There is a feeling I get sometimes when i read Shakespeare, or William Blake, when I roll the text over in my head. It feels like the touch of the warm sun on ones upturned face, catching the rays between the clouds. When it is possible to put aside the worries of the day, to appreciate the complexities for the sum of what they are, to believe just for a moment in the sublime mysteries, that it might be possible to speak into being a way of living at peace with the world. i have no wish to diminish the extraordinary gift of some of Michael Moorcock's prose by clunkily describing its effect, and boy, I am as clunky as The Iron Giant.
Much like the city this novel is set in, and about, this isa vast undertaking. As the reader finds oneself buffeted through time as much as space. Although it is quite a complex piece of work it flutters with all the enthusiasm of a Silver Jubilee bunting, dancing with all the unfettered joie de vivre of a blizt blown kerchief, dancing in the incendiary winds of the past.
And London is a city with one hell of a past. Perhaps more Hells and Heavens than most major cities. If one is interested at all in the psychogeography of any major city then this is a book for your shelf. A city like London is off course a work in progress, one that never ends as its inhabitants and its many eras pass. But it is in the unearthing, the great joy of the undertaking, when it comes into its own. the joy of the dance as much as the joy of the music, Take a long dander in the company of Michael Moorcock into the eco system of a great city, feel its pulse, know that it is alive, never more so than when it is sleeping, when it dreams. With so vast a living organism as London surely it is not too much to believe that occasionally a great city dreams its fictional inhabitants into becoming reality. It is not an common thing for a reader like myself, prone to sprnding long periods alone but always intrigues by the lives of others, can come across a character or a person we wish were not fictional. such is the case with the characters in this novel, as well rounded and believable as anything in Charles Dicken's.work. Their creation so mired in our own humane fallibility and bitter sweet fragility they are surely real on some familiar plain of existence, at least something like our own.
It was on another level a really interesting way to experience the novel as seen through the various POVs of people who hear voices as they try to get through their days. Three hyper perceptive telepaths who in turn are forced to meditate and even medicate to have some semblance of a rational existence. As the reader you actually have a taste of what this must be like for them. The narrative is broken up so we jump back and fourth along their timeline we sometimes experience their outcomes before they do. it is not always pleasant and adds a fission of melancholy to unfolding events.
A wonderful work. i feel enriched just having finished it.
Also felt like laughing and crying at the same time.
It is that sort of experience.
