Mother London

Michael Moorcock's Mother London is perhaps his best known literary work and for good reason. Shortlisted for the Whitbread fiction prize this has the feel of a novel by a writer at the acme of his powers. A large, though never sprawling, novel Mother London follows three mental-hospital outpatients Mary Gasalee, David Mummery and Josef Kiss and their friends, in an episodic, non-linear history of the capital from the Blitz to present day. Most noteworthy is the astounding humanity of the novel (a quality redolent in all his work including its excellent follow up King of the City), with all of London's outcasts and marginals mentioned and defended. This could have reduced the novel to polemic, to parody or to the dreadful, mind-narrowing of political correctness but instead is testimony to the fact that Moorcock has created such a fine array of believable, flawed, kind characters.

Throughout the book the voice of ordinary Londoners forces its way into the narratives through snippets of conversations "overheard" by the three main characters who each have, to a greater or lesser extent, the gift of telepathy. This hint of magic is underplayed throughout so that the work never succumbs to the straitjacket of magical realism itself: the conceit is used very successfully to take our characters out of themselves, and to allow London, and the voices that constitute her being, into the novel as a character herself. A vast and superb achievement (London novelists such as Charles Dickens, Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair all come to mind as peers), Mother London is a book to cherish--rarely have the voices of this wonderful city spoken out so clearly through such an expansive story. --Mark Thwaite

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Flotsam and Jetsam - Rated
I loved the structure of this novel. The chapters in each book ebb and flow through time, mirroring London's great river, revealing the flotsam and jetsam of the book's voices and inhabitants.

The magical realism bit of this book tends to idealise London, but only in the most humane of ways. If you want to see the flip side and get deep down and dirty however, I'd recommend anything by Iain Sinclair.

Wonderful novel - Rated
This is a wonderful novel. Rich, complex and genuinely humane. Michael Moorcock's ability to create realistic characters often in the most fantastic situations is here seen at its finest, where he is describing ordinary Londoners in an ordinary city.
Only the device of using 'voices' -- a sort of Londoners' chorus -- makes this book in any way fantastic. He takes a triangle of disparate people -- a music hall performer, a reclusive writer and a woman who has awakened from a coma after many years -- and describes them, their relatives and friends during the years from 1942 (the Blitz) to 1988, but it is not the typical 'family saga'. Its picture of an entire city is loving and at the same time profound. It could be read in conjunction with Peter Ackroyd's non-fiction about London and give you a very thorough picture of the city. I came to Michael Moorcock recently and have read his fantasy (though I am not much of a fantasy reader) as well as his literary fiction and I find that whenever I feel like a thoroughly satisfying read I reach either for a new Moorcock (one I haven't read) or Mother London, which always delivers more than the first, second or even third time I read it. It has my heartfelt recommendation!

A joy.... - Rated
I've always had a 'fondness' for Moorcock, and read all, and I mean all, his Eternal Champion series as a teenager, but would find it hard to recommend any to anyone other than teenagers now.
This novel, however, is a joy to read, Complex, deep, but always with a wonderful sense of the love of life that clearly infects Mr Moorcock to this day if you read his website. I cannot recommend this book highly enough and the ending is an elegy to better days ahead.....

Victorian virtues, modern obsessions - Rated
This is probably my favourite novel by a living English author.
I recently bought my third copy because I keep lending it and not getting it back. Anyone interested in the history of contemporary London but who wants to read a novel with a cast of characters and variety of scenery as rich and complex as Dickens should get Mother London. My only advice is not to go lending it to anyone. You'll probably find you have to buy
another!

A true modern masterpiece - Rated
In its scope, in its masterly handling of form, in the warmth and humanity of its characters, Mother London stands head and shoulders over almost any other English novel I have read. I only read this recently in the French edition (also called for
some reason Mother London) and while the translation is excellent, the original is that much better. This is a perfect introduction to Moorcock's work, especially his non-fantasy.
Of all the authors (Ballard, Aldiss, M.J.Harrison) who have provided us with experimental genre as well as literary fiction,
Moorcock remains the greatest. If you want a rich fantasy, reminiscent of Flaubert, next, then try his Gloriana. And if you want a startling blood-and-thunder heroic fantasy you can't go wrong with either his Runestaff quartet or one of the Elric
books. A writer of astonishing range and skill. He is England's authentic genius.