
Early in the book, he discusses the nature of his three books. (The words below are direct quotes, but I’ve stitched the sentences into more logical sequences.)
Image: Pages of The Voynich Manuscript (Source)
Where and when?
Not all questions need answers, and yet we seek them.
Both aspects remind me of Peake’s Gormenghast, of which Miéville is a fan (see my review HERE). In addition, the urchins of the bridgetown reminded me of Peake’s Under-River.
Quotes
• “The thick mist beckoned me and pushed me back at the same time.”
• “They lived together… without viciousness or rancour but… without pleasure or interest.”
• “He watched me with desperate fondness.”
• “I can’t tell you what my father wanted from me.”
“Once I said to my father, ‘Why do you want me?’ I still think that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever done.”
• “Luxuriating in the terror of it, the sense that the hill had paused and would at any moment flex and crush me.”
• “The room felt saturated with his presence, felt like he was speaking in it.”
• “The ruckusing air of the uplands.”
“The sway of our step-by-step descent narcotized me so I felt myself retreat behind my eyes.”
“A sequence of imbricated catastrophes.”
(It’s Miéville; there have to be a few strange words.)
• “Houses built on bridges are scandals. A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape, an unspace to link One-place-town to Another-place-town.” Huh?!
See also
I recently enjoyed Jesse Ball’s Census. It’s similarly hard to place and unravel, with dubious intent behind the titular census, but it has less plot and is rather more beautiful. See my review HERE.
It’s hard to resist the lure of labels and the urge to uncover the truth. But labels obscure as much as they reveal. The truth of a good story isn’t in whether it happened as described, but in the more profound and elliptical lessons it teaches us, whether we realise it or not. That’s why fairy tales, myths, and legends persist through millennia, across the globe, sometimes as sacred texts. What I drew from this may not be the same as what you draw from it.
Miéville has famously said he plans to write in every genre. Sometimes that manifests itself in books that blur and blend genres. I’d say this is Kafka for the older end of YA, both in the telling, and the vague menace of sinister authorities, compounded by the looming fear of what might be in the hole in the cave.
Image: Untitled artwork by Valentin Pavageau that fits aspects of this story (Source)
There’s a sprinkling of fantasy and thus mystery.
“I didn’t know if I’d seen anything real, because the hill will throw up its nightmares.”
The story is slippery, sometimes shocking, and ultimately unknowable. Perhaps irrelevant. It opens thus:
“A boy ran down a hill path screaming. The boy was I. He held his hands up and out in front of him as if he’d dipped them in paint… I shouted, ‘My mother killed my father!’”
Keys
“In Keying, No Obstacle Withstands”
Apart from casually mentioning that neighbours include “weather-watchers, hermits and witches”, the magical aspect comes mainly from the keys the boy’s father makes. Customers ask for:
“Love, money, to open things, to know the future, to fix animals, to fix things, to be stronger, to hurt someone or save someone, to fly - and he’d make them a key.”
But they play no real part in the story: we never “see” the magic or know the consequences. Maybe they’re a fantasy or fraud, rather than fantastical. Instead, the key we might want, and never get, is the one that unlocks the full truth of the story itself.
Image: Keys, by Arsenic in the Shell (Source)
Note the language
Miéville always seduces with words, but here, he largely eschews unusual vocabulary (I didn’t notice a single instance of “palimpsest” or “puissant”, of which he’s so fond). However, the contrasting meanings of another favourite, “cleave”, silently seep through the pages: push and pull, mother and father, a hole and a bridge, us and them, two cities, two languages, “Two wars! One inside, one out”, truth and lies, life and death.
“You can be I or he or she or we or they or you and you won’t be lying, though you might be telling two stories at once.”
The careful switch of the unnamed narrator's pronouns for himself (he, I, you), sometimes in a single sentence, stand out. Mostly, “he” experiences emotions at the time, and “I” has the benefit of hindsight.
The second person is used only twice I think, both at times of cleaving:
“You watched her go. That was the last time you saw her.”
And when ostracism forces closeness with the one he fears:
“x held your hand tight while you stared at them”.
In a story where truth, understanding, and memory are always cloudy, this adds another veil.
Occasionally, Miéville uses articles in unexpected ways: “the Bridgetown” (definite article, one word, no capital letter), and most notably in the title, although the reason for that one does emerge.
Image: A bridge town, by surrealist photographer, Erik Johansson (Source)
The narrator, the writer
“You’ll write it not because there’s no possibility it’ll be found but because it costs too much to not write it.”
The more the narrator explains about writing this story, the more puzzling it becomes. It’s not in the language he grew up speaking. Secrets and ciphers are important. The exact circumstances of where he’s writing, and whether the compulsion is his own or from external sources, are ominous.
Is there a mystical, magical aspect, or is he mad, or coerced?
“You never put anything down except to be read.”
Early in the book, he discusses the nature of his three books. (The words below are direct quotes, but I’ve stitched the sentences into more logical sequences.)
Image: Pages of The Voynich Manuscript (Source)
Where and when?
Not all questions need answers, and yet we seek them.
Both aspects remind me of Peake’s Gormenghast, of which Miéville is a fan (see my review HERE). In addition, the urchins of the bridgetown reminded me of Peake’s Under-River.
Quotes
• “The thick mist beckoned me and pushed me back at the same time.”
• “They lived together… without viciousness or rancour but… without pleasure or interest.”
• “He watched me with desperate fondness.”
• “I can’t tell you what my father wanted from me.”
“Once I said to my father, ‘Why do you want me?’ I still think that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever done.”
• “Luxuriating in the terror of it, the sense that the hill had paused and would at any moment flex and crush me.”
• “The room felt saturated with his presence, felt like he was speaking in it.”
• “The ruckusing air of the uplands.”
“The sway of our step-by-step descent narcotized me so I felt myself retreat behind my eyes.”
“A sequence of imbricated catastrophes.”
(It’s Miéville; there have to be a few strange words.)
• “Houses built on bridges are scandals. A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape, an unspace to link One-place-town to Another-place-town.” Huh?!
See also
I recently enjoyed Jesse Ball’s Census. It’s similarly hard to place and unravel, with dubious intent behind the titular census, but it has less plot and is rather more beautiful. See my review HERE.
August 30, 2017
Creepy, weird little book.
China Mieville is self-described as a writer in the “new weird” genre, and so he is living up to his name. Readers who enjoyed his The City & the City andEmbassytown will know what I mean and he is following along this path in his 2016 publication. Mieville has also stated that he wants to write a novel in every genre and this may be his Kafka entry, as this blends elements of surrealism and absurdity into a complicated narrative set in imagery that seems to be always overcast, dark and gloomy.
The narrator looks back to his childhood, sometimes writing in the third person, but also makes circuitous references to his writing in the present. He describes growing up in a Beckettesque house with his mother and father and lots of strange goings on. His father is a key-maker with hints towards the supernatural and mystical. There are explanations about his parents being from different countries, of accented languages and translated writings only thinly understood. There are dirty street children who play mimic like games and who catch bats off a bridge. There is a hole into darkness into which his father tosses refuse and the corpses of his murders. There is a census taker who must write it all down.
Mieville uses symbolism, metaphor and simile to great advantage and creates a mood and dramatic tension that is intriguing and entertaining, but frequently hard to follow.
Perhaps not the best book for new readers, and this may be regarded as one of his lesser works, this is nonetheless a unique visit with a very talented and imaginative writer.
China Mieville is self-described as a writer in the “new weird” genre, and so he is living up to his name. Readers who enjoyed his The City & the City andEmbassytown will know what I mean and he is following along this path in his 2016 publication. Mieville has also stated that he wants to write a novel in every genre and this may be his Kafka entry, as this blends elements of surrealism and absurdity into a complicated narrative set in imagery that seems to be always overcast, dark and gloomy.
The narrator looks back to his childhood, sometimes writing in the third person, but also makes circuitous references to his writing in the present. He describes growing up in a Beckettesque house with his mother and father and lots of strange goings on. His father is a key-maker with hints towards the supernatural and mystical. There are explanations about his parents being from different countries, of accented languages and translated writings only thinly understood. There are dirty street children who play mimic like games and who catch bats off a bridge. There is a hole into darkness into which his father tosses refuse and the corpses of his murders. There is a census taker who must write it all down.
Mieville uses symbolism, metaphor and simile to great advantage and creates a mood and dramatic tension that is intriguing and entertaining, but frequently hard to follow.
Perhaps not the best book for new readers, and this may be regarded as one of his lesser works, this is nonetheless a unique visit with a very talented and imaginative writer.
April 28, 2017
I can't say that I'm completely satisfied with this novella, but I can say that I'm haunted by it. I'm haunted by all the little details that make up this world so much like our own, the hints of wars and magics and strange chemicals and vials and keys that provide people with purpose and a way out or through the labyrinths of their lives...
Not to mention a very Schrodinger's Cat view of reality, where murderers are and are not, where the murdered is and is not, where, perhaps, everything is rewritten and only census takers can determine the correct average.
Not that I'm truly or even likely getting the grok of this novel. I am just using my intuition. But it's possible.
We've got a murder mystery, first and foremost, and not even the MC, a kid who constantly doubts what he's seen, can really take the measure of it. No one in the town can, but everyone suspects everything.
And then there's the trademark monsters and monstrosities that Meivillé is so good at.
I can honestly say this feels like a more mature work from his earlier stuff, more willing to take the slow path while all the little details encroach upon us from the periphery.
I respect it. It also happens to be nominated for the '17 Hugos, and while I wouldn't put it at the top of my list, I totally agree it should be here. It's very impressive in its way even if I catch myself wanting a lot more than where it ended.
Not to mention a very Schrodinger's Cat view of reality, where murderers are and are not, where the murdered is and is not, where, perhaps, everything is rewritten and only census takers can determine the correct average.
Not that I'm truly or even likely getting the grok of this novel. I am just using my intuition. But it's possible.
We've got a murder mystery, first and foremost, and not even the MC, a kid who constantly doubts what he's seen, can really take the measure of it. No one in the town can, but everyone suspects everything.
And then there's the trademark monsters and monstrosities that Meivillé is so good at.
