Everyday Objects in UnLondon

This book does something truly magical with the rubbish and leavings of everyday life.  As Zanna and Deeba move from the normal and static world of London, to the topsy-turvy world of UnLondon, objects take on different quality.  There are suddenly a new set of rules about how those objects behave, a rule system the girls are left on the outside of when they first stumble into Unlondon, to be menaced by a tidal wave of rogue trash.

               “Deeba,” Zanna whispered.
                There was more rubbish than had been there a moment before. The black plastic, and the can, and the newspapers, had been joined by greasy hamburger wrappers, a grocery bag, several apple cores, and scrunched-up clear plastic. The rubbish rustled.
                More rolled into view: chicken bones, empty tubes of toothpaste, a milk carton. Debris blocked off the way they had come.
                Deeba and Zanna stared. The rubbish was moving towards them. It was coming against the wind.
                As the girls began to creep backwards, it seemed as if the rubbish realized they were onto it. It sped up.
                The cartons and cans rolled in their direction. The paper fluttered for them as madly as agitated butterflies. The plastic bags reached out their handles and scrambled towards the girls.
                Deeba and Zanna screamed and ran. They heard the manic wet rustle of the predatory rubbish. They raced through the maze of walls, desperate to get away.
                Mieville, China, Un Lun Dun (p. 30). 

Through the intervention of natives, the girls start to learn how to navigate this strange world they have landed themselves in. Eventually, Deeba at least gains enough mastery of these rules to begin to manipulate events around her, to step the space vacated by her friend’s absence as the “Chosen One.” But this relearning the place of everyday objects does more than just further the narrative along. There is something about the light of the strange UnLondon sun that challenges both the characters perception of the world around them, and our own perspective on the “mundane” around us. Bit by bit, like the umbrellas that creep and the bowing foxes, we are challenged to re-think our own world: is it really as static and lifeless as we, in our adult state, have believed it to be.

The academic in me would point to Walter Benjamin, who had a thing for the afterlife of trash and wrote an astonishing amount on the subject, but, instead of trying to score those points (though there is definitely something there would be worth exploring), I rather I will rather explore the it from the light of the renewing take of a child.  Not that Benjamin’s philosophy and the thinking of a child are mutually exclusive, but this blog is not quite the place to battle out Benjamin. 

There is something to be said for reminding an adult, or a young adult reader, for the fluid way that they looked at the world when they were far younger. A book suddenly becomes the raw material for a soft suit.  An umbrella (or rather unbrella) is suddenly a foot soldier in an army, able to flap about on its own.  Watch a child play and these transformations are already happening on our side of reality, every day.  They are a part of the fabric of our reality and our own very nature that we, in the process of growing up, forget and discard to deal with more adult concerns, like jobs, and relationships, and the mundane future in which these live.  We let go of the fluidity of the child, for whom the umbrella can be a playmate and champion.

But through the vehicle of the novel, older children and adults can re-indulge in a forgotten activity.  The wordplay allows a reader who may have a little more linguistic sophistication than the young child the chance to re-examine these objects and have those aha! moments of reseeding.  Garbage cans become “binja” (my particular favorite); words become utterlings, with their own shapes and presence separate from the instances in which they were uttered.  Each slight shift perspective forces a certain elasticity into the reader’s perspective, until they are completely comfortable with the upside-down rules of UnLondon.

I would like to believe that, like our heroines, the reader also has to learn how to properly encounter each of these oddities.  At first, it is with incredulity, a sense that such tom-foolery is somehow both alien and demeaning. Then, like all adults that end up being entranced by a child’s game, slowly the barriers against the bizarre start to fall.  Maybe we find ourselves chuckling along with one implausible word pun after another, but slowly we are drawn into the game, and by being drawn, start to play by different rules. 

I challenge you to read this book and then not look at a trash can and smile.

But does this have any lasting effect on the reader?  I would like to think, that if you stretch your brain enough in these directions, both in these returns to a child’s perspectives, and in science fictions more classic mind benders, it gives you the ability to hand more of life’s more mind bending puzzles.  I would like to think that the change in perspective that books like Un Lun Dun provide stretch out mental muscles that make it easier to handle the strangeness that life will throw at us naturally. 

But I am a little bias, and I like thinking the world is a bit strange.

Keep reading, dear readers, and watch out for the binja. 

Un Lun Dun via Amazun ;-)