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Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. HTML:For readers of George Saunders, Kelly Link, David Mitchell, and Karen Russell, This Census-Taker is a stunning, uncanny, and profoundly moving novella from multiple-award-winning and bestselling author China Mi�ville. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries�and fails�to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape. When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over. But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend? Enemy? Or something else altogether? Filled with beauty, terror, and strangeness, This Census-Taker is a poignant and riveting exploration of memory and identity. Praise for This Census-Taker �China Mi�ville is a magician . . . who can both blow your mind with ideas as big as the universe and break your heart with language so precise and polished, it�s like he�s writing with diamonds.��NPR �The book haunts the reader; what actually happened seems always just out of reach, glimpsed in shadow as it rounds a corner ahead of our vision.��Los Angeles Review of Books �[Mieville�s] been compared to Karen Russell and George Saunders, and rightfully so.��The Huffington Post �Marvellous.��The Guardian �Lingers in the mind like an unsettling dream.��Financial Times �A thought-provoking fairy tale for adults . . . [This Census-Taker] resembles the narrative style, quirkiness, and plotting found in the works of Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, or Steven Millhauser.��Booklist �Brief and dreamlike . . . a deceptively simple story whose plot could be taken as a symbolic representation of an aspect of humanity as big as an entire society and as small as a single soul.��Kirkus Reviews.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member psutto
China Mieville returns with yet another different book. This one a novella. It is extraordinary (being both remarkable AND unusual)
The narrator is less than reliable, in identity, in time, in tense, in age...
A boy ran down a hill path screaming. The boy was I ... He was nine years old, I think, and
This uncertainty in perception runs through the book. It opens with the boy telling the people in the village that his mother has killed his father, or was it that his father killed his mother? The narrative is built upon shifting sand and with each page Mieville poses a new question. But then answers each with ambiguity. This could, in lesser hands, be terribly unsatisfying but Mieville pulls it off with a flourish. It is all misdirection, all illusion, none of it is misdirection, none of it is illusion.
Why 'this' census taker? Who are the census takers and what are they taking censuses for? There are hints and prompts for supposition but there are no easy answers. I expect that this is the type of book that you have to read several times to fully experience, and that is either a masterpiece or not worth the effort - depending upon your point of view.
With well-written books you get the impression that book is only the visible part of a larger body, like an iceberg. With this book Mieville has obfuscated the visible part and you are left with glimpses of a much larger world, through a foggy lens. It is a masterfully crafted puzzle box that ends on an acrostic. The meaning of which is just another hint, another question, another mist-shrouded viewpoint that makes you wonder, makes you question, makes you want to read it again.
A boy ran down a hill path screaming...
Overall - Mieville fans will have scooped this up, devoured it, left satisfied and yet wanting more. Non-Mieville fans can't really exist, can they?
The narrator is less than reliable, in identity, in time, in tense, in age...
A boy ran down a hill path screaming. The boy was I ... He was nine years old, I think, and
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this was the fastest he'd ever run, and he stumbled and careered and it seemed many times as if he would fall into the rocks and gorse that surrounded the footpath, but I kept my feet and descended into the shadow of my hill.This uncertainty in perception runs through the book. It opens with the boy telling the people in the village that his mother has killed his father, or was it that his father killed his mother? The narrative is built upon shifting sand and with each page Mieville poses a new question. But then answers each with ambiguity. This could, in lesser hands, be terribly unsatisfying but Mieville pulls it off with a flourish. It is all misdirection, all illusion, none of it is misdirection, none of it is illusion.
Why 'this' census taker? Who are the census takers and what are they taking censuses for? There are hints and prompts for supposition but there are no easy answers. I expect that this is the type of book that you have to read several times to fully experience, and that is either a masterpiece or not worth the effort - depending upon your point of view.
With well-written books you get the impression that book is only the visible part of a larger body, like an iceberg. With this book Mieville has obfuscated the visible part and you are left with glimpses of a much larger world, through a foggy lens. It is a masterfully crafted puzzle box that ends on an acrostic. The meaning of which is just another hint, another question, another mist-shrouded viewpoint that makes you wonder, makes you question, makes you want to read it again.
A boy ran down a hill path screaming...
Overall - Mieville fans will have scooped this up, devoured it, left satisfied and yet wanting more. Non-Mieville fans can't really exist, can they?