I can honestly say this feels like a more mature work from his earlier stuff, more willing to take the slow path while all the little details encroach upon us from the periphery.
I respect it. It also happens to be nominated for the '17 Hugos, and while I wouldn't put it at the top of my list, I totally agree it should be here. It's very impressive in its way even if I catch myself wanting a lot more than where it ended.
February 9, 2017
"You'll write it not because there's no possibility it'll be found but because it costs too much to not write it."
-- China Miéville, This Census-Taker
"LORD, if you were to record iniquities, Lord, who could remain standing?"
-- Psalms 130:3 (International Standard Version)
I would probably consider this to be a bridge novella, spanning the gap somewhere between the shores of novel and novella; a scandal with gravity, perhaps. It weighs-in at just a quinternion over 200 pages in a 5.75" x 7.5" format. For Miéville this book is a surprise (as much as any thing new with Miéville is ever REALLY a surprise). It has the tone and feel of his earlier novels, but this one is quite Spartan and reserved. A couple stories in 'Three Moments of an Explosion' hinted at this style.
He has really dialed back his normal complexity, his labyrinthian plots and prose. This is a guy who knows he can dervish, dance, and dive with his prose, and now KNOWS you know, but is comfortable just sitting there, like a jaguar, all potential energy, ready to pounce. You can feel that confidence and almost relaxed alertness in his prose and in this story. Anyway, I expect I will be pointing to this novel in the future and saying this marks the beginning of a more mature Miéville. He isn't content to just dazzle us with his brain and unleashed torrents. He's good now. He will now slowly unsettle us with his art, his craft, the fog at the edge of our field of view, and the cracks in caves that hold dark stories.
I think part of this is due to time spent at the MacDowell colony reading John Hawkes and perhaps, hanging with Denis Johnson.
-- China Miéville, This Census-Taker
"LORD, if you were to record iniquities, Lord, who could remain standing?"
-- Psalms 130:3 (International Standard Version)
I would probably consider this to be a bridge novella, spanning the gap somewhere between the shores of novel and novella; a scandal with gravity, perhaps. It weighs-in at just a quinternion over 200 pages in a 5.75" x 7.5" format. For Miéville this book is a surprise (as much as any thing new with Miéville is ever REALLY a surprise). It has the tone and feel of his earlier novels, but this one is quite Spartan and reserved. A couple stories in 'Three Moments of an Explosion' hinted at this style.
He has really dialed back his normal complexity, his labyrinthian plots and prose. This is a guy who knows he can dervish, dance, and dive with his prose, and now KNOWS you know, but is comfortable just sitting there, like a jaguar, all potential energy, ready to pounce. You can feel that confidence and almost relaxed alertness in his prose and in this story. Anyway, I expect I will be pointing to this novel in the future and saying this marks the beginning of a more mature Miéville. He isn't content to just dazzle us with his brain and unleashed torrents. He's good now. He will now slowly unsettle us with his art, his craft, the fog at the edge of our field of view, and the cracks in caves that hold dark stories.
I think part of this is due to time spent at the MacDowell colony reading John Hawkes and perhaps, hanging with Denis Johnson.
March 17, 2017
One of my Hugo Award nominees, novella, 2016.
____
A boy runs screaming into a village, having witnessed something horrible.
Years later, the narrator tells us, he is imprisoned, under guard, allowed to write this book in a solitary room.
There is something, he tells us, that his 'manager' told him:
"You never put anything down except to be read. Every word ever written is written to be read, and if some go unread that's only chance, failure, they're like grubs that die without changing....
So my first is a book of numbers. It's lists and calculations and, for efficiency, I write it using ciphers. ... This first book's for everyone, though almost no one wants it or would know how to read it.
The third of my three books is for me. You'll keep one, is what he told me, for you alone to read ... But you'll never be sure that no one else will read them: that's the risk and that's how the third book works. ... You'll write it not because there's no possibility it'll be found but because it costs too much to not write it.
... The second book's for readers, he said. But you can't know when they'll come, if they do. It's the book for telling. But ... you can still use it to tell secrets and send messages. ... The second book's performance."
This is the second book. In it, this man - this census-taker - tells us of his childhood, and hints at how he came to be where he is - and who he is.
It's not a pleasant tale. It's the tale of a child who has no one to trust. The first thing we learn is that, perhaps, he cannot even trust his own memory. He certainly cannot trust the psychopath that he is bound to. The law cannot be depended on to protect him. His friends are incapable of doing so. Citizens wait for the presence of 'authority' - but from where does that authority derive?
Right before reading this book, I has a discussion with some friends in which we bemoaned the recent popularity of stories with ambiguous endings, which seem to be all too popular these days. I have to admit - in some ways this is one of these. Both the narrator and the author know far more than they are telling, and the reader is left to guess. Much of this world exists outside the scope of these pages. There's as much going on outside that circumference as there is within it. However, nevertheless, I absolutely loved this book. It didn't feel unfinished, and at no point did I feel like Miéville was 'cheating' by refusing to make a decision. He knows more than he's telling, here - but he definitely knows. The book is beautifully structured, with every element working in the context of the whole, and working around to a feeling of closing the circle of completion, even though much is yet unrevealed.
What is revealed is wonderfully tantalizing. For much of the book on might guess that the setting is any of number of poverty-stricken, war-torn contemporary locations. But we do get to find out that it is a post-apocalyptic setting, after some kind of anti-technology revolution. However, some people seem to retain some kind of abilities... are they technology-based, or some kind of magic? We're not sure.
In a way, I believe that the point of the book is that it doesn't matter. The average person has no idea how many things work. We don't know, here, the point or goal of the census, or why unknown forces might want - or not want - it completed. What has a psychopathic killer fled, and what has shaped his strange and terrifying dysfunctional episodes? We don't know - but all these things ring true as things that just might not be known.
On the other hand - the narrator does, at the end, refer to his book - this book - as a "prologue." It would certainly be wonderful if Miéville were to write a longer novel set in this intriguing world.
____
A boy runs screaming into a village, having witnessed something horrible.
Years later, the narrator tells us, he is imprisoned, under guard, allowed to write this book in a solitary room.
There is something, he tells us, that his 'manager' told him:
"You never put anything down except to be read. Every word ever written is written to be read, and if some go unread that's only chance, failure, they're like grubs that die without changing....
So my first is a book of numbers. It's lists and calculations and, for efficiency, I write it using ciphers. ... This first book's for everyone, though almost no one wants it or would know how to read it.
The third of my three books is for me. You'll keep one, is what he told me, for you alone to read ... But you'll never be sure that no one else will read them: that's the risk and that's how the third book works. ... You'll write it not because there's no possibility it'll be found but because it costs too much to not write it.
... The second book's for readers, he said. But you can't know when they'll come, if they do. It's the book for telling. But ... you can still use it to tell secrets and send messages. ... The second book's performance."
This is the second book. In it, this man - this census-taker - tells us of his childhood, and hints at how he came to be where he is - and who he is.
It's not a pleasant tale. It's the tale of a child who has no one to trust. The first thing we learn is that, perhaps, he cannot even trust his own memory. He certainly cannot trust the psychopath that he is bound to. The law cannot be depended on to protect him. His friends are incapable of doing so. Citizens wait for the presence of 'authority' - but from where does that authority derive?
Right before reading this book, I has a discussion with some friends in which we bemoaned the recent popularity of stories with ambiguous endings, which seem to be all too popular these days. I have to admit - in some ways this is one of these. Both the narrator and the author know far more than they are telling, and the reader is left to guess. Much of this world exists outside the scope of these pages. There's as much going on outside that circumference as there is within it. However, nevertheless, I absolutely loved this book. It didn't feel unfinished, and at no point did I feel like Miéville was 'cheating' by refusing to make a decision. He knows more than he's telling, here - but he definitely knows. The book is beautifully structured, with every element working in the context of the whole, and working around to a feeling of closing the circle of completion, even though much is yet unrevealed.
What is revealed is wonderfully tantalizing. For much of the book on might guess that the setting is any of number of poverty-stricken, war-torn contemporary locations. But we do get to find out that it is a post-apocalyptic setting, after some kind of anti-technology revolution. However, some people seem to retain some kind of abilities... are they technology-based, or some kind of magic? We're not sure.
In a way, I believe that the point of the book is that it doesn't matter. The average person has no idea how many things work. We don't know, here, the point or goal of the census, or why unknown forces might want - or not want - it completed. What has a psychopathic killer fled, and what has shaped his strange and terrifying dysfunctional episodes? We don't know - but all these things ring true as things that just might not be known.
On the other hand - the narrator does, at the end, refer to his book - this book - as a "prologue." It would certainly be wonderful if Miéville were to write a longer novel set in this intriguing world.
June 4, 2017
4ish stars.
For a horror novella, there's not much horror. At least not that we get any explicit glimpses of. Just lots of creepiness.
This is brilliantly written as the memoir of sorts of- well... this guy? Who's writing different books or something? And maybe he's being guarded? And he writes about his experiences as a kid I guess? And his dad may or may not have killed his mom? And there are, like, these magic keys? And then this mysterious dude comes?
So basically it's hard to know what actually happens when our narrator isn't quite sure himself. He's remembering his experiences as a child, so not only are his memories bound to have grown hazy over the years, but it's hard for us to know how much of the memories are accurate and how much of them are figments of a deeply traumatized child's imagination. He presents them in first, second, and third person sporadically, almost as if he's telling the story to himself at some points and trying to tell it as an outsider at others as a way to process and sort through his thoughts and memories.
This is all about the mood- It's creepy, weird, haunting, ethereal. And it's just so well written. This is only my second Mieville, but it's totally different from the other that I've read. I think I've got a new author man crush.
Posted in Mr. Philip's Library.
For a horror novella, there's not much horror. At least not that we get any explicit glimpses of. Just lots of creepiness.
This is brilliantly written as the memoir of sorts of- well... this guy? Who's writing different books or something? And maybe he's being guarded? And he writes about his experiences as a kid I guess? And his dad may or may not have killed his mom? And there are, like, these magic keys? And then this mysterious dude comes?
