King of the City (ISBN 0380795035)

BRILLIANT. TIMELY. A REAL LIFT FROM REAL LIFE!:
Whoever thinks this book has no shape just doesn't know what a gem they have in their hands! Like Mother London, you have to let Moorcock lead you through something of a maze. You have to give yourself up to his work, as with the Cornelius books. If you let him lead you -- he'll take you a lot of places you've never been before. The centerpiece of this novel appears to be the big Thanksgiving Party at the Red Mill, when every character in the book dances around the mill, while above them the vanes turn through a third dimension. In Mother London everything radiates from the Blitz scenes. This is a more eccentric shape, but it certainly works for me. It doesn't matter how many times Denny Dover has been married (three, I think) -- just look at the women he's married. Each one a wonderful individual! Rosie, his cousin, is a sort of Diana figure, as beautiful as she is good, and it's at this point, for all Rosie is a living, thinking human being, you realise why this book is called 'A Fable'. It is dealing with the fabulous. It is all invented. Virtually no place in the city, however much you mourn a genuine loss, ever existed. You think the names are familiar, that they are bound to be just around the corner, or on the next tube station, but they never are. This entire London is an invention. But why is it an invention ? I think it is the other side of Mother London, which was all about real places, real London. This is the modern fantasy of London, as unreal and at the same time as real as anything Dickens ever gave us. And, finally, you understand why Peter Ackroyd has called Moorcock the modern Dickens -- for his humanity is as profound as his inventive genius. Moorcock is a true original. If he had not written those rafts of awful sword and sorcery epics and added to the flow of garbage which began with the Attack of the Hobbits, I could forgive him anything. As it is, there is a different kind of engagement here which, if you value original minds, you will want to sample. Moorcock's determination to remain in the popular arena, in spite of every effort (including articles about him in the London Review of Books and inclusion in the Oxford Companion to English Literature) to draw him in to his rightful place in English literature sometimes to look like a career death-wish, but you have to admire his engagement with his audience, which is as much part of his ethos (see his website multiverse.org) as never offering us the same book twice. Mother London is a gentler book, but King of the City is a wild hunt of a novel, full of rage and love for the unsung, the under-rated and the disrespected. Moorcock's identification with his readers rather than his reviewers is to be applauded.

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll -- A Moral Tale!:
The great thing about this particular novel is that all the music which seems fictitious is actually available on record. The Greenfly and the Rose is on at least one Robert Calvert Album and most of the other numbers are either old Stiff numbers or old Moorcock Deep Fix numbers. It's a weird feeling reading this book -- which is the most authentic account of the Stiff period I know -- Ian Dury, Elvis Costello et al -- while playing the music. Well worth it for this alone.

Outstanding and very relevant to our times:
One of Moorcock's finest realistic novels. This book has a strange structure, which gradually reveals why the central character, Danny Dover, is in the situation he's in, then takes him to embattled Europe (Kosovo specifically) and the book's conclusion, which might or might not be a happy ending. On the way you learn about his life as a rock and roll guitarist, a photo-journalist and, finally, a cynical paparazzo. He loves the go-getting Rose and has a rival in the equally ambitious Johnny 'Barbican' Begg. This threesome offers typical Moorcock dynamic. But there are dozens of other great characters. I particularly liked the chain-smoking French giant journo Fromental, who goes with him to Rwanda. The set pieces are great, as you would expect from the Moorcock of Mother London, Byzantium Endures and, of course, The Condition of Muzak. As a character Danny is most like a 'realistic' Jerry Cornelius (though the book's described significantly as 'a fable') and the concerns are closer to the JC stories, with direct confrontations with modern social problems and politics. Moorcock's understanding of modern politicians, like Clinton or Blair, is wonderful, as is his writing. This is some of the most powerful writing he's ever done -- an incredibly sustained roll of words and ideas, like a great, prolonged rock performance. His descriptions of the rock and roll life have the feel of autobiography, as does much of the Notting Hill material. Where he dealt with real places in Mother London, he here invents or resurrects London backgrounds, such as the Mill at Tufnell Park, the thieve's sanctuary in Seven Dials and a whole London district, Brookgate, sandwiched between Holborn and Clerkenwell. Dickensian? Yes. Sentimental? No. The resolution offers a happy ending much in the manner of Condition of Muzak -- ironic, sardonic, hopeful. Moorcock likes his fellow human beings, even some of the worst of them, though he rarely sees them as anything but what they are. The scenes in Rwanda -- angry, accurate, urgent -- are as good as anything Moorcock has done. I loved this book which, like Mother London, rewards several readings. It seems almost a different book every time you come back to it. A classic from one of our finest modern novelists. Totally recommended!

Not Free SF Reader:
Moorcock here has written a book about late twentieth century London. It also a of a commentary on the political and media power structures of the time, as a rocker type guy seems to have uncovered evidence that a ridiculously wealthy industrialist named Begg is actually alive, and still plotting. This leads to wanderings around the world to try and do something about it.

A great modern novel:
I read this at the same time as I read Don DeLillo's wonderful Cosmopolis which is the 'cool' approach to the same material. This is an angry, eloquent, all-encompassing book dealing with modern greed and lack of spirituality, our obsession with vulgar fame and money. DeLillo's book concentrates on a relatively small canvas -- one day in New York in the year 2000. Moorcock starts in London and goes to Paris, New York, Rwanda, Bosnia and back again. These two books are two different 'takes' on the same modern problems. They are both hugely entertaining, beautifully written, with a keen ear for modern speech. Read them together as I did. You won't regret it!