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LibraryThing member macha
a novella using terrifically evocative but very simple language to tell starkly and without explication a not-so-simple story, about a boy, his father, his mother, a town. which also touches upon the limitations of language, the trauma of unbearable memories, the legacy of war, the exact point at
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which law breaks down into the viscerally unjust, and the impossible parsing of empathy and love. Show Less
LibraryThing member vpfluke
This novel was running along at 3.5 rating for the first 70%. Then the census taker appears. And the story begins to take focus. Maybe even a deus ex machine. The census taker is like a family historian who needs get tied up. Genealogists do this al the time. The keep verifiable records. They have
As I was reading the book yesterday, I received a phone call from the U.S. Census Bureau who wanted to reactivate my application to be a "field representative" (i.e. a census taker). So this novel rose to poignancy for me. The census taker gathers information to get a focus on the population, and this pertains to the father's family. And resolves to the narrator becoming the census taker's assistant.
There is an interesting discussion of the book or record the boy keep; 1) coded numbers and signs, 2) words written to be seen, 3) private thoughts. So how do we construct our memories.
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to deal with not entirely verifiable data. The combination gun the census taker has a broadguage bore for possibilities (i.e. standard variation), and the single bore shot which focuses on the target (i.e. the mean).As I was reading the book yesterday, I received a phone call from the U.S. Census Bureau who wanted to reactivate my application to be a "field representative" (i.e. a census taker). So this novel rose to poignancy for me. The census taker gathers information to get a focus on the population, and this pertains to the father's family. And resolves to the narrator becoming the census taker's assistant.
There is an interesting discussion of the book or record the boy keep; 1) coded numbers and signs, 2) words written to be seen, 3) private thoughts. So how do we construct our memories.
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LibraryThing member BillieBook
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.
LibraryThing member starbox
When you finish it, you lie back and think. And keep on thinking..
Set in a weird, unknowable village (I began picturing a Welsh mountain, but banyan trees and feral children with odd names made me think India??
The narrator opens, recalling as a child running...from a murder at home. He tells of
But it feels "off"...the boy moves from referring to himself as "I" to the 3rd person- like he's now distanced from it. And the narrative - written in a slightly stumbling way, as if trying to explain something difficult ..is punctuated with bits from Now- where he's writing it down, compiling notes, under some kind of manager... The baffled reader reads on...
And as this grim life continues- the villagers arent sure and send the child back to his father- a Census Taker comes knocking one day. Seeking official information...
It felt to me like a profoundly religious book. The matter-of-fact, kindly census taker on his mule...unafraid of delving the darkest recesses...of Dealing With Stuff...the Gehenna-like cleft in rock...a later life of hazy recollections, setting things straight..the mission of his department: "The Hope Is So: Count Entire Nation. Subsume Under Sets. Take Accounts. Keep Estimatesa. Realize Interests. So. Reach Our Government's Ultimate Ends."
Superb. This is, apparently, what they call "speculative fiction."
Set in a weird, unknowable village (I began picturing a Welsh mountain, but banyan trees and feral children with odd names made me think India??
The narrator opens, recalling as a child running...from a murder at home. He tells of
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his odd, uncommiunicative parents - especially his father, whose work in his keymaker's shed is punctuated with occasional never-discussed murders...of animals..or people. There's no tell tale evidence- there's a great cleft in the cave outside, where they throw all the rubbish... The boy lives a solitary, fearful existence.But it feels "off"...the boy moves from referring to himself as "I" to the 3rd person- like he's now distanced from it. And the narrative - written in a slightly stumbling way, as if trying to explain something difficult ..is punctuated with bits from Now- where he's writing it down, compiling notes, under some kind of manager... The baffled reader reads on...
And as this grim life continues- the villagers arent sure and send the child back to his father- a Census Taker comes knocking one day. Seeking official information...
It felt to me like a profoundly religious book. The matter-of-fact, kindly census taker on his mule...unafraid of delving the darkest recesses...of Dealing With Stuff...the Gehenna-like cleft in rock...a later life of hazy recollections, setting things straight..the mission of his department: "The Hope Is So: Count Entire Nation. Subsume Under Sets. Take Accounts. Keep Estimatesa. Realize Interests. So. Reach Our Government's Ultimate Ends."
Superb. This is, apparently, what they call "speculative fiction."
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LibraryThing member Stevil2001
“This”–he tapped the broad gauge tube–“a shotgun. It spreads possibilities.”