So basically it's hard to know what actually happens when our narrator isn't quite sure himself. He's remembering his experiences as a child, so not only are his memories bound to have grown hazy over the years, but it's hard for us to know how much of the memories are accurate and how much of them are figments of a deeply traumatized child's imagination. He presents them in first, second, and third person sporadically, almost as if he's telling the story to himself at some points and trying to tell it as an outsider at others as a way to process and sort through his thoughts and memories.
This is all about the mood- It's creepy, weird, haunting, ethereal. And it's just so well written. This is only my second Mieville, but it's totally different from the other that I've read. I think I've got a new author man crush.
Posted in Mr. Philip's Library.
March 30, 2023
4.5 stars
I have not read enough China Mieville. This one is a fairly brief novella which is set in a post-apocalyptic society, although that part is much understated and you pick it up from clues along the way. The beginning of the Guardian review sets the scene very well;
“Any story that, on its very first page, redefines its protagonist from third to first person, flips forward in time to offer a view of him from elsewhere, makes a subtle alteration of tense, and announces that the character’s age in the story is a matter of speculation even to the older self doing the narrating, is going to be a story about perception, whatever else it is.”
The boy who narrates lives with his parents in isolation on a hill near a run-down town. His father makes keys for the townspeople; these seem to have unusual properties which are never entirely defined.
“[My father] made keys. His customers would come up from the town and ask for the things for which people usually ask—love, money, to open things, to know the future, to fix animals, to fix things, to be stronger, to hurt someone or save someone, to fly—and he'd make them a key.”
His father sometimes kills animals which he throws into a hole in a nearby cave. These killings are disturbing and without reason. The boy feels that sometimes people are thrown down there too. One day the boy runs into town saying his father has killed his mother and he saw it. His mother is nowhere to be found and his father says she left and produced a goodbye letter. The boy remains in town for a while living with a group of street children. Eventually his father fetches him back. Life goes on and then the census taker arrives. It is worth noting that the boy is not an entirely reliable narrator.
The whole is rather eerie with lots of asides that don’t lead anywhere, but are interesting in themselves. Devotees of Mieville have argued that this is a Bas-Lag story (Mieville has written three novels in the Bas-Lag series) and will produce a great deal of evidence to make the argument.
There are nods in the book to Kafka and Borges and there is mystery, suspense and magic and of course there is an element of fairy tale as well. The narrator is writing as an adult and his circumstances are unclear as well. Because Mieville is writing and telling through the eyes of a child there is a great deal left unasked and unexplained and the whole can feel sparse at times. But then Mieville can also become almost baroque in its descriptiveness;
“There I, who’d known only the fierce spine-backed fish of the mountain streams and their animalcule prey, came to a sudden stop, slack with awe before a glass tank big enough to contain me, transported at some immense cost for I don’t know what market, full not with me or with any person but of brine and clots of black weed and clenching polyps and huge starfish, sluggishly crawling, feeling their way over tank-bottom stones like mottled hands.”
There is plenty of symbolism and the whole left me feeling that I do need to read more by Mieville
I have not read enough China Mieville. This one is a fairly brief novella which is set in a post-apocalyptic society, although that part is much understated and you pick it up from clues along the way. The beginning of the Guardian review sets the scene very well;
“Any story that, on its very first page, redefines its protagonist from third to first person, flips forward in time to offer a view of him from elsewhere, makes a subtle alteration of tense, and announces that the character’s age in the story is a matter of speculation even to the older self doing the narrating, is going to be a story about perception, whatever else it is.”
The boy who narrates lives with his parents in isolation on a hill near a run-down town. His father makes keys for the townspeople; these seem to have unusual properties which are never entirely defined.
“[My father] made keys. His customers would come up from the town and ask for the things for which people usually ask—love, money, to open things, to know the future, to fix animals, to fix things, to be stronger, to hurt someone or save someone, to fly—and he'd make them a key.”
His father sometimes kills animals which he throws into a hole in a nearby cave. These killings are disturbing and without reason. The boy feels that sometimes people are thrown down there too. One day the boy runs into town saying his father has killed his mother and he saw it. His mother is nowhere to be found and his father says she left and produced a goodbye letter. The boy remains in town for a while living with a group of street children. Eventually his father fetches him back. Life goes on and then the census taker arrives. It is worth noting that the boy is not an entirely reliable narrator.
The whole is rather eerie with lots of asides that don’t lead anywhere, but are interesting in themselves. Devotees of Mieville have argued that this is a Bas-Lag story (Mieville has written three novels in the Bas-Lag series) and will produce a great deal of evidence to make the argument.
There are nods in the book to Kafka and Borges and there is mystery, suspense and magic and of course there is an element of fairy tale as well. The narrator is writing as an adult and his circumstances are unclear as well. Because Mieville is writing and telling through the eyes of a child there is a great deal left unasked and unexplained and the whole can feel sparse at times. But then Mieville can also become almost baroque in its descriptiveness;
“There I, who’d known only the fierce spine-backed fish of the mountain streams and their animalcule prey, came to a sudden stop, slack with awe before a glass tank big enough to contain me, transported at some immense cost for I don’t know what market, full not with me or with any person but of brine and clots of black weed and clenching polyps and huge starfish, sluggishly crawling, feeling their way over tank-bottom stones like mottled hands.”
There is plenty of symbolism and the whole left me feeling that I do need to read more by Mieville
February 4, 2024
4.5 stars
short review for busy readers: If you know China Mieville’s style, you’ll know what you’re getting into: weird that makes more and more sense the longer you read. Much shorter than his others, but just as atmospheric and original. A slower read due to the style.
in detail:
This is my 4th Mieville and I am utterly enraptured.
A boy lives with his rough-but-loving mother and war-damaged father on a misty hillside above a partially destroyed town in what seems like a semi-restored post-apoc world.
The boy has seen his father kill animals for no reason and believes that he has started to kill people, too, in his odd madness.
When the boy believes he witnessed his mother’s murder, he flees to the town and tells everyone he can what happened. Some believe him, some don’t. In any case, he’s returned to the hill and his father because that’s where he belongs.
And here is the central conundrum: how do you live with a parent you believe to be off their rocker in a way, and perfectly capable of murder? The uneasy tension between the two is chalk full of pitfalls, secrets, lies and the stress of being in close quarters with someone you distrust so much.
Were they true, these accusations? Did the boy’s father really kill his mother? Or was there something the boy saw and knew which created these myths built of fear and distrust in their minds ?
Whatever the case, Mieville tightly weaves the web of mystery and secrets around his characters, making their every move a balanced step along the cliff’s edge.
And in the end, I wanted more of the story. Much much more.
But this is a novella or a short novel and only meant to present the dynamic, not explore it to its final ends.
And yes, in typical Mieville fashion, the story starts confusingly and you will have to go back and read the start again once you’ve finished to make sense of it all (reason for the docking of a half a star) but the images and the language are so enthralling it hardly matters.
This is my favourite Mieville so far, simply because it spoke to me personally.
short review for busy readers: If you know China Mieville’s style, you’ll know what you’re getting into: weird that makes more and more sense the longer you read. Much shorter than his others, but just as atmospheric and original. A slower read due to the style.
in detail:
This is my 4th Mieville and I am utterly enraptured.
A boy lives with his rough-but-loving mother and war-damaged father on a misty hillside above a partially destroyed town in what seems like a semi-restored post-apoc world.
The boy has seen his father kill animals for no reason and believes that he has started to kill people, too, in his odd madness.
When the boy believes he witnessed his mother’s murder, he flees to the town and tells everyone he can what happened. Some believe him, some don’t. In any case, he’s returned to the hill and his father because that’s where he belongs.
And here is the central conundrum: how do you live with a parent you believe to be off their rocker in a way, and perfectly capable of murder? The uneasy tension between the two is chalk full of pitfalls, secrets, lies and the stress of being in close quarters with someone you distrust so much.
Were they true, these accusations? Did the boy’s father really kill his mother? Or was there something the boy saw and knew which created these myths built of fear and distrust in their minds ?
Whatever the case, Mieville tightly weaves the web of mystery and secrets around his characters, making their every move a balanced step along the cliff’s edge.
And in the end, I wanted more of the story. Much much more.
But this is a novella or a short novel and only meant to present the dynamic, not explore it to its final ends.
And yes, in typical Mieville fashion, the story starts confusingly and you will have to go back and read the start again once you’ve finished to make sense of it all (reason for the docking of a half a star) but the images and the language are so enthralling it hardly matters.
This is my favourite Mieville so far, simply because it spoke to me personally.
June 9, 2017
Wow - I really seem to be in the minority here, people loved this book. Me? Not so much. I'll write why as soon as I've gotten over my disappointment... It just seemed so promising.
Disclaimer: I may be unnecessarily hard on this book, but that is only because of its lost potential and my belief that the author is one of the most essential writers of this era.
There's no denying China Miéville is an extraordinary, challenging writer. I've personally had a slightly mixed-bag experience with his books, beginning with the beguiling (and utterly bonkers) Railsea before falling utterly head-over-heels with the language of Embassytown. The City & the City was incredible but difficult, slow-going, while Un Lun Dun was a perfectly adequate disappointment, feeling rather too derivative (a younger Neverwhere, perhaps) but still fun. The least of his books, for me, was Kraken, which still felt somewhat too familiar, and not nearly fun enough for its concept.
His best works are exceptional, his worst at least inventive. It's a fine line that separates the two, and I think it has something to do with the combination of idea and language. Railsea and Embassytown had both, The City and the City had such an astounding idea that the duller writing was excused.
This Census Taker has an idea, but it is hidden out of sight in the corners and crevices of the story. You can catch glimpses of it, out of the corner of your eye - but there is nothing to grab on to, nothing solid to hold. Comprehension is not the end-game here, and this aspect of the story I unreservedly loved.
There are ruined cities and destroyed civilisations in the distance. The boy is fighting to understand the destruction of his own, small world, while the world itself seems to be barely settling from its own destruction.
I pictured this:
Shaun Tan's worlds (this one is from The Arrival) and astounding imageries are a perfect fit, and if this book were ever to be illustrated then he is the only one to do it justice, I think. But for it to be worthy of illustration, this story needs some serious work.
The lack of clarity is emphatically not an issue here. It is the pure, physical writing that lets down everything else. I've seen Miéville spin words into gold, pull the most obscure and perfect phrase from the depths of this language - and possibly others, too - turn punctuation into plot and each time capture in all in the most perfect font possible. Language, for him, is clearly incredibly important, and his skill with it is undeniable. So why is this book so painful to read?
