Smoke lingers round your fingers

[venta]

I've just been reading, on a friend's recommendation, Stoneheart, by Charlie Fletcher. Which is a children's book, and manages to be impressively dark, understated (in some regards, less so with the giant trampling statues) and extremely funny in places.

What really suckered me in was its incredibly powerful sense of place; it's set in London and written by someone who clearly loves London, and knows it well. Admittedly it's a rather odd London in many ways, which is what made it so endearing. I love flipsidecities, the places geographically recognisable but utterly distinct so that they lure you in with their familiary then delight you with their strangeness.

And, as far as I can tell, one of the best places to do that with in a story is London. There probably are many other cities with a history as rich and various, but in the world of English literature London is a clear frontrunner.

Walking round London, seeing streetnames I recognise from history lessons, I've always felt that there were a thousand other cities bubbling underneath. Bits of the past trying to poke out. Once, lost, I blundered into Trafalgar Square and knew instantly where I was - followed by realising I was still fundamentally lost, as I had no idea where I was in relation to anywhere else. London is a place I walk round, and at the same time a myth and a mystery.

From the bureaucratic magic of Jonathon Stroud to the frankly deranged writing of Ian Sinclair, I've wandered from Hawksmoor church to London Wall and loved the lot. What Philip Pullman did for Oxford was entertaining, but never quite the same (and the scene that stuck with me most from the film was a tiny snapshot of a train-that-never-was shooting over Air Street in, of course, London).

So tell me: what other cities have been made magical with a slight fraying of reality ? Years ago, spindlemere told me that Paul Magrs had tried setting magical realism in Darlington, where I grew up, but I've never quite had the courage to try it. I don't feel London should hog all the limelight, but I don't feel I've ever met anywhere else with quite the depth of... stuff to furnish so many stories.

What have I missed ?

Remember:

- You can't make an omelette, Mr Croup, without...
- Killing a few people, Mr Vandemar.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Bryan Lumley's Alice in Sunderland is said to do a pretty good job of that sort of thing, although I haven't read it (and don't really know the area, anyway).

But London is bound to have a huge advantage just in terms of (numbers of people who've lived there) * (time that it's been around for stuff to happen), even without the factor of writers being primarily metropolitan.

Even as a kid, reading stuff like Paddington, the Wombles, and 101 Dalmatians (and another book whose name I can never remember in which a load of statues come to life), London seemed thoroughly magical -- no doubt helped by the way that we only ever went in to do fun stuff like go to museums or do Christmas shopping on Oxford Street.

San Francisco puts up a pretty good show, in global terms. Not as big or as ancient, but the writers who've based themselves there have perhaps tended towards the mythologizing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Alice in Sunderland is ace, actually, I'd forgotten about that. I file comics quite differently in my head from books, so didn't think of things like that, or Alan Moore, or anyone's Constantine (who's a Londoner whatever the bloody film said).

I don't think I've ever read anything like that set in the US - with the possible exception of American Gods. If you've got any particular recommendations, let's have 'em. I've never been to SF, but I'd be curious about meeting a city that way rather than through real geography.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Tim Powers's trilogy Last Call, Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather are a great starting-place for mythic California. (His earlier books [such as The Anubis Gates] are terrific fun too, in a different way, if you haven't come across them.)

Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 is also pretty good for this sort of thing re San Francisco and environs.