This inscrutable novella is about the son of a man who makes magic keys, and whose father may have killed his mother, but no one knows for sure-- not the authorities, who only have his word for it, and not the
This inscrutable novella is about the son of a man who makes magic keys, and whose father may have killed his mother, but no one knows for sure-- not the authorities, who only have his word for it, and not the
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narrator, who thought he may have seen his father dying or someone else entirely. The novella chronicles the time before and after the murder, with occasional glimpses of the present day, where the narrator is writing the whole incident up in the second of three books he owns. The first is facts, which everyone can read but few will. The second is stories, written for readers even though they might not come. The third is secrets, which only he is supposed to read but others might. As maybe you can tell from what I've said so far, the book is partially about truths and how we capture them-- the kid is fascinated by creatures in bottles as a kid, because it makes him imagine an entirely contained world, and of course the census-taker who comes to the village is all about the capturing of (a form of) truth. Anyway, there are significant aspects of this book I did not comprehend, and I did not expect it to end where it did, but I greatly enjoyed reading it. Show Less
LibraryThing member -Eva-
In a house on a hilltop, a young boy witnesses a traumatic event, but without any proof of wrong-doings, the boy is returned to the hilltop to make the most of his apprehensive situation. I've read a few reviews that complain that the story-telling is jumbled and the plot confusing and I couldn't
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disagree more. This is an wonderful, albeit scary (nay, horrific), story about a seven-year-old's experiences when his sociopath father murders his mother and his many impotent attempts at escape. So, it's set in the Bas-Lag universe, which may have been what has irked readers not used to the conventions in this world, but even without that knowledge, Miéville's world-building is as strong as ever and the events that are described may or may not have happened, but it isn't too difficult to find one version of "truth" that works for the story. I meant to read this in chunks as I know Miéville writes a dense text, but once I had started, nothing could have kept me from finding out the boy's ultimate fate. Show Less
LibraryThing member alexbolding
Much lauded short sf novella. Disappointing. The style of narration is ominous. Mieville has a tendency to switch between first and second person narration. It starts with a boy, the protagonist, on the run, having witnessed a lugubrious event, a suspected murder, by his father on his mother. Then
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the story switches back in time. We are in an uncertain time, place and world. Occasionally we are fed tit bits of information to form a picture: electricity exists, but is not ubiquitous; roads are there, but hardly any forms of motorised transport exist; the world has known better times – before the war – so are we in a post-apocalyptic world? There is an ethnic divide between those who live uphill and those who live in the town downhill. Within the town there is a divide between the North and South end of the river and bridge – South is lugubrious, magic. The boy’s dad makes ‘keys’, which act as talisman for the ones asking for them. The boy’s dad kills animals, which he offers as sacrifices to the hole in the cave up the hill. The hole is dark and endless. Whenever one throws something inside, one cannot hear it crashing at the bottom. The boy suspects that his dad also kills humans to feed the hole. There is the suggestion that there is some kind of giant monster. Perhaps living in the cave? After the incident the boy flees and stays for a while with some street kids who hang out on the bridge. The boy is afraid of his dad. The street kids wish to protect him, but in actual fact they can’t. A triumvirate from the town, looking into the alleged crime of the boy’s dad, concludes that the boy’s dad cannot be convicted for something for which there is no proof. The boy’s mom has disappeared, but nobody quite knows where. The boy is forced to live with his dad. One day a census taker appears on the doorstep of the boy’s house. He is sent to investigate strangers from the coast, like his dad. He is to register everything and coaxes a confession out of the boy. The boy shows him the hole in the cave. Funny enough, the man devices a way to descend into the cave with a light. At some stage, the boy panics and calls him back. By and lo, the man returns. He nods but does not disclose what he has seen. Instead the man proposes to meet the boy’s father. After doing that the father comes looking for the boy, agitated, feeling betrayed. In the end the boy is taken on as an apprentice to the census taker. End of story. What to make of this? From the critics: ‘Mieville’s brain-twisting inventive use of language pins the indefinable to the page: reading this slim book feels like gasping a lungful of air, holding it throughout and then letting it out slowly, wondering what just happened. A challenging, thought-provoking read’. Well yes, pretty apt description. Mieville plays with our minds. Our minds try to make sense and produce wholes out of titbits of information. As readers, we also trust the author will reveal the missing parts in the end, and that’s what keeps one going. But then in the end, Mieville fails to reveal the missing parts and leaves us gasping. Show Less
LibraryThing member orkydd
I was looking forward to reading this novella, but found it frustratingly underwhelming. Mieville's writing chops are on display for all to see, with shifting tesnse, unreliable narator, brutal honesty and tricksy ambiguity.
A boy pounds down the hillside into the town. He is fleeing something
So it goes...
