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.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about London; can't think of another city I've read that manages it so conclusively. However, I've played in a roleplaying game set in Cambridge, that provided a similar flipsidecities atmosphere (Vampire - with ao_lai, Leon and Anthony C-C).

I think it's difficult to accomplish because it requires the writer to know the city well (I think they more or less have to have lived there for many years), but also the reader to know it well enough to recognise what they don't know (so to speak).

[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.

[venta.livejournal.com]

but also the reader to know it well enough to recognise what they don't know

That's an important factor, even with books in real-world settings. Sometimes a passage is written in such a way that without in-depth knowledge of the relevant town, you're completely sunk. Alternatively, it's full of irrelevant detail which is nice if you like the smugness of knowing exactly which outfitters in Turl Street they're talking about, but not that interestingly written if you don't.

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd have got into this post sooner if I hadn't wondered what the hell flipsy-dessities were! But try reading a novel which sets a fictional village down in an area you know well and keeps the real towns & villages in place, too. Unnerving, as you can never quite pinpoint a map ref for the fictional.

[shui-long.livejournal.com]

London has so many layers of history, with so many odd bits of its previous existences still lurking, that I often have the feeling that there might be something *more*, maybe something *other*, just round the corner. Perhaps it's just that there are so many odd little lanes, so many new-but-not-quite-all-new buildings? Hong Kong has something of the same feeling - or parts of Beijing, but it isn't the same as there really are (or were, if they cleaned the place up too thoroughly for the Olympics) parts of old worlds, if not quite *other* worlds, tucked into odd corners.

Neither Oxford nor Cambridge hit that particular note for me; the centres of both are steeped in history, but there's less opportunity to go round a corner and find something different. Perhaps the *other* would have to be on a less fantastically alien, more domestic note - that instead of Walters, there's a shop selling magic wands, or that dusty little bookshop is selling grimoires (it wouldn't surprise me if it was...). And the night life of the Oxford gargoyles should certainly prove interesting.

I've never been to Seattle, but it seems to have an unusually high concentration of urban fantasy writers who seem to weave the city into their plots - and vice versa.

[venta.livejournal.com]

You can't go wrong with a flipsy-dessity.

Gaudy Night has a very nice note explaining where the fictional Shrewsbury College, Oxford is located - and apologising to (I think) Magdalen for plonking it on their cricket pitch.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Do you have any particular recommendations for Seattle writers ? I've never been there either, but it's somewhere that's always sounded strangely appealing.

[dryad-wombat.livejournal.com]

*Grins at your post*

And thank you for your lovely wedding card! It arrived yesterday. What a gorgeous card to choose, and thank you so much. We're keeping it with all our wedding things :) Thank you sweets!

[venta.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome, and I'm glad you liked it.

On the other hand - arrived yesterday ? Unless you've moved and it had to be redirected, I shall fume gently at the PO, because I posted it at the end of June!

[dryad-wombat.livejournal.com]

I will join you in fuming - the Royal Mail had the cheek to lose a parcel for us recently. But in the case of your lovely card they did have a reason, because we moved in February 2008 and have been useless about posting out letters with our new address.

We're paying for mail redirection but the Royal Mail didn't redirect it, and sent it to the old address, where it languished. But it reached us eventually and brought a beam to our day.

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