The constant changing of tenses is awkward, the shifts between first, second, and third person perspectives are hideously clumsy. Since reading this, I've seen reviews that argue it intentionally re-creates the confusion the main character is feeling. The argument is admittedly very valid, and fits with how Miéville tends to write, pushing boundaries. That doesn't mean it works. Risks are essential, yes, and he seems always willing to take them. Risks don't always pay off.
This review here, by Bill Morris, says it best:
His other words - those that aren't changing tenses and times and perspectives - lie flat and dull on the page. There is no emotional investment, we are left clinically cold - and not through fear but through apathy. If that was also the intent then I applaud, it worked. But his previous books have shown the ability to create a similar tension without the complete lack of emotion, "cardboard cutouts" and I so badly wanted that to be the case again.
As I said before, This Census-Taker has an idea, but that is lost in the experiment. I only wish the idea had triumphed here.
Disclaimer: I may be unnecessarily hard on this book, but that is only because of its lost potential and my belief that the author is one of the most essential writers of this era.
There's no denying China Miéville is an extraordinary, challenging writer. I've personally had a slightly mixed-bag experience with his books, beginning with the beguiling (and utterly bonkers) Railsea before falling utterly head-over-heels with the language of Embassytown. The City & the City was incredible but difficult, slow-going, while Un Lun Dun was a perfectly adequate disappointment, feeling rather too derivative (a younger Neverwhere, perhaps) but still fun. The least of his books, for me, was Kraken, which still felt somewhat too familiar, and not nearly fun enough for its concept.
His best works are exceptional, his worst at least inventive. It's a fine line that separates the two, and I think it has something to do with the combination of idea and language. Railsea and Embassytown had both, The City and the City had such an astounding idea that the duller writing was excused.
This Census Taker has an idea, but it is hidden out of sight in the corners and crevices of the story. You can catch glimpses of it, out of the corner of your eye - but there is nothing to grab on to, nothing solid to hold. Comprehension is not the end-game here, and this aspect of the story I unreservedly loved.
There are ruined cities and destroyed civilisations in the distance. The boy is fighting to understand the destruction of his own, small world, while the world itself seems to be barely settling from its own destruction.
I pictured this:
Shaun Tan's worlds (this one is from The Arrival) and astounding imageries are a perfect fit, and if this book were ever to be illustrated then he is the only one to do it justice, I think. But for it to be worthy of illustration, this story needs some serious work.
The lack of clarity is emphatically not an issue here. It is the pure, physical writing that lets down everything else. I've seen Miéville spin words into gold, pull the most obscure and perfect phrase from the depths of this language - and possibly others, too - turn punctuation into plot and each time capture in all in the most perfect font possible. Language, for him, is clearly incredibly important, and his skill with it is undeniable. So why is this book so painful to read?
The constant changing of tenses is awkward, the shifts between first, second, and third person perspectives are hideously clumsy. Since reading this, I've seen reviews that argue it intentionally re-creates the confusion the main character is feeling. The argument is admittedly very valid, and fits with how Miéville tends to write, pushing boundaries. That doesn't mean it works. Risks are essential, yes, and he seems always willing to take them. Risks don't always pay off.
This review here, by Bill Morris, says it best:
"There was no escaping the fact that I was reading a bad book by a very fine writer, but it occurred to me that this was actually a good thing. China Miéville, a writer with an international cult following whose commercial success is every bit as secure as Murakami or Franzen’s, had dared to do something that they, so far, have not. He had dared to take risks, he had dared to leave his comfort zone, he had dared to fail. And that’s precisely what he did. I find a failure of this kind far more admirable, if not more satisfying, than another safe commercial success."
His other words - those that aren't changing tenses and times and perspectives - lie flat and dull on the page. There is no emotional investment, we are left clinically cold - and not through fear but through apathy. If that was also the intent then I applaud, it worked. But his previous books have shown the ability to create a similar tension without the complete lack of emotion, "cardboard cutouts" and I so badly wanted that to be the case again.
As I said before, This Census-Taker has an idea, but that is lost in the experiment. I only wish the idea had triumphed here.
December 16, 2018
My beloved China Mieville took some very Lovecraftian elements and some odd Kafkaesque ones and blended them with his amazing prose into a strange, beautiful and sometimes confusing novella. I mention Lovecraft, because it is creepy, ineffable and creates a thick atmosphere of dread and insolation; and Kafka because there is no escape, no clear reason for the way things are in “This Census Taker”.
The narration slips from first to third and then to second person, sometimes within a single sentence. We get a feeling that the story is set in an isolated country where something terrible has happened, but it isn’t clear if it was a war or some ecological disaster. Things are bleak, resources are scarce, and barter seems to be the way the local economy works. There is no technology more complicated than a generator anywhere in sight. And there is a bottomless pit within walking distance from the boy’s house…
Even a rabid fangirl like myself has to admit that it is hard to engage with “This Census Taker”: the world-building and narrative choices make this quite a dense little novelette – and it is too short for that density to be fully rewarding (in “Perdido Street Station” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) for instance, he created an equally dense world, but took a lot of time to explore it and really let the reader sink their teeth into it) and too deliberately vague. But it is darkly fascinating and will probably sear some haunting images in your mind.
Are the narrator's memories accurate, or warped by old and deeply ingrained trauma? Are the memories even his, or is the boy another person altogether? Did one of his parents really kill the other? Are there monsters or are those simply a way the child's mind protected itself from even more horrible possibilities? Mieville will never answer those questions, and while that can be a tad frustrating, I also think it's better this way. This book requires a bit of patience, and while it is not his best work, it is still a worthy addition to his catalogue. Definitely more for the established fans than for the newbies.
The narration slips from first to third and then to second person, sometimes within a single sentence. We get a feeling that the story is set in an isolated country where something terrible has happened, but it isn’t clear if it was a war or some ecological disaster. Things are bleak, resources are scarce, and barter seems to be the way the local economy works. There is no technology more complicated than a generator anywhere in sight. And there is a bottomless pit within walking distance from the boy’s house…
Even a rabid fangirl like myself has to admit that it is hard to engage with “This Census Taker”: the world-building and narrative choices make this quite a dense little novelette – and it is too short for that density to be fully rewarding (in “Perdido Street Station” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) for instance, he created an equally dense world, but took a lot of time to explore it and really let the reader sink their teeth into it) and too deliberately vague. But it is darkly fascinating and will probably sear some haunting images in your mind.
Are the narrator's memories accurate, or warped by old and deeply ingrained trauma? Are the memories even his, or is the boy another person altogether? Did one of his parents really kill the other? Are there monsters or are those simply a way the child's mind protected itself from even more horrible possibilities? Mieville will never answer those questions, and while that can be a tad frustrating, I also think it's better this way. This book requires a bit of patience, and while it is not his best work, it is still a worthy addition to his catalogue. Definitely more for the established fans than for the newbies.
November 24, 2015
3.5 stars.
It's not the epic novel China Miéville's readers have been anxiously awaiting since 2010's Embassytown. (That will come with 2016's The Last Days of New Paris.) But his novella This Census-Taker proves that the New Weird superstar has not lost the ability to captivate and unnerve. As with all of Miéville's work, it begins with a city, sprawling incongruously up the slopes of a pair of steep hills (or perhaps small mountain peaks), the gap between spanned by a bridge. Near the top of one peak, in one of the city's less desirable neighborhoods, a boy lives with his parents. The story that unfolds will be narrated by the man the boy will become, looking back on a frightening and formative time in his life, still groping for understanding.
The boy's mother spends her days gardening, and going on sojourns into the lower city, where the boy accompanies her while she conducts business that's beyond a child's understanding. His father is a keymaker. Despite their personal dislike of the man, citizens come to him with any number of requests, and he creates a key for them. They aren't necessarily for doors. The father labors over these for sometimes a whole day or more.
The peak is high, and the family's house is too large for their needs and falling into disrepair. The boy whiles away his time in a large attic room where his parents rarely go, making secret drawings on the fading wallpaper. If there is a city dump, it's too far to be convenient, and his parents dispose of their trash by pitching it into a deep hole in a nearby cave. This will be important.
The father has another aspect to his character that the boy discovers, quite by accident. (continued...)
It's not the epic novel China Miéville's readers have been anxiously awaiting since 2010's Embassytown. (That will come with 2016's The Last Days of New Paris.) But his novella This Census-Taker proves that the New Weird superstar has not lost the ability to captivate and unnerve. As with all of Miéville's work, it begins with a city, sprawling incongruously up the slopes of a pair of steep hills (or perhaps small mountain peaks), the gap between spanned by a bridge. Near the top of one peak, in one of the city's less desirable neighborhoods, a boy lives with his parents. The story that unfolds will be narrated by the man the boy will become, looking back on a frightening and formative time in his life, still groping for understanding.
The boy's mother spends her days gardening, and going on sojourns into the lower city, where the boy accompanies her while she conducts business that's beyond a child's understanding. His father is a keymaker. Despite their personal dislike of the man, citizens come to him with any number of requests, and he creates a key for them. They aren't necessarily for doors. The father labors over these for sometimes a whole day or more.
The peak is high, and the family's house is too large for their needs and falling into disrepair. The boy whiles away his time in a large attic room where his parents rarely go, making secret drawings on the fading wallpaper. If there is a city dump, it's too far to be convenient, and his parents dispose of their trash by pitching it into a deep hole in a nearby cave. This will be important.
The father has another aspect to his character that the boy discovers, quite by accident. (continued...)
February 14, 2016
Attempting to describe a China Miéville work of fiction to someone that hasn't read him is like trying to describe the word wet to a being that has never experienced the sensation; adjectives accumulate but they are just glancing blows to the essence. If you are reading this review and are familiar with CM's work I hope I make sense here on why this short book failed me. If you've not read any CM and I do a poor job of conveying the wetness of this reading experience, I only ask that you dive in head first to another CM novel (any from the Bas-Lag trilogy will do) before trying this novel.
