“‘No two persons ever read the same book,’ the writer and critic Edmund Wilson said. Let me expand that sentiment outward into the geography of experience: it seems increasingly clear to me that no two persons live in the same city.”

At The Millions, an insightful commentary on China Mieville’s The City And The City.

I read that novel last year and was determined to write about it. But I failed.  Now everyone is talking about it, and many of my friends claim it’s their new favorite book.

My own response was somewhat tepid: I enjoyed the book as a weird sci-fi noir but found the dialogue, characterization and description a bit wanting.

Yet that ceased to matter because the central idea of the novel is ingenious (which I won’t reveal here.)