This Census-Taker

“weird” seems to be the word to describe this book. When I was a kid, there was a restaurant that set up these miniature tableaus that you could view through an eye viewer. I'm super short, so I could only stand on my tiptoes and catch glimpses of the edges of the scene. That's how this novella made me feel: Mieville created an expansive world and showed us slivers of it. There was no clear setting, the thinnest characters and definitely no plot. But there was atmosphere in spades. There will be fragments and passages that stick with me for such a long time.

In your life, you write three books. This is the one for a reader because some things can't NOT be written. But you can still have secrets.

This is the book that reminded me that reading is in and of itself a skill. This was challenging to follow and catch snippets, but so rewarding to read.

Short lovely novella about trauma, perception, power, and individuality. Great example of Weird Fiction.

I'm a huge fan of Miéville so I really wanted to like this, but it didn't really come together for me. It felt like more of a writing experiment than anything else, though I did like some elements of that style. The plot was really vague and hard to follow and never hooked me.

China Mieville is a fave, but this one really didn't do it for me. It was definitely creepy at times, in a way that I like, but I didn't feel like I'd really gotten anything from this in the end.