A boy pounds down the hillside into the town. He is fleeing something
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horrfic. Or is he? His father, and his mother. Who has done what to whom? In town, the authorites are solicitous. But they can do nothing. Only the lost and the destituter can assist, and with litle power or agency.So it goes...
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LibraryThing member PhilipJHunt
Poetry. Miéville uses words in new ways. Like Shakespeare really. And, just like the Bard, you wonder why not. The meaning is clear even if on first reading it seems a bit wrong. But then perhaps that is China Miéville's thing. He is an artist who writes worlds that are at once familiar and
"This Census-Taker" is a novella. Short but deep. Misted through the narrator-child's natural half-grasp of things. And complexified for the reader because our world is not the child's world. It is some other place. Other time. Other universe. Perhaps.
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wrong. He hints at events by writing just not quite enough. He can write the most fastidious description of a place, but then unmoor it from reality the next moment. He's not to be read quickly. Or only one time."This Census-Taker" is a novella. Short but deep. Misted through the narrator-child's natural half-grasp of things. And complexified for the reader because our world is not the child's world. It is some other place. Other time. Other universe. Perhaps.
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LibraryThing member jen.e.moore
Eerie and unsettling - and yes, a little hard to follow. Or rather: this is a compelling story about a boy trapped alone in his home in the hills outside of town, with his father who may have murdered his mother, told years later, possibly by more than one author, in a wider setting that is
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probably not our world as it is but which is not at all explained. I liked it, but I'm not sure I got it. This will probably reward re-reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member lauriebrown54
A young boy lives in a dystopian future; he and his parents live on a lonely hill outside of town. The mother scavenges things and grows vegetables that she trades for other foods in the run down town where a pack of feral children run. The father is a key maker; his keys are magical and can bring
There are no answers in this book. There is no answer to the disappearance, there is no answer as to why the world is so broken, there is no answer to why the boy, now grown, is in prison, writing his memoir. Nor is there much depth to any characters; even the boy whose eyes we see the story through (changing from first to third person constantly) is not a person but bundle of fear, tension, and despair. The book is almost nothing but atmosphere. This is not a world any reader would want to live in. It’s a world without hope.
It was a kind of interesting read- I kept reading, trying to find some answers- but not one I’d put in the same class as Mieville’s other work. It’s a tone poem of despair, not a novel.
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money or love to the purchaser. The father also occasionally kills animals- and maybe more- and throws the bodies down a pit in a cave. One day, the boy runs into town in a panic: he has seen his father kill his mother. Or vice versa. He’s not really sure. But the townspeople rule that he must be returned to his father- there is no proof the mother didn’t just leave. So he lives in constant fear of his father. Is the father a killer, or did the mother leave?There are no answers in this book. There is no answer to the disappearance, there is no answer as to why the world is so broken, there is no answer to why the boy, now grown, is in prison, writing his memoir. Nor is there much depth to any characters; even the boy whose eyes we see the story through (changing from first to third person constantly) is not a person but bundle of fear, tension, and despair. The book is almost nothing but atmosphere. This is not a world any reader would want to live in. It’s a world without hope.
It was a kind of interesting read- I kept reading, trying to find some answers- but not one I’d put in the same class as Mieville’s other work. It’s a tone poem of despair, not a novel.
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LibraryThing member nmele
Melville is a wonderful storyteller but this short novel seemed like one written by Gene Wolfe, full of cryptic and unexplained incidents and details. I enjoyed it and read it in a single sitting. It feels like the first of a series but who knows? Glad I read it.
LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member mamzel
Wow! Just wow!
The basic story is about a boy who runs into town, in the beginning of the book, hysterical and implying he saw his father murder his mother. As the story unfolds, through his eyes, we see scenes where the father brutally kills animals and terrorizes his wife and son. He makes his
Mièville tells the story from the boy's perspective, from a third person's viewpoint, and even puts the reader in the action using second person perspective. The whole time I read this short but packed book I was immersed in amazing imagery and fascinating use of words.
The basic story is about a boy who runs into town, in the beginning of the book, hysterical and implying he saw his father murder his mother. As the story unfolds, through his eyes, we see scenes where the father brutally kills animals and terrorizes his wife and son. He makes his
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living by making keys that perform various deeds, both good and not so, for village folk. Was this all from a lonely child's imagination? Mièville tells the story from the boy's perspective, from a third person's viewpoint, and even puts the reader in the action using second person perspective. The whole time I read this short but packed book I was immersed in amazing imagery and fascinating use of words.
