The City & the City

Whoever said that Mieville’s “The City & the City” was probably the most difficult story we will read this semester was not over exaggerating at all. It’s interesting how “The City & the City” opening was similar to the other mystery books we have read, but where it worked for the other books, it failed to do so with this story. The mystery books have all seemed to jump right into the plot without any sense of back story or prologue. In the other mystery novels this sense of immediacy worked and compelled me to read more of the story, but with Mieville’s book it was unsettling and left me feeling confused. The main problem with “The City & the City” jumping into the plot was the fantastical setting. It was very difficult for me to visualize the crime scene when I had no clue where the story was even taking place. At first, I was not sure if the city was a fictional place because the narrator would refer to known countries like Turkey and the United States. The ensuing pages try to establish this fictional city but only make the setting more convoluted by including ideas like the bordering city and the Breach.  Also the use of a different language and slang terminology makes it even harder to comprehend the basis of the story. It was just too hard to decipher a new world, language, and a crime all at one time; it was almost like a sensory overload.

House Rules & Red Herrings

House Rules attempts to create a mystery feel to the book and frequently uses literary tactics to achieve this tone common to most mystery novels. This book constantly refers to “Red Herrings” to divert the reader’s attention from a significant fact and misdirect the audience’s suspicion of a character or information. Jacob constantly uses the Red Herring device to create his perfect crime scene. A crime scene where he makes the police and the reader, at the beginning, believe that the tutor’s boyfriend or Jacob killed Jess Maguire. At the end of the novel it is revealed to us that Jacob positioned all the evidence so that the crime scene did not illuminate Theo’s participation in the death of Jacob’s tutor. Jacob’s steady utterance of Red Herrings throughout this book led me to question the composition of Jodi Picoult’s story. After coming to terms with the misdirection theme, I realized that many elements of the plot that had nothing to do with the crime were also red herrings in a way. The Rich Matson character, the detective that implemented Jacob, had no real purpose to the development of this story. At one point, the story made it seem like Matson was noticing the discrepancies in the crime scene and started to suggest that there was more to the crime when he reexamined the evidence. Matson started to become attached to Jacob but then his character just disappears. Also Matson’s almost romance with Emma was not necessary. Matson in multiple instances describes Emma’s warm caramel brown eyes and how he could see himself in a relationship with Emma. But it was pretty obvious that this relationship would never happen since Matson was the one who arrested Jacob. So why even include the potential romance! It seems to me many components of the plot were employed just to fill pages!

House Rules

Sooo, House Rules is not really what I imagined it to be. Even the introduction of the novel was very outlandish. I was shocked when the opening scene described the mother, Emma, walking in on the murder scene of her child. And instead of bursting into hysterics, like any normal mother would, she just stands there and internalizes the scene. Within the first couple pages I was already judging Emma as the cold hearted killer of the story but then it was revealed the whole crime scene was staged by her son who was still alive. Talk about buzz kill. The crime scene scenario quickly grabbed my attention but then lost it when they revealed this was not the crime that ties the book together. While this was a nonconventional opening to the novel, I still think this book would have kept my attention longer if the big mystery was presented sooner.

I had the inclination that the main character was a detective or a person who had an obsession for solving crimes and used the advantages of his disorder to solve some centralizing mystery that encompassed the whole book. Instead I was presented with a young adult suffering from Aspergers who almost had an eerie fetish with forensic science and blockaded the solving of a murder mystery. I hate a book that sells itself as something that it’s not. The back cover of the book made it seem like Jacob would use his disorder and love for forensic analysis to prove his innocence in the murder of his tutor. In its place, the book preaches about the fallacies of our justice system when it comes to people who can’t communicate in a “neurotypical” way.  

GWTDT Supporting Abuse?

After completing Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson, it is understandable how so many readers walk away with the impression that this book has a feminist tone and focuses on women empowerment. The main heroine, Lisbeth Salander, is painted as the “black and shinning knight” who vehemently fights against her own personal rapist and the serial rapist/murderer of the Vanger family. Through Salander’s tumultuous conquest, this book attempts to take a stand against sexual abuse and perverse ideologies like Nazism, but at the same time, if observed from a different perspective, it upholds these morally bankrupt practices.

Lisbeth is able to gain our sympathy through the visceral rape committed by her guardian. Because of the brutality of these images, we support Salander’s retaliation against her guardian. However, we fail to recognize Salander going too far in her retribution and promoting sexual abuse. After the first encounter with the guardian it is exposed that Salander had recorded her sexual assault. She also reveals to Bjurman that she knows of his illegitimate bank account. Was that not enough to deter her guardian from contacting her again? Did she really need to rape him in return to reclaim her control? This book is so aimed at the evils of men that it almost extols the inversion of gender roles in the second encounter with Bjurman.

During the last scenes with Martin Vanger, we get a glimpse of how sadistic Martin and Gottfried Vanger had become. Martin is engaged in a lip-lock with the chained Blomkvist when Lisbeth enters the dungeon. Salander confronts Martin and launches into a battle with the maniac using a golf club. Throughout the fight, we receive the insight that Salander is using her anger from her personal sexual assault to fuel her attack on Martin. Mickael describes this scene as if Salander is possessed and enjoys beating the hell out of Martin. Most of Lisbeth’s actions were not necessary to apprehend Martin. Even Lisbeth’s decision to destroy Martin’s laptop, filled with videos and information on his victims, supports his actions.  Once again the reader is positioned to accept overzealous abuse from Salander because it stems from a female.

The fact that the only female characters, in a book laden with female roles, who received justice are Lisbeth and Harriet also supports my claim. The book presents us with the idea that the other females’ situations were not drastic or important enough to need a resolution. Henrik could have used the family autobiography to reveal all the injustices happening to the women in his family, but he only cared about the ordeal surrounding Harriet. The other females’ situations are barely acknowledged and are offered as if nothing can be done. For a “feminist” book to have more females being held in submissive conditions is almost ironic.