Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories is the rather
unwieldy title for a new collection of short fiction by China Miéville.
Much like the collection it fronts, it’s baroque, intriguing and baffling in
equal measure – and like the stories in that collection, shows off Miéville’s
flair for evocative prose.
The first thing to note is the staggering scope of Miéville’s
imagination. There’s a lot of stories in this collection, and each of them has
something unique to say. The tales leap across time and space, between modes of
expression and paths of thought, challenging the preconceptions of the reader.
There’s an early piece in which mysterious icebergs take up residence over
London. Another where model patients begin expressing symptoms of a disease
before it surfaces. Another where preserved remains of non-human figures are
found in the ash-strewn ruins of a Pompeii analog. Another…well, you get the
picture. Each scenario is something unique.
It helps, of course, that the prose in which each story
bathes is, to extend the metaphor, liquidly smooth. Miéville has always had an
eye for a well-turned phrase, and his language here is superb. The dialogue
flits between the elaborate declamation and the sparse everyday speech easily,
and each step on the scale between the two is also well represented. The
descriptive passages, speaking broadly, have a languid, almost poetic quality
to them. In part this is affected by the context of the story they’re
portraying, but the words have a fluid feeling to them –portraying meaning, but
always capable of change. Reading through the collection, the rhythm of the
prose can leave the narrative feeling dreamlike, a subtle separation from
reality. The language is very easy to read, but is unashamed in demanding
attention from the reader, whilst acting to lull and shock them in equal
measure.
Miéville is also known for his mastery of the
strange, the unexpected, the prosaically obscene and the obscenely prosaic –
and the collection doesn’t disappoint. I won’t approach spoiler territory here,
but each of the stories in this collection has a twist to it – the thing that
makes the text veer from the expected, and enter the universe of the
weird. There are times when this works
well, when the reader is drawn with
their interlocutor into an elaborate confusion, or a sparse, conflicted new
reality, their expectations challenged or downright destroyed. On the other
hand, there are moments when this feels a little awkward, where the conceit
that defines the weird doesn’t quite work as it might. This is limited by the
format, however – the reader gets the context to fill their shorter narrative,
with more focus and less breadth than might be expected in a more long-form
text.
Perhaps my one complaint as a reader was the endings – at
least some of them. There’s a certain abruptness to some of the closing
paragraphs, which leave the reader teetering on the edge of realisation and
revelation, unfulfilled. I suspect this is intentional in some cases, leaving
the reader to draw their own conclusions. Still, the text as a whole seems
averse to closure, leaving questions in its wake rather than a feeling of
completion. Stories end where they will, and perhaps not where one might
expect. The feeling, as with the prose, is almost dreamlike – but in this case,
a dream from which one involuntarily is forced to wake. It’s an interesting stylistic choice, but I
can’t deny a feeling of emptiness, a need for closure which may be
intentionally evoked.
In the end, the stories that Miéville provides in this
collection are an excellent read. Each is expertly crafted within its own
context. The prose is a pleasure to go through, and the concepts are
wonderfully imaginative. They’re both fascinating and deeply, deeply weird –
and the former may be a function of the latter. The abrupt endings aside – or
perhaps because of them – this is clever, compulsive reading. I suspect you
have to be in the right mood, a sort of sanguine acceptance of the strange, to
fully appreciate it – but this is an excellent collection, which will reward
any reader who follows the strange paths it offers up to them.
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