Miéville is a master storyteller and wordsmith - "weird fiction" has been associated with his writing style and that is as good a moniker as any. What works so amazingly well in his longer novels is his ability to thread Lovecraftian storylines with beautifully constructed characters rich in emotional depth that echo the best/worst of humanity. Having read all of his published works I believe that it takes at least 300+ pages for this knitting to be effective; his short fiction and novellas - while often good - never achieve the Chine Miéville level of excellence found in his longer novels.
This Census-Taker is my Exhibit A in a CM work that misses the CM mark. There are so many jarring shifts in perspective throughout the story (sometimes one paragraph to the next) that the protagonist of the story might very well be you, the Reader - a ghost haunting this narrative and inhabiting the characters in turn or given omniscient access to their every thought. I'm not entirely certain what this book wanted to be; it feels like a mystery wrapped in a spooky tale with a side of magic (maybe?) sprinkled on top. Was there murder commited here? That doesn't seem to be the point for CM, which is fine - it is his story to tell - but then what IS the point? I needed about 100 more pages of the Census-Taker (both the character and the book itself) to make heads or tails of anything in this jumble of loose ends and frustrations.
I see that CM has another book releasing in August of this year. It is 150 pages, give or take. As a big CM fan I am hoping this work will encompass his longer narrative skills - and if not, I sincerely hope he takes the time needed to craft a future novel reminiscent of his fabulous first works.
January 23, 2016
So there's a story about a people with unusual powers that used those powers in some huge way, perhaps in a conflict, and have now spread themselves all over the world. And these people are strange and important enough that every single one of them needs to be tracked down and accounted for.
This isn't that story.
Instead, this is a story at the edges of that one, told in shifting first, second and third person narrative and measured in love, betrayal, hope and trust of a young boy.
There's a boy who is the son of a local woman, departed and returned with a foreign husband and now living as one of the barely-tolerated up-hillers from the local town. The father is strange. He makes keys that have bizarre properties and unlock things like wealth or the future, but he's also prone to snap and kill things. The story is told from the point of view of the boy and how he lives, terrified, in the shadow of this man and what happens when one day he comes home to find his father murdering his mother.
This is a strange book. As I said, the oddly intimate and a bit weird point of view story of the boy is actually telling us the first story, but almost entirely by implication and framing. The terror of the boy towards his father and the various betrayals to the boy, father, friend and community is all visceral, but you know things turn out because the narrative is from the adult talking about his childhood.
As usual for Miéville, the weird meter is turned to eleven. And also as usual for Miéville it's very, very good.
This isn't that story.
Instead, this is a story at the edges of that one, told in shifting first, second and third person narrative and measured in love, betrayal, hope and trust of a young boy.
There's a boy who is the son of a local woman, departed and returned with a foreign husband and now living as one of the barely-tolerated up-hillers from the local town. The father is strange. He makes keys that have bizarre properties and unlock things like wealth or the future, but he's also prone to snap and kill things. The story is told from the point of view of the boy and how he lives, terrified, in the shadow of this man and what happens when one day he comes home to find his father murdering his mother.
This is a strange book. As I said, the oddly intimate and a bit weird point of view story of the boy is actually telling us the first story, but almost entirely by implication and framing. The terror of the boy towards his father and the various betrayals to the boy, father, friend and community is all visceral, but you know things turn out because the narrative is from the adult talking about his childhood.
As usual for Miéville, the weird meter is turned to eleven. And also as usual for Miéville it's very, very good.
November 18, 2015
Um...I'm not sure what I just read, but I liked it? Then again, that's pretty much my reaction to all China Mieville, so there you go.
January 31, 2016
Atmospheric and oppressive. Compulsively readable. This story, part horror, part thriller, part coming of age, begins with an unnamed boy running down a hill, from where he lives, into a rural town, with his arms outstretched, his hands splayed as if dripping paint or blood, though there is neither of those things there, only dirt common to a boy of nine that he is. He's in a panic, barely able to tell the townsfolk what he knows, what has happened, what violence he has witnessed, especially since he's not even certain in his own mind what he saw. The images stacked in his memory keep changing, faces and bodies interchanging. He only knows he needs help and protection from someone in his own home. What follows is a tense read, doom and dread hanging over the intelligent and cautious boy who remains unnamed except for the generic moniker the feral children in town have bestowed upon him--uphiller.
As the boy tells the reader his story from some point in time in the future, recalling details that happened both before and after the horrible thing happened, his voice jumps from first person to third, then to second, then back to each of those in turn, sometimes changing within the same sentence, to great effect. And the horrible thing is, the horrible thing is but one of many horrible things that may or may not have happened. This is a story that is meant to keep the reader guessing as to what is real or what might be imagined. This is a story about a boy trapped in unthinkable circumstances, the reader trapped right along with him. But this isn't a conventional horror story with overt acts of terror, not nearly as much as implied ones. But most of all, this is a story of a boy at the mercy of others and at the mercy of the circumstances of his birth, living an isolated life, even when among other people.
But what really sets this story above others from this mix of genres was the amazing writing contained within it that flowed in a poetic stream, the rush of words beautiful and lulling even as the content was enough to make the reader uneasy, if not downright queasy, at times. There was an economy of words here, even as the writing was most descriptive, the author using all his senses, including a sixth one, to instill an atavistic fear in the reader.
Here are some passages that tell so much about the boy and his parents and his life on the hill, saying in only a couple of sentences what some writers might have taken whole paragraphs to say:
"It's best to live up here," my father told me. "Where the air's good and thin, not too heavy. It doesn't get in the way."
"I grew up with the constant wind of the hill whispering to me and pushing back my dark fringe. Behind its sounds were the faint and far-off and occasional shouts of animals and the clack of rock-fall. Sometimes there was an engine or the percussion of a distant shotgun."
"I had no money and my face was not winning enough that I was ever given anything free by candy-sellers. My mother stared as if overwhelmed at everything in the huts we passed, all the bright packets dangling within, with an expression that made me want desperately to be older for her."
"I stood in the remnants of the garden on an evening full of sunlight lingering on the slopes, and below the raucous goat complaining I became aware of another growing beat. My insides clenched. My father's window glowed against the creeping dark. He huddled within, bent by the sill. He was the color of the dirt on the window..."
I want to add that I'm not a die hard fan of this author. I've only read The City & the City, which I really enjoyed, and Railsea, which I didn't. So I thought I'd break the tie with this book, seeing where it would land. It landed me with an absorbing book that has me eager to try another one by the author.
As the boy tells the reader his story from some point in time in the future, recalling details that happened both before and after the horrible thing happened, his voice jumps from first person to third, then to second, then back to each of those in turn, sometimes changing within the same sentence, to great effect. And the horrible thing is, the horrible thing is but one of many horrible things that may or may not have happened. This is a story that is meant to keep the reader guessing as to what is real or what might be imagined. This is a story about a boy trapped in unthinkable circumstances, the reader trapped right along with him. But this isn't a conventional horror story with overt acts of terror, not nearly as much as implied ones. But most of all, this is a story of a boy at the mercy of others and at the mercy of the circumstances of his birth, living an isolated life, even when among other people.
But what really sets this story above others from this mix of genres was the amazing writing contained within it that flowed in a poetic stream, the rush of words beautiful and lulling even as the content was enough to make the reader uneasy, if not downright queasy, at times. There was an economy of words here, even as the writing was most descriptive, the author using all his senses, including a sixth one, to instill an atavistic fear in the reader.
Here are some passages that tell so much about the boy and his parents and his life on the hill, saying in only a couple of sentences what some writers might have taken whole paragraphs to say:
"It's best to live up here," my father told me. "Where the air's good and thin, not too heavy. It doesn't get in the way."
"I grew up with the constant wind of the hill whispering to me and pushing back my dark fringe. Behind its sounds were the faint and far-off and occasional shouts of animals and the clack of rock-fall. Sometimes there was an engine or the percussion of a distant shotgun."
"I had no money and my face was not winning enough that I was ever given anything free by candy-sellers. My mother stared as if overwhelmed at everything in the huts we passed, all the bright packets dangling within, with an expression that made me want desperately to be older for her."
"I stood in the remnants of the garden on an evening full of sunlight lingering on the slopes, and below the raucous goat complaining I became aware of another growing beat. My insides clenched. My father's window glowed against the creeping dark. He huddled within, bent by the sill. He was the color of the dirt on the window..."
I want to add that I'm not a die hard fan of this author. I've only read The City & the City, which I really enjoyed, and Railsea, which I didn't. So I thought I'd break the tie with this book, seeing where it would land. It landed me with an absorbing book that has me eager to try another one by the author.
May 12, 2019
Ich habe dieses Buch gekauft, weil mich das Cover (einsame Berggegend, Düsternis) zusammen mit dem überschaubaren Umfang an zwei andere Autoren erinnerte: Andrea Maria Schenkel und Jacques Chessex. Ich hatte also eher eine Kriminalgeschichte im Kopf, an der sich im Folgenden die gesellschaftlichen Abgründe eines Bergdorfes manifestieren. Zudem ist das Buch im wunderbar ambitionierten Liebeskind Verlag erschienen, der auch Donald Ray Pollock verlegt.
Der Autor sagte mir bis dahin nichts, der Name schien mir recht ungewöhnlich. Der Nachname scheinbar französisch (vielleicht dachte ich auch deshalb an Chessex) und der Vorname einfach nur exotisch (vielleicht jemand mit Migrationshintergrund?) Wikipedia schuf Abhilfe und sorgte bei mir für zwei Reaktionen: 1. Verdammt, ich habe Fantasy gekauft? 2. Was für ein interessanter, hochgebildeter, politisch denkender Mann. Jemand der sich der Richtung des „New Weird“ verschrieben hat, einer Richtung der Fantasy, von der ich nie zuvor gehört habe.
Zurück zum Buch: Über weite Strecken hinweg würde ich auch gar nicht von Fantasy reden (Schlüssel mit Zauberwirkung sind das eindeutigste Indiz auf dieses Genre). Vieles was mysteriös erscheint, könnte auch einfach nur im Kopf des erzählenden Jungen entstehen, befördert von der Einsamkeit, in der er aufwächst und den Impressionen des nahen Bergdorfes, das kriegszerstört und völlig verarmt ist. Das meiste bleibt sehr vage, es gibt Andeutungen auf Kriege, auf die Zerstörung von Maschinen (evtl. Roboter?), auf politische Verfolgung, die sich vielleicht in der titelgebenden Volkszählung widerspiegelt.