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LibraryThing member jonfaith
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
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
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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. Show Less
LibraryThing member tottman
Reading China Mieville is a little like being kidnapped. You’re not quite sure what’s happening, you’re not sure where you going, and afterwards, you’re not sure where you’ve been. That’s where the analogy ends, because China Mieville is a wonderful experience and This Census-Taker, his
One of Mieville’s strengths is immersing you in a world that is a surreal yet contains tantalizing elements of familiarity. This Census-Taker is the story of a boy who lives on a hill in a remote location. After an event which leaves him terrified, the boy is left alone with a parent who is both mysterious and possibly dangerous. The story is told from the point of view of the man the boy became.
This story draws you in, fascinates you and discomfits you all at the same time. The characters are solid and well-drawn even while their actions and views of events may remain opaque. I was struck by the beauty and oddness of the descriptions, both of people and place. This story in particular reminded me of something that Shirley Jackson or Kelly Link might have written. There is a sense of disquiet created, even a sense of foreboding. It pulls you forward but you have no idea what awaits and if you should anticipate it or dread it.
The ending of this book for me was incredible, and while not filled with answers, it did fill me with wonder. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that I am fascinated with Mieville’s command of language and the ability to structure things in a way that let you reexamine early story events in a new light once certain things are revealed. The tantalizing glimpse of this world and its inhabitants that Mieville offers is very satisfying. It may not be for everyone, but for anyone who enjoys their fiction a little odd and exceptionally well-written, it might be for you. I loved this story. Highly recommended.
I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book.
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latest story, is another great one.One of Mieville’s strengths is immersing you in a world that is a surreal yet contains tantalizing elements of familiarity. This Census-Taker is the story of a boy who lives on a hill in a remote location. After an event which leaves him terrified, the boy is left alone with a parent who is both mysterious and possibly dangerous. The story is told from the point of view of the man the boy became.
This story draws you in, fascinates you and discomfits you all at the same time. The characters are solid and well-drawn even while their actions and views of events may remain opaque. I was struck by the beauty and oddness of the descriptions, both of people and place. This story in particular reminded me of something that Shirley Jackson or Kelly Link might have written. There is a sense of disquiet created, even a sense of foreboding. It pulls you forward but you have no idea what awaits and if you should anticipate it or dread it.
The ending of this book for me was incredible, and while not filled with answers, it did fill me with wonder. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that I am fascinated with Mieville’s command of language and the ability to structure things in a way that let you reexamine early story events in a new light once certain things are revealed. The tantalizing glimpse of this world and its inhabitants that Mieville offers is very satisfying. It may not be for everyone, but for anyone who enjoys their fiction a little odd and exceptionally well-written, it might be for you. I loved this story. Highly recommended.
I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book.
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LibraryThing member bragan
This novella centers on a boy who lives halfway up a large hill, or maybe a small mountain, with his father, who might or might not be a murderer, in a decaying world that seems like it might be, but might not be, post-apocalyptic. And, yes, there is a census of some kind, and a census-taker, or
Really, the whole thing is just odd. Which, of course, is pretty much what you expect from Miéville. And there's a lot of the kind of oddness I usually love in Miéville's stuff: inventive weirdness, touches of wonderfully effective creepiness, strange but vividly rendered places, and the sense that we're getting small glimpses into a much larger world. But in the other Miéville books I've read, all of that generally does seem to exist in the context of a coherent story of some kind. Or at least a semi-coherent one, one that makes sense by its own odd logic, if not necessarily by ours. Which this one, though, I'm left feeling completely uncertain what any of it meant or what I'm supposed to get out of it. And, I don't know, maybe that's actually the point. Or maybe I'm just missing something important and obvious, and I really shouldn't have read this while on night shifts, when my brain function is, to put it charitably, variable. But either way, while I did find it very intriguing, I can't say I exactly found it satisfying.
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census-takers, of some kind, but all of that also might or might not be quite what it appears to be.Really, the whole thing is just odd. Which, of course, is pretty much what you expect from Miéville. And there's a lot of the kind of oddness I usually love in Miéville's stuff: inventive weirdness, touches of wonderfully effective creepiness, strange but vividly rendered places, and the sense that we're getting small glimpses into a much larger world. But in the other Miéville books I've read, all of that generally does seem to exist in the context of a coherent story of some kind. Or at least a semi-coherent one, one that makes sense by its own odd logic, if not necessarily by ours. Which this one, though, I'm left feeling completely uncertain what any of it meant or what I'm supposed to get out of it. And, I don't know, maybe that's actually the point. Or maybe I'm just missing something important and obvious, and I really shouldn't have read this while on night shifts, when my brain function is, to put it charitably, variable. But either way, while I did find it very intriguing, I can't say I exactly found it satisfying.
