What an intoxicating collection. Michael Moorcock's range is such that I never know what to expect til I jump. Its like finding a hidden pond in an isolated location on a blistering hot day and when you jump in the difference in texture and temperature sometimes just takes your breath away.ell,heres a nice one", I thought to myself "A Michael Moorcock book that will stand quite comfortably next to some work by Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd and the huge undertaking they have set themselves in making some sense of the City of London. A task that has already taken billions of words over the years, as poets, artists and writers try to make sense of this semi-organic region of Merie Olde Englande.2, or something like that., just not neccessarily in those particular words. Here we are though, with a book containing almost ten storiesthat prove to be lesser known threads ina tapestry stitched without end. It is the perfect Summer read. Or the perfect Autumn read. Almost certainly the perfect Winter read. I have no wish to appear seasonist, so I will leave that there to dangle in its own pleasant abstraction.
The story that stood out for me was The Cariene Purse. A story set entirely in Egypt. So the paragrapgh proceeding this one already boinks up against this one. And why should it not with so many seemingly randomn ideas in collision. Its main character, a Von Bek in search of his missing sisterhas roots in the Merrie Olde Englande mentioned before so I guess it counts. And even if it does not it remains a lovely piece of writing. As does the story before it in this collection; London Bone. Perhaps the Cariene Purse felt so special to me as it turned out to be the first story I read this year while sitting in my garden at the front of my house. I was not experiencing Egyptian level sunshine but it felt comfortable enough to allow me to mentally travel to that hotter zone. To follow that main charcter in search of his sister to a place I did not expect to find myself in, given I thought these would all prove to be Londoncentric stories. But that is Michael Moorcock for you, with those three ducks on his auntie Flo's wall turning out to be multiversal avatars. Which we all become when we read.
