Fantastic Metropolis

Reading

I tend to read very few “new” books each year. It’s simply impossible to ignore all the quality literature that towers in the past (and on my desk, literally), so I dedicate a lot of my time to catching up on it. The positive side of this is that I can get a sense of which books are worth reading and so waste very little time with crap, especially since I’m lucky to know intelligent and well-read people who always recommend me the best. Here I must thank Michael Moorcock, João Barreiros, Jeff VanderMeer, Timmi Duchamp and Zoran Zivkovic (among others, including all Listmania! participants) for many priceless suggestions. And because “any book you haven’t read is a new book”, as Charles Dickens said, here’s my list of favourites for 2002:

A Espuma dos Dias, Boris Vian, Aníbal Fernandes (Translator)

(Relógio d’?gua, Portugal)

Boris Vian’s L’écume des jours (which I read in excellent Portuguese translation by Aníbal Fernandes), is quite possibly the best fiction I had this year. L’écume is about the poignant romance between Colin, a wealthy bon vivant, and Chloe, a young woman who eventually wastes away when a waterlily infects her lungs. Set in an absurd and nearly unrecognizable Paris, this book is jazzy, weird, witty, and ultimately tragic, as the lives of Colin, Chloe and their friends collapse in a downward spiral of misery and despair. L’écume des jours is currently available in three different English translations: Moon Indigo (accurate, but austere), Foam on the Daydream (more in spirit with the playful mood of the original), and the recent Foam of the Daze (of which I know nothing about).

City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer, Michael Moorcock (Introduction)

(Prime Books, USA)

This new and improved hardcover edition of City of Saints and Madmen is one of the strangest books I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience (not just read). City is literally and literarily crowded with goodies. Stories overflow onto the dust jacket itself—Ambergris sucks you in before you even open the covers!—, another continues well beyond its end, while yet another must be completed from the rest of the book through a decryption effort by the reader. The new stories (my favorites being “The Cage”, “The Release of Belacqua” and “In the Hours After Death”) are as sharp and clever as only Jeff VanderMeer can make them, imparting his Ambergris setting with a particular atmosphere that no other writer could possibly recreate.

The Scar, China Miéville

(Macmillan, UK)

Despite the book’s tedious beginning, China Miéville pushes the boundaries of his gift another step further in The Scar. Meet Bellis Coldwine, who is on the run from Crobuzoni authorities and unexpectedly finds herself a captive in Armada, an immense pirate city adrift in the middle of the ocean. Unaware of the reasons for her capture, she stumbles on the city leaders’ plan to harness a leviathan creature from another dimension (evoking Moby-Dick, and the kragen hunters in Jack Vance’s The Blue World), which in turn leads up to a suitably ambiguous finale on the edge of reality and probability. Echoes of Miéville’s influences abound: the gormenghastian names, or the rust beach out of Viriconium, to name a couple. The Scar demonstrates once more why Miéville is a required read and a talent to watch closely. Trust me, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.