Einigen Lesern mag das zu hoch gegriffen sein, aber ich fühlte mich immer wieder an Franz Kafka erinnert. Das liegt an der Beunruhigung, die manche Sätze und Szenen auslösen, ohne dass ich erklären könnte warum; es liegt auch daran, dass Gesetzesvertreter nicht vertrauenswürdig erscheinen und an dem Vater-Sohn-Konflikt. Es liegt nicht zuletzt an einer Beschreibung wie dieser:
Häuser auf Brücken sind etwas Skandalöses. Eine Brücke möchte nicht sein. Könnte sie sich eine eigene Form aussuchen, dann hätte die Brücke einfach keine, sie wäre ein Nichtraum, der einen Ort mit einem anderen über einen Fluss oder eine Straße, ein Gewirr aus Eisenbahngleisen oder einen Steinbruch hinweg verbindet, eine Insel an eine andere kettet oder an das Festland, von dem sie sich fortmüht. Der Traum einer Brücke besteht aus einer Frau, die an einer Schlucht steht und einen Schritt nach vorn tut, als sei es ihre Aufgabe zu sterben, doch ihr Fuß setzt direkt auf der anderen Seite auf. Eine Brücke ist besser als gar keine, ihr höchstes Ziel ist Lückenlosigkeit, und allein diese Tatsache sollte ihr Schande bereiten.
Die Brücke entwickelt hier ein Eigenleben, das mich an Kafkas gleichnamige Erzählung erinnerte, die mit den Worten beginnt: „Ich war steif und kalt. Ich war eine Brücke, über einem Abgrund lag ich.“
Sicher ist Kafkas Erzählung brillanter als diese Geschichte, aber doch scheint mir Dieser Volkszähler eine Art Hommage an Kafka zu sein und zwar beileibe keine schlechte.
Der Gedanke scheint mir um so naheliegender, als Miéville in The Last Days of New Paris die Auseinandersetzung mit André Breton und den Surrealisten sucht: Ein Buch, das ich sicher ebenfalls lesen werde.
Der Autor sagte mir bis dahin nichts, der Name schien mir recht ungewöhnlich. Der Nachname scheinbar französisch (vielleicht dachte ich auch deshalb an Chessex) und der Vorname einfach nur exotisch (vielleicht jemand mit Migrationshintergrund?) Wikipedia schuf Abhilfe und sorgte bei mir für zwei Reaktionen: 1. Verdammt, ich habe Fantasy gekauft? 2. Was für ein interessanter, hochgebildeter, politisch denkender Mann. Jemand der sich der Richtung des „New Weird“ verschrieben hat, einer Richtung der Fantasy, von der ich nie zuvor gehört habe.
Zurück zum Buch: Über weite Strecken hinweg würde ich auch gar nicht von Fantasy reden (Schlüssel mit Zauberwirkung sind das eindeutigste Indiz auf dieses Genre). Vieles was mysteriös erscheint, könnte auch einfach nur im Kopf des erzählenden Jungen entstehen, befördert von der Einsamkeit, in der er aufwächst und den Impressionen des nahen Bergdorfes, das kriegszerstört und völlig verarmt ist. Das meiste bleibt sehr vage, es gibt Andeutungen auf Kriege, auf die Zerstörung von Maschinen (evtl. Roboter?), auf politische Verfolgung, die sich vielleicht in der titelgebenden Volkszählung widerspiegelt.
Einigen Lesern mag das zu hoch gegriffen sein, aber ich fühlte mich immer wieder an Franz Kafka erinnert. Das liegt an der Beunruhigung, die manche Sätze und Szenen auslösen, ohne dass ich erklären könnte warum; es liegt auch daran, dass Gesetzesvertreter nicht vertrauenswürdig erscheinen und an dem Vater-Sohn-Konflikt. Es liegt nicht zuletzt an einer Beschreibung wie dieser:
Häuser auf Brücken sind etwas Skandalöses. Eine Brücke möchte nicht sein. Könnte sie sich eine eigene Form aussuchen, dann hätte die Brücke einfach keine, sie wäre ein Nichtraum, der einen Ort mit einem anderen über einen Fluss oder eine Straße, ein Gewirr aus Eisenbahngleisen oder einen Steinbruch hinweg verbindet, eine Insel an eine andere kettet oder an das Festland, von dem sie sich fortmüht. Der Traum einer Brücke besteht aus einer Frau, die an einer Schlucht steht und einen Schritt nach vorn tut, als sei es ihre Aufgabe zu sterben, doch ihr Fuß setzt direkt auf der anderen Seite auf. Eine Brücke ist besser als gar keine, ihr höchstes Ziel ist Lückenlosigkeit, und allein diese Tatsache sollte ihr Schande bereiten.
Die Brücke entwickelt hier ein Eigenleben, das mich an Kafkas gleichnamige Erzählung erinnerte, die mit den Worten beginnt: „Ich war steif und kalt. Ich war eine Brücke, über einem Abgrund lag ich.“
Sicher ist Kafkas Erzählung brillanter als diese Geschichte, aber doch scheint mir Dieser Volkszähler eine Art Hommage an Kafka zu sein und zwar beileibe keine schlechte.
Der Gedanke scheint mir um so naheliegender, als Miéville in The Last Days of New Paris die Auseinandersetzung mit André Breton und den Surrealisten sucht: Ein Buch, das ich sicher ebenfalls lesen werde.
September 20, 2021
This book took me by surprise.
It draws you in and then meticulously hides the answers. You figure out certain parts - this is clearly the third book, the book one writes because one must, but not one to be read by others. For that there is a second book, the noisiest of the three, of which you get only glimpses. You know the world fell apart, and this world, where machines where exterminated, returned to its pre-industrial stage, dominated by superstition and only a semblance of law. The first book is just a numerical record, a book of numbers, supposed to help the war inside, the government of something else. This is the main census-taker's book - the least interesting one.
Let's return to the third book, the one he writes because it costs too much for him not to write it. Bridge over abyss, where parentless children live and hunt, magical keys of the mysterious father figure driven by a periodically irresistible urge to kill, the hole in the hill that absorbs everything thrown in.
I may have the key from the book, the key cut by the murderous father. You can see for yourself if it fits the lock, if it opens the weather... The key I see is in the bottle, where lizard is, which is way too big to get into the bottle. It must have grown inside. You can put a baby in the bottle, feed it, let it grow into a man or a woman - you find this towards the end of the book. You see that the child is in such a bottle - a property of an abusing parent (Why do you want me?), incapable of running away until this census-taker comes along
It draws you in and then meticulously hides the answers. You figure out certain parts - this is clearly the third book, the book one writes because one must, but not one to be read by others. For that there is a second book, the noisiest of the three, of which you get only glimpses. You know the world fell apart, and this world, where machines where exterminated, returned to its pre-industrial stage, dominated by superstition and only a semblance of law. The first book is just a numerical record, a book of numbers, supposed to help the war inside, the government of something else. This is the main census-taker's book - the least interesting one.
Let's return to the third book, the one he writes because it costs too much for him not to write it. Bridge over abyss, where parentless children live and hunt, magical keys of the mysterious father figure driven by a periodically irresistible urge to kill, the hole in the hill that absorbs everything thrown in.
I may have the key from the book, the key cut by the murderous father. You can see for yourself if it fits the lock, if it opens the weather... The key I see is in the bottle, where lizard is, which is way too big to get into the bottle. It must have grown inside. You can put a baby in the bottle, feed it, let it grow into a man or a woman - you find this towards the end of the book. You see that the child is in such a bottle - a property of an abusing parent (Why do you want me?), incapable of running away until this census-taker comes along
March 31, 2016
Oh China, I love you - but I love you more when you make a tiny amount of sense.
April 6, 2018
I can't sit here and sagely type to you the meaning of This Census-Taker. Neither its plot or its deeper, thematic meaning. I am full of confusions and questions and speculations. I do know that I was dazzled by Miéville's prose -- which I often am -- but in a new way, a foggy, struggling, back tracking, Joseph Conrad way.
I didn't realize it until I wrote those words, but the novel I most closely relate to This Census-Taker has to be Conrad's Heart of Darkness. There is colonization at work here, there is menace and hegemony, there is metaphysics and underlying threat, there is bureaucracy and its violent arm, there is an abyss and sound and imagination.
I will read this again and again in coming years, and I doubt I will ever pin down the whos? the whats? the whys? the hows? the whens? or the wheres?
I don't think I ever want to pin those questions down. I want to keep guessing at answers. I want to make them what I will, to let my imagination finish this story. I want to read this with friends and argue about meaning. I want to hang with that friend I am sure will hate this book and listen to them rant, then I can piss them off for loving it for all the same reasons they hate it. I need something new from Miéville. I hope it comes soon.
I didn't realize it until I wrote those words, but the novel I most closely relate to This Census-Taker has to be Conrad's Heart of Darkness. There is colonization at work here, there is menace and hegemony, there is metaphysics and underlying threat, there is bureaucracy and its violent arm, there is an abyss and sound and imagination.
I will read this again and again in coming years, and I doubt I will ever pin down the whos? the whats? the whys? the hows? the whens? or the wheres?
I don't think I ever want to pin those questions down. I want to keep guessing at answers. I want to make them what I will, to let my imagination finish this story. I want to read this with friends and argue about meaning. I want to hang with that friend I am sure will hate this book and listen to them rant, then I can piss them off for loving it for all the same reasons they hate it. I need something new from Miéville. I hope it comes soon.
July 11, 2016
Ignore the stars. My short review is something like: "shiver; shrug?"
August 28, 2018
This Census-Taker opens with a nameless boy running down a hill from his parents' house into the city below claiming he saw his mother murder his father. Or maybe it’s the other way around? This kid just can't seem to get his story straight!
This is my first foray into Miéville, not because it is his most popular or well-known work, but because it was a cool $6 for the brand-new hardcover in the bargain section. I get the feeling this isn't the most representative of his pioneering new weird approach, since it is a book where most of the oddness occurs maddeningly on the periphery.