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LibraryThing member Mithril
Intense and surreal.
LibraryThing member fugitive
I didn't know where this book was going as I was reading it, and when I finished it I didn't know where it ended up. Mieville usually writes novels and short stories that are structurally pretty traditional. This is the first work of his that I've read that seems to be intentionally playing with
Bear with me on this comparison here to the works of Philip K. Dick (PKD). I once told a friend that if you started out reading Dick's The Man in the High Castle you would find a coherent, fairly traditional (and outstanding) novel. You might then proceed to read other works by Dick and I'm pretty sure you'd be totally confused (a lot of his work is undeniably confusing, non-linear, and even insane). The Man in the High Castle spoils the reader into thinking PKD's other works would be similar. This is not so.
The opposite happens, too. If you read some of PKD's oeuvre before The Man in the High Castle, you'd think all of his works are experimental, surreal, philosophical, and confusing. When you then read The Man in the High Castle, you might think as I did, "Where did THIS come from?"
And so it is with Mieville and this novella, This Census Taker. If you've never read Mieville, don't start with this book - it will just confuse you and might keep you away from his more accessible creations. Do come back and read it after digesting several of his other works. If you have read a lot of Mieville, this will be an interesting adventure. For me, it was a literary treat that kept me spellbound.
Mind, I wouldn't compare the literature of PKD with Mieville, except in the above context. In fact, this book reminds me more of something written by John Crowley. Both Crowley and Mieville (at least in this book) create a sense of unease merely by the style of their writing.
So I see this described as a "novella" and I wonder what the definition of that means since this comes in around 200 pages. But it is a novella, at least in the sense that the story arc, even at 200 pages, is fairly limited in complexity. In the end, it doesn't really matter.
The setting of This Census Taker is rural and small town, another deviation from Mieville's usual urban settings. The village and hills of This Census Taker are at the other end of the urban spectrum. A typical Mieville work is also explicitly surreal and fantastic. There is no concrete magic or technology here. There is a bridge. There is a hole in the ground where trash is dumped. There are goats. There are street urchins. There is a murder. Maybe several? Maybe none? Nothing jumps out and grabs you as true fantasy. Yet it still comes across feeling fantastic. When it's "just" fiction.
There is a plot. There is a protagonist. There are characters. You see them through a film of traditional language that shifts subtly, often without even realizing that it is happening. It starts with the title: "This Census Taker." Why not "THE Census Taker"? Why not "A Census Taker"? "Tale of the Census Taker"? Or just "Census Taker"?
In the end, no matter where you go, there you are.
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the reader by changing person (first person, second person, third person) and tense (past, present, future). In the end, I was struck with a sense of wonder and surreal unease - what did I just read?Bear with me on this comparison here to the works of Philip K. Dick (PKD). I once told a friend that if you started out reading Dick's The Man in the High Castle you would find a coherent, fairly traditional (and outstanding) novel. You might then proceed to read other works by Dick and I'm pretty sure you'd be totally confused (a lot of his work is undeniably confusing, non-linear, and even insane). The Man in the High Castle spoils the reader into thinking PKD's other works would be similar. This is not so.
The opposite happens, too. If you read some of PKD's oeuvre before The Man in the High Castle, you'd think all of his works are experimental, surreal, philosophical, and confusing. When you then read The Man in the High Castle, you might think as I did, "Where did THIS come from?"
And so it is with Mieville and this novella, This Census Taker. If you've never read Mieville, don't start with this book - it will just confuse you and might keep you away from his more accessible creations. Do come back and read it after digesting several of his other works. If you have read a lot of Mieville, this will be an interesting adventure. For me, it was a literary treat that kept me spellbound.
Mind, I wouldn't compare the literature of PKD with Mieville, except in the above context. In fact, this book reminds me more of something written by John Crowley. Both Crowley and Mieville (at least in this book) create a sense of unease merely by the style of their writing.
So I see this described as a "novella" and I wonder what the definition of that means since this comes in around 200 pages. But it is a novella, at least in the sense that the story arc, even at 200 pages, is fairly limited in complexity. In the end, it doesn't really matter.
The setting of This Census Taker is rural and small town, another deviation from Mieville's usual urban settings. The village and hills of This Census Taker are at the other end of the urban spectrum. A typical Mieville work is also explicitly surreal and fantastic. There is no concrete magic or technology here. There is a bridge. There is a hole in the ground where trash is dumped. There are goats. There are street urchins. There is a murder. Maybe several? Maybe none? Nothing jumps out and grabs you as true fantasy. Yet it still comes across feeling fantastic. When it's "just" fiction.
