Series: No
Pages: 210
Copyright: 2016
Publisher: Del Rey
Buy: Amazon
Summary: from Good Reads
For readers of George Saunders, Kelly Link, and Karen Russell, This Census Taker is the poignant and uncanny new novella from award-winning and bestselling author China Miéville. After witnessing a profoundly traumatic event, a boy is left alone in a remote house on a hilltop with his increasingly deranged parent. When a stranger knocks on his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation are over—but by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? Is he the boy’s friend? His enemy? Or something altogether other?
Feelings:
The world in this novel is so close to our own but so different. This novella is startlingly simple, but there is also depth. I think the epigraph in this novel sets the tone for the book perfectly. The main character does not live " for but against." He struggles not only to understand simple things and we get to know him as a child, but from the adult perspective.
Like the other novel I read by China Meville this novel uses a sightly odd writing style. I think that adds to the story. It also adds a bit of distance between the narrator now and the narrator in the past.
While I loved this novel and will be adding it to my collection of kept books, which I try to keep relatively small, I was left wondering if I had missed something. There were many questions I felt weren't answered. That is why this book has a four bird rating instead of a 5 bird rating. I have read other books by China Mieville, and I also enjoyed them. I will be searching out more by this author. I highly recommend this novella to anyone who enjoys fiction with a slight alteration of the setting so that it almost feels like fantasy.
Like the other novel I read by China Meville this novel uses a sightly odd writing style. I think that adds to the story. It also adds a bit of distance between the narrator now and the narrator in the past.
A boy ran down a hill path screaming. The boy was I. He held his hands up and out in front of him as if he'd dipped them in paint and was coming to make a picture, to press them down to paper, but all there was on him was dirt. There was no blood on his palms. p.3The third person style turns very quickly to first person. I liked this transition and the way we had distance from the narrator for the first two paragraph but "I" is interspersed so that when the third paragraph is fully in first person it does not come as a surprise.
People in the town saw that cloud long before I arrived, Samma would later tell me. p.3The book gives lots of hints about what happens, but the adult narrator stays out of the child's story and we are allowed to come to our own conclusions about what happens in the story. I liked that the author gave the reader the opportunity to put together the hints. That made the novel a lot more satisfying for me.
While I loved this novel and will be adding it to my collection of kept books, which I try to keep relatively small, I was left wondering if I had missed something. There were many questions I felt weren't answered. That is why this book has a four bird rating instead of a 5 bird rating. I have read other books by China Mieville, and I also enjoyed them. I will be searching out more by this author. I highly recommend this novella to anyone who enjoys fiction with a slight alteration of the setting so that it almost feels like fantasy.
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