The boy's father, for instance, comes from a far-away city, makes keys that grant people supernatural abilities, and beats random animals to death before throwing them into a seemingly-bottomless pit. The boy, who serves as the narrator of this book, is often given the opportunity to inquire about the nature of his father through his mother or father, but frustratingly is unconcerned with the goings-on of the world around him. I suppose it is fairly realistic for a child to be uninterested in his parent's history at a young age, but it makes for a frustrating reading experience.
Some might argue that Miéville is showing restraint in unveiling his world only in bits and pieces, and there's some merit to that. Though I am frustrated to not have had all my questions answered, the novella does convey a consistent tone of the world, and it is fun to imagine what else lurks beyond the city and the house on the hill. Even if I enjoyed a lot of the reading of this book, it left me feeling as if I was brought to the edge of discovery only to be denied answers at every turn.
[2.5 Stars]
With all that said, fire off your Miéville recommendations, because I'm looking forward to reading some of his more well-known works.
This is my first foray into Miéville, not because it is his most popular or well-known work, but because it was a cool $6 for the brand-new hardcover in the bargain section. I get the feeling this isn't the most representative of his pioneering new weird approach, since it is a book where most of the oddness occurs maddeningly on the periphery.
The boy's father, for instance, comes from a far-away city, makes keys that grant people supernatural abilities, and beats random animals to death before throwing them into a seemingly-bottomless pit. The boy, who serves as the narrator of this book, is often given the opportunity to inquire about the nature of his father through his mother or father, but frustratingly is unconcerned with the goings-on of the world around him. I suppose it is fairly realistic for a child to be uninterested in his parent's history at a young age, but it makes for a frustrating reading experience.
Some might argue that Miéville is showing restraint in unveiling his world only in bits and pieces, and there's some merit to that. Though I am frustrated to not have had all my questions answered, the novella does convey a consistent tone of the world, and it is fun to imagine what else lurks beyond the city and the house on the hill. Even if I enjoyed a lot of the reading of this book, it left me feeling as if I was brought to the edge of discovery only to be denied answers at every turn.
[2.5 Stars]
With all that said, fire off your Miéville recommendations, because I'm looking forward to reading some of his more well-known works.
March 25, 2023
Odd and mercurial to start, This Census-Taker eventually transitions into a more straightforward narrative, if flecked still with fantasy here and there. Some of the initially apparent holes can be closed with careful reading, but others remain unresolved even when the book ends. Still, despite the book’s persistent ambiguities, its worldbuilding and characterization are fairly intricate for such a short read, which I think works to its detriment. There is enough raw material here to make a full novel, but for whatever reason Miéville opted to keep it short. Novellas are meant to be more narrowly focused and self-contained, but this has a sprawling tendency, opening too many doors that still swing creaking in the wind by the last page. That said, I still enjoyed it. (3.5, rounded down)
January 5, 2021
CRITIQUE:
Progressive Enlightenment
Post-modernist critics tend to demean the traditional use of narrative in literary fiction, as if it's somehow beneath the intelligence of serious readers.
My two most recent reads have highlighted how fulfilling narrative can be when pushed to the limit.
In the case of the "Berlin Noir" crime trilogy, the narrative was so precisely assembled, it could have been plotted on graph paper. I couldn't help but admire the skill applied to the exercise.
Measured Revelation
In the case of "This Census-Taker", what is rewarding is the fact that, while the narrative is, to all intents and purposes, linear, it took almost until the end of the novel to work out exactly what was going on.
Meaning and significance are realised incrementally. Mieville utilises a measured revelation. Each step towards the end enlightens each of the steps that preceded it.
The Need for Evidence or Proof
I won't discuss the plot in any greater detail, because of spoiler concerns.
However, I will try to enumerate the material parts of which the whole is made.
There is a house, on a hill, above a town, that has a bridge, near which there are houses and shops. In the hill, there is a cave, at the bottom of which there is a hole.
An un-named boy has come here with his parents (his father is a key-maker) from some other city that has experienced an insurrection or apocalypse.
Counted Absences
The boy's parents have been shunned by the local townspeople. One day, the boy runs down the hill screaming that his mother killed his father. In a letter possibly forged by his father, his mother supposedly writes, "I must go away because I am not happy on this hill." His father is still alive, but his mother has disappeared. In the absence of evidence, it's not apparent whether his father has actually killed his mother. In the absence of the law, nobody is able to prove the truth (or otherwise) of either statement, and the boy is returned to the care of his father.
No Obstacle Withstands (1)
The person who comes closest to the truth is a census-taker who has come to count the population of the town and its environs. The census is intended to "reach our government's ultimate ends." It's part of the process of order being rebuilt out of the ashes of chaos. "When I came down that day, I wasn't running for the law, but the law found me."
The boy realises that in the life of the imagination, in writing, "In Keying/ No Obstacle Withstands." (1) Likewise, an absence, a hole, a gap or a gulf is something that must be filled or bridged in order to create or connect meaning. When the boy becomes a (this) census-taker/writer, he appreciates that "I counted absences in my head...I according to some purpose looking for the message left for me there."
Footnote 1: "No obstacle can withstand a noble idea that is supported by human will, perseverance, and truth." (Dr Marko Saravanja)
The five capitalised words of Mieville's sentence could be an acrostic for "I KNOW."
A Metaphor for Reading, Writing and Tale Telling
This mystery/fantasy is a hole, an absence that the boy (and Mieville the author, and we readers) must fill with images, words and meaning:
Geographical Absence
There is no authorial clue as to the setting of the novel.
The cover of the hardback shows a tree-covered mountain in black and white. However, I don't accept this as a legitimate clue as to the whereabouts of the novel.
In order to lock down the meaning of the novel, I tried to visualise or imagine my own version of the setting.
For me, it was set in Australia, although that might only be because I'm Australian. It would be interesting to compare how other readers visualised the setting, and whether they needed to visualise in order to make sense of it.
Although the novel is not as glamorous as the film, I imagined the setting of the film "The Dressmaker".
The fictional town of Dungatar (see image below) was built on a nature reserve along the road to the You Yangs Regional Park — an area of low-lying hills south of Melbourne:
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-2...
This is an alternative image of the hill above the town in the book:
Margaret Preston, "Shoalhaven Gorge"
Source: https://artblart.com/tag/gert-sellhei...
Here is an imagined image of the father (the keymaker):
Source: https://prabook.com/web/albert.tucker...
And the hunters/intruders:
Source: https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.c...
And Judy Davis as the mother?
ALTERNATIVE ENDING
[An Homage]:
It was just before sunset when the census-taker came back to my father's house on the hill. I was sitting on the front stairs, just like my father had told me to. He had gone down the hill to do some shopping in town.
The census-taker was carrying a gun, and wearing clothes that made him look like a hunter. He also looked a bit like my father when he was working in his room making keys. Even the gun looked like one of my father's.
"Come with me," he said. "I want to show you something."
He turned and walked towards the cave. I followed him. "Hurry up. We haven't got long." When we got inside the cave, it was starting to get dark, though the sun was still shining along the length of the cave, and I could see the hole. Besides, I was so familiar with the dimensions of the cave and where the hole was, I could see a rope descending into the hole.
"Climb down the rope," he said. "I want you to see what's down there."
I climbed down. It wasn't as hard as I expected. There were knots tied in the rope at regular intervals, which made it easy to hold onto.
The hole wasn't as deep as I expected. When I got to the bottom, I crawled towards the middle of the hole, but something was in my way. I could still see a little of the light from the sunset. I reached out and felt some clothing on the bottom. I realised it was my mother's dress. Then I looked over and saw my mother's face. I felt it, and it was cold. There was no way she could have been alive, after a week at the bottom of the hole. Next to her was the dead body of my goat.
"Did you see her?" The census-taker asked. I didn't answer.
Then I heard another voice. It sounded like my father. "Drop the gun!"
I heard the census-taker's boot slip on some of the rocks at the top of the hole, and they landed on me, where I was lying on the bottom of the hole.
Then I heard two gunshots. They were almost simultaneous, but they sounded different, as if they were fired by separate guns.
A body fell into the hole. I crawled towards it, and it was my father. He had a bullet wound in his chest, but he was already dead when he hit the floor. He definitely wasn't breathing.
The census-taker must have still been alive, because I could hear him crawling around at the top of the hole.
He asked, "Are you alright, boy?" He was out of breath.
As soon as I replied, I heard another gunshot. The bullet hit me in the chest, quite close to my left shoulder. I pressed my finger into the hole in my chest, and waited for somebody to find me there. I didn't like my chances. Not even Samma and Drobe knew there was a cave on the hill.
Two last things happened, while I was waiting. The rope and a gun both landed on the floor of the hole next to my father's body. I didn't hear any more from the census-taker. He was either dead or gone.
Progressive Enlightenment
Post-modernist critics tend to demean the traditional use of narrative in literary fiction, as if it's somehow beneath the intelligence of serious readers.
My two most recent reads have highlighted how fulfilling narrative can be when pushed to the limit.
In the case of the "Berlin Noir" crime trilogy, the narrative was so precisely assembled, it could have been plotted on graph paper. I couldn't help but admire the skill applied to the exercise.
Measured Revelation
In the case of "This Census-Taker", what is rewarding is the fact that, while the narrative is, to all intents and purposes, linear, it took almost until the end of the novel to work out exactly what was going on.
Meaning and significance are realised incrementally. Mieville utilises a measured revelation. Each step towards the end enlightens each of the steps that preceded it.
The Need for Evidence or Proof
I won't discuss the plot in any greater detail, because of spoiler concerns.
However, I will try to enumerate the material parts of which the whole is made.
There is a house, on a hill, above a town, that has a bridge, near which there are houses and shops. In the hill, there is a cave, at the bottom of which there is a hole.
An un-named boy has come here with his parents (his father is a key-maker) from some other city that has experienced an insurrection or apocalypse.
Counted Absences
The boy's parents have been shunned by the local townspeople. One day, the boy runs down the hill screaming that his mother killed his father. In a letter possibly forged by his father, his mother supposedly writes, "I must go away because I am not happy on this hill." His father is still alive, but his mother has disappeared. In the absence of evidence, it's not apparent whether his father has actually killed his mother. In the absence of the law, nobody is able to prove the truth (or otherwise) of either statement, and the boy is returned to the care of his father.