There is a plot. There is a protagonist. There are characters. You see them through a film of traditional language that shifts subtly, often without even realizing that it is happening. It starts with the title: "This Census Taker." Why not "THE Census Taker"? Why not "A Census Taker"? "Tale of the Census Taker"? Or just "Census Taker"?
In the end, no matter where you go, there you are.
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LibraryThing member PDCRead
A boy lives with his mother and father high in the hills in an unfinished house. His father is a key maker, who often has to quickly produce keys for strangers who knock at the door. They rarely descend to the village to see the others so he has a lonely life. Until one day he appears in the
This is strange, in the way that only a Miéville book can be, things that are clear become muddied and aspects that were crystal clear become opaque. There is a lot of subtle terror and creepy moments in this story as well as elements of mystery. It feels to like there is a underlying vein of magic to the world he has created. I like books with messy endings, but this didn’t feel that it was resolved though. It is good but not at the same level as his great books like The City and the City, Railsea and Perdido Street Station which seriously mess with your head.
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village alone, traumatised and very scared, claiming that he has just witnessed a murder. Left alone with a parent who is become more deranged he feels more and more isolated. That is until another stranger knocks on the door; this time he isn’t here to request a key, but to elicit information and determine facts. Is he friend, or foe, or something that will challenge everything.This is strange, in the way that only a Miéville book can be, things that are clear become muddied and aspects that were crystal clear become opaque. There is a lot of subtle terror and creepy moments in this story as well as elements of mystery. It feels to like there is a underlying vein of magic to the world he has created. I like books with messy endings, but this didn’t feel that it was resolved though. It is good but not at the same level as his great books like The City and the City, Railsea and Perdido Street Station which seriously mess with your head.
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LibraryThing member modioperandi
This is my third time reading Mieville after The Last Days of New Paris, wonderful by the way, and various short stories in Vandermeer anthologies I was hooked on getting to read more of his back catalog.
This Census-Taker is weird, dark, and darkly-horrific, strange, emotional. You know that effect
The novel begins with the scene of a boy running down the slope, his face transformed by crying and horror, his arms outstretched and his hands red, stained with blood. The narrator is that anonymous boy who recounts, years later, based on memories, what his life was like before and after the tragedy. Uncertainty takes center stage as soon as it begins, when the child tries to explain what he has seen. What happened? Did the mother kill the father? Was it the father who killed the mother? The character tries to understand what surrounds him and with him we discover his world, with all the questions that a nine-year-old boy may have.
Loneliness and helplessness stain the entire novel. With a complex narrative, full of gaps and inaccuracies, we enter a strange, dark atmosphere with a fantastic and supernatural touch. On the environment only impressions, conjectures appear. We know that something must have happened before all that because things are no longer as they were; that beyond what you see there is something because you can hear noises and animals. We know that there are other cities, other people because there are those who come from there. That at the top of the hill are the poor neighborhoods and from there you can see the city below, connected to its skirts by a bridge. And we know that there is something else, that there has to be, but we don't know it because they don't tell us. We remain on the edge of mystery, of suspicion, of what is hidden behind the projection, in the fog or on the other side of the hill.
The style helps to create that strange and oppressive atmosphere, although it also manages to clearly, briefly and directly outline a moment, a character, a sensation. It seems that the author is very comfortable from the beginning, it seems that he relates to his whim; it changes the tone, the rhythm, goes from third to first person, moves smoothly between the real and bordering on the fantastic, and mixes them as if they shared the same shot. Again in this novel, China again leaves us a huge space for the imagination, it opens gaps that it surely will not fill, or yes ... and that, in any case, will require an active and open reader. The truth is that I imagine her saying: "If I know more, I don't have to tell you about it, nor do I have to know everything."
AUDIOBOOK:
The narration by Matthew Frow is straight a straight style. He does give a stellar performance and his voice acting for the roles is spot on but by and large he gives a straight-narration. Which given the material in This Census Taker works really well. Personally I do love the full-on performance style the voice acting tour de force books are the best where every sentence is a performance. However what Frow brings to This Census Take is very strong. The audiobook audio does suffer from that 'empty room' sound which is unfortunate but it is not strong but it is there.
