September 13, 2010

City of Saints and Madmen (#125)

City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer


What I said then: 

Linked short stories all set in the same fantastic city in which humans co-exist alongside a race of bloodthirsty mushrooms. Good or bad, I’ll cherish forever the chance to write the phrase 'bloodthirsty mushrooms.'

What I say now:

Yep, I was right, the bloodthirsty mushrooms are the best thing about the book. Seriously.

No matter what the residents of Ambergris try, fungi of every shape and colour spread throughout their streets and steal into their houses until suddenly, with no warning and no explanation, people go missing by their thousands, nothing left behind but swiftly drying bloodstains and swiftly growing toadstools. Even though the idea of killer mushrooms is fundamentally daft, Vandermeer is able to make them eerie and macabre, rather than comical, which I'd argue is the mark of a pretty talented writer.

As will always be the case with an anthology, some stories were stronger than others. The ones I tended to enjoy the most were those that delved in a straightforward fashion into moments in Ambergris' history ('The Early History of Ambergris', 'King Squid' and 'Learning to Leave the Flesh' were the highlights for me). When the city was merely the setting, rather than the subject, the stories dropped off in quality: Vandermeer is better with stones and mortar and dry history than he is with people and emotions. Though he'll take the trouble to exactly nail down all the details of some arcane ritual, he'd prefer to be obtuse about character actions and motivations.

Another beef is that the entire second half of the book, comprising about ten different stories, is presented as a set of 'Appendices' to the novella that precedes them, leading - not unreasonably, I don't think - to an expectation that all of those 'appendices' would reference and play off each other, combining to produce something more than the sum of their parts. I kept expecting the later stories to introduce new meaning to the earlier ones, and vice versa, but it never happened. As I mentioned, most of the stories were frustratingly vague and could have used a bit of clarification, so I was disappointed that it never came.

I can't fault his writing style, but because most of the stories (and characters) had no real emotional core, the book was difficult to enjoy.

Cheers, JC.


about to start: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
books to go: 124

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