No Obstacle Withstands (1)
The person who comes closest to the truth is a census-taker who has come to count the population of the town and its environs. The census is intended to "reach our government's ultimate ends." It's part of the process of order being rebuilt out of the ashes of chaos. "When I came down that day, I wasn't running for the law, but the law found me."
The boy realises that in the life of the imagination, in writing, "In Keying/ No Obstacle Withstands." (1) Likewise, an absence, a hole, a gap or a gulf is something that must be filled or bridged in order to create or connect meaning. When the boy becomes a (this) census-taker/writer, he appreciates that "I counted absences in my head...I according to some purpose looking for the message left for me there."
Footnote 1: "No obstacle can withstand a noble idea that is supported by human will, perseverance, and truth." (Dr Marko Saravanja)
The five capitalised words of Mieville's sentence could be an acrostic for "I KNOW."
A Metaphor for Reading, Writing and Tale Telling
This mystery/fantasy is a hole, an absence that the boy (and Mieville the author, and we readers) must fill with images, words and meaning:
"The [second] book's for readers...It's the book for telling...You can still use it to tell secrets and send messages. Even so. You could say them right out, but you can hide them in words, too; in their letters, in the ordering on lines, the arrangements and rhythms...The second book's performance."
Geographical Absence
There is no authorial clue as to the setting of the novel.
The cover of the hardback shows a tree-covered mountain in black and white. However, I don't accept this as a legitimate clue as to the whereabouts of the novel.
In order to lock down the meaning of the novel, I tried to visualise or imagine my own version of the setting.
For me, it was set in Australia, although that might only be because I'm Australian. It would be interesting to compare how other readers visualised the setting, and whether they needed to visualise in order to make sense of it.
Although the novel is not as glamorous as the film, I imagined the setting of the film "The Dressmaker".
The fictional town of Dungatar (see image below) was built on a nature reserve along the road to the You Yangs Regional Park — an area of low-lying hills south of Melbourne:
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-2...
This is an alternative image of the hill above the town in the book:
Margaret Preston, "Shoalhaven Gorge"
Source: https://artblart.com/tag/gert-sellhei...
Here is an imagined image of the father (the keymaker):
Source: https://prabook.com/web/albert.tucker...
And the hunters/intruders:
Source: https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.c...
And Judy Davis as the mother?
ALTERNATIVE ENDING
[An Homage]:
It was just before sunset when the census-taker came back to my father's house on the hill. I was sitting on the front stairs, just like my father had told me to. He had gone down the hill to do some shopping in town.
The census-taker was carrying a gun, and wearing clothes that made him look like a hunter. He also looked a bit like my father when he was working in his room making keys. Even the gun looked like one of my father's.
"Come with me," he said. "I want to show you something."
He turned and walked towards the cave. I followed him. "Hurry up. We haven't got long." When we got inside the cave, it was starting to get dark, though the sun was still shining along the length of the cave, and I could see the hole. Besides, I was so familiar with the dimensions of the cave and where the hole was, I could see a rope descending into the hole.
"Climb down the rope," he said. "I want you to see what's down there."
I climbed down. It wasn't as hard as I expected. There were knots tied in the rope at regular intervals, which made it easy to hold onto.
The hole wasn't as deep as I expected. When I got to the bottom, I crawled towards the middle of the hole, but something was in my way. I could still see a little of the light from the sunset. I reached out and felt some clothing on the bottom. I realised it was my mother's dress. Then I looked over and saw my mother's face. I felt it, and it was cold. There was no way she could have been alive, after a week at the bottom of the hole. Next to her was the dead body of my goat.
"Did you see her?" The census-taker asked. I didn't answer.
Then I heard another voice. It sounded like my father. "Drop the gun!"
I heard the census-taker's boot slip on some of the rocks at the top of the hole, and they landed on me, where I was lying on the bottom of the hole.
Then I heard two gunshots. They were almost simultaneous, but they sounded different, as if they were fired by separate guns.
A body fell into the hole. I crawled towards it, and it was my father. He had a bullet wound in his chest, but he was already dead when he hit the floor. He definitely wasn't breathing.
The census-taker must have still been alive, because I could hear him crawling around at the top of the hole.
He asked, "Are you alright, boy?" He was out of breath.
As soon as I replied, I heard another gunshot. The bullet hit me in the chest, quite close to my left shoulder. I pressed my finger into the hole in my chest, and waited for somebody to find me there. I didn't like my chances. Not even Samma and Drobe knew there was a cave on the hill.
Two last things happened, while I was waiting. The rope and a gun both landed on the floor of the hole next to my father's body. I didn't hear any more from the census-taker. He was either dead or gone.
June 29, 2017
2017 Hugos nominee for Best Novella, and I honestly don't know what to make of this book. It's purposefully cryptic and vague, and there's a haziness of identity throughout -- "the boy" vs. "I" vs. "you", our narrator blurring pronouns in his retelling -- and the chronology see-saws back and forth, and yet that wasn't even the problem. I could follow that easily enough. Where This Census-Taker lost me was the meandering prose and a lack of direction, and that it so stubbornly refuses categorisation and doesn't seem to know what to do with itself either. It's often been categorised as horror, but it's more vaguely unsettling than truly horrific. It's not really the tale of a boy being whisked off to a mystical new profession, either, because you don't get enough information about his future. It's not entirely a murder mystery either. So what in the world is it?
So I really struggled with keeping my interest, and literally right when the story felt like it had picked up and I was finally going to get some answers, then... it ends. I was caught off-guard because the last chunk of the book is a preview of another novella, so I didn't realise I was at the end -- "Wait, it's over already? BUT I WANTED TO FIND OUT ABOUT XYZ."
People differ between calling it a novella or a novel, and thus I think it straddles that line uncomfortably; it's too long to be satisfying short fiction, and it's too short to be a fully-fleshed-out tale either, and so it's disappointing on both fronts.
There are some intriguing points here; the magical touches of the narrator's father's magical keys, the hints of worldbuilding we're not seeing, a past war. In its gloomy remote setting & claustrophobic family relationships & maybe-guilty maybe-not & a too-eloquent narrator looking back on his unreliable past, it actually oddly reminded me of His Bloody Project, too. But in the end, there's just not enough.
And though I'm normally quite game for Miéville's prose, there were huge chunks here where the writing got on my nerves for being too goddamn flowery and self-indulgent. This is a perfect example of the prose that I hated, sounding like an MFA student gone haywire:
Ultimately, not for me. I need more plot, more meat, less vaguenesses. You can't just coast on atmosphere alone, and I wish those meandering philosophical side-bars had been edited down.
I almost gave up halfway through but kept stubbornly chugging along because I was hoping to unravel some of those mysteries, but it ends underwhelmingly and without resolution, too, as if it's simply run out of steam.
So I really struggled with keeping my interest, and literally right when the story felt like it had picked up and I was finally going to get some answers, then... it ends. I was caught off-guard because the last chunk of the book is a preview of another novella, so I didn't realise I was at the end -- "Wait, it's over already? BUT I WANTED TO FIND OUT ABOUT XYZ."
People differ between calling it a novella or a novel, and thus I think it straddles that line uncomfortably; it's too long to be satisfying short fiction, and it's too short to be a fully-fleshed-out tale either, and so it's disappointing on both fronts.
There are some intriguing points here; the magical touches of the narrator's father's magical keys, the hints of worldbuilding we're not seeing, a past war. In its gloomy remote setting & claustrophobic family relationships & maybe-guilty maybe-not & a too-eloquent narrator looking back on his unreliable past, it actually oddly reminded me of His Bloody Project, too. But in the end, there's just not enough.
And though I'm normally quite game for Miéville's prose, there were huge chunks here where the writing got on my nerves for being too goddamn flowery and self-indulgent. This is a perfect example of the prose that I hated, sounding like an MFA student gone haywire:
Houses built on bridges are scandals. A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape, an unspace to link One-place-town to Another-place-town over a river or a road or a tangle of railway tracks or a quarry, or to attach an island to another island or to the continent from which it strains. The dream of a bridge is of a woman standing at one side of a gorge and stepping out as if her job is to die, but when her foot falls it meets the ground right on the other side. A bridge is just better than no bridge but its horizon is gaplessness, and the fact of itself should still shame it. But someone had built on this bridge, drawn attention to its matter and failure. An arrogance that thrilled me. Where else could those children live?
Ultimately, not for me. I need more plot, more meat, less vaguenesses. You can't just coast on atmosphere alone, and I wish those meandering philosophical side-bars had been edited down.
I almost gave up halfway through but kept stubbornly chugging along because I was hoping to unravel some of those mysteries, but it ends underwhelmingly and without resolution, too, as if it's simply run out of steam.
August 22, 2016
He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing.
Oh China, you coy wretch. Promise and no delivery, or at least an awkward variety. The Census-Taker is an austerity tale, one set after the robots revolt. All Skycorp and shit, except matters have settled Bronze Age. The opening sections reminded me of The Wasp Factory, but despite shimmering examples of trades being depicted, the tale only introduced its titular character essentially as an epilogue. From my hip one could read this as Double Indemnity of the next Dark Age.
Oh China, you coy wretch. Promise and no delivery, or at least an awkward variety. The Census-Taker is an austerity tale, one set after the robots revolt. All Skycorp and shit, except matters have settled Bronze Age. The opening sections reminded me of The Wasp Factory, but despite shimmering examples of trades being depicted, the tale only introduced its titular character essentially as an epilogue. From my hip one could read this as Double Indemnity of the next Dark Age.
July 20, 2022
Mieville leaves you groping around in the dark for meaning, thinking you're in a vast subterranean cave, with all sorts of creatures lurking in its depths. Then he opens the door and switches the lights on and you're in a small bare room with a table and two chairs. You sit down in one of the chairs and gesture for Mieville to take the other but he just walks out the door, leaving it open.
January 24, 2016
The lowest rating I've ever given any of Miéville's works. My heart aches, but my brain aches even more.
Read
August 18, 2016This copy is one of 750 special signed editions also 26 lettered editions were produced and all were signed by China Miéville.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,281 reviews