This Census-Taker is weird, dark, and darkly-horrific, strange, emotional. You know that effect
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of looking through a small hole in which the sharp image in the center appears surrounded by blurred margins? This Census-Taker is like that. Peep-hole like where you can get the sense of what going on at the outskirts of the image but not really. Just enough to give you an idea of what is going on.The novel begins with the scene of a boy running down the slope, his face transformed by crying and horror, his arms outstretched and his hands red, stained with blood. The narrator is that anonymous boy who recounts, years later, based on memories, what his life was like before and after the tragedy. Uncertainty takes center stage as soon as it begins, when the child tries to explain what he has seen. What happened? Did the mother kill the father? Was it the father who killed the mother? The character tries to understand what surrounds him and with him we discover his world, with all the questions that a nine-year-old boy may have.
Loneliness and helplessness stain the entire novel. With a complex narrative, full of gaps and inaccuracies, we enter a strange, dark atmosphere with a fantastic and supernatural touch. On the environment only impressions, conjectures appear. We know that something must have happened before all that because things are no longer as they were; that beyond what you see there is something because you can hear noises and animals. We know that there are other cities, other people because there are those who come from there. That at the top of the hill are the poor neighborhoods and from there you can see the city below, connected to its skirts by a bridge. And we know that there is something else, that there has to be, but we don't know it because they don't tell us. We remain on the edge of mystery, of suspicion, of what is hidden behind the projection, in the fog or on the other side of the hill.
The style helps to create that strange and oppressive atmosphere, although it also manages to clearly, briefly and directly outline a moment, a character, a sensation. It seems that the author is very comfortable from the beginning, it seems that he relates to his whim; it changes the tone, the rhythm, goes from third to first person, moves smoothly between the real and bordering on the fantastic, and mixes them as if they shared the same shot. Again in this novel, China again leaves us a huge space for the imagination, it opens gaps that it surely will not fill, or yes ... and that, in any case, will require an active and open reader. The truth is that I imagine her saying: "If I know more, I don't have to tell you about it, nor do I have to know everything."
AUDIOBOOK:
The narration by Matthew Frow is straight a straight style. He does give a stellar performance and his voice acting for the roles is spot on but by and large he gives a straight-narration. Which given the material in This Census Taker works really well. Personally I do love the full-on performance style the voice acting tour de force books are the best where every sentence is a performance. However what Frow brings to This Census Take is very strong. The audiobook audio does suffer from that 'empty room' sound which is unfortunate but it is not strong but it is there.
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LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate
Like every other one of his stories that I have read this is another strange little piece of work. Post apocalyptic and dystopian and brutal. I had no idea what was really going on here but that didn't stop any of the enjoyment. If you want safe, predictable stories with a beginning, a middle, and
I hope I haven't made it seem that I am trying to put you off this book, quite the opposite, you really should read it. If you haven't read anything by this author I can tell you that everything I have read by him I have enjoyed.
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an end then you should stay away from this guy. It was very dark, gloomy, and probably wet as well, I can almost feel the dampness in my bones. The brutality was stark and ever present. At no point did it ever feel like this book was going to have a good ending.I hope I haven't made it seem that I am trying to put you off this book, quite the opposite, you really should read it. If you haven't read anything by this author I can tell you that everything I have read by him I have enjoyed.
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LibraryThing member Jayeless
This Census-Taker did not start well. The beginning is slow, confusing, and nauseatingly gruesome. There came a point, though – once the narrative had actually caught up to the scene which opened the novel – where the haunting, gloomy atmosphere took over and I came to welcome the confusion.
The
In summary, this is a dark, atmospheric tale that you should only read if you can handle your questions going unanswered. That said, it's not too bad. (Feb 2019)
The
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novella raises many questions, hardly any of which are answered by the conclusion. It's set in a small, macabre town, impoverished and largely isolated from the outside world. The narrator's father makes a habit of bashing animals to death and throwing them down a hole, for reasons which are never exactly explained to the reader, but can be guessed. He seems to progress to killing people; he seems to progress to killing the narrator's mother. The town has no real policemen, and the volunteers who stand in for them are friends with the narrator's dad and tell the boy that he must have imagined the whole thing. The story continues on.In summary, this is a dark, atmospheric tale that you should only read if you can handle your questions going unanswered. That said, it's not too bad. (Feb 2019)
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LibraryThing member adzebill
An odd little fable, almost like Gene Wolfe in what it left out.
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novella — 2017)
Locus Award (Finalist — Novella — 2017)
Italia Award (Winner — 2020)
Writers' Prize (Shortlist — 2017)
Original publication date
2016-01-12
DDC/MDS
| Fic SF Mieville |