Product Description

A mesmerising collection of stories from 'the master storyteller of our time' [Angela Carter] Stories of London's past, present and future, of brave old ladies, beatific unfrocked vicars, Irish-Americans, and the seedy side of the London tourist trade combine in this showcase of Moorcock's narrative talent. Moorcock, like Dickens, paints his characters larger than fiction and his similar affection for the weak and the marginalised, and his faith in their powers of self-renewal, make this collection worthy of the comparison. 'He is,' said Angela Carter in the Guardian, 'the master storyteller of our time'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #345467 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Michael Moorcock was born in England in 1939. He has written many novels and has won the GUARDIAN Fiction Award for CONDITION OF MUSAK and was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize for MOTHER LONDON. In recent years he has achieved an international reputation and is now recognised as a major contemporary novelist. A longtime resident of London, he now lives near Austin, Texas, with his wife.

Customer Reviews

Great companion to Mother London and King of the City
This book is a must for all those like me who can't get enough of Moorcock's London fiction. He and Iain Sinclair (and possibly Peter Ackroyd) are by far and away the best writers on London and Moorcock is the most generous of them, imbuing his work with a warmth and enjoyment of people which you rarely find in modern fiction, certainly not in the London lads whose work seems to be a cult amongst cool boys, these days -- Self, Hornby, Amis and the rest. The first story is actually set in rural Oxfordshire and is about an old lady living alone who hears a sound in her closet. Moorcock misdirects us wonderfully and with a surprising, moving result. London Bone, the title story, is a wry satire on modern greed which sells its own heritage for immediate cash gains and loses something in the transaction. London Blood harks back to pre-war London and again has an old lady, this time looking back at her South London past. I know of no other writer who has given us such a broad AND deep picture of the capital. The Clapham Antichrist is another parable for our times, dealing with a vicar who is sacked by his church when he has visions. All the stories have the same clarity and humanity we associate with Moorcock who, of all modernist experimenters, seems to have the unsentimental heart of a great Victorian. As Angela Carter said of him somewhere 'his work makes that of the majority of his contemporaries seem mean and cautious in comparison'. I would recommend this book as one to give someone who has never read Moorcock before.

This is the real Michael Moorcock
This is the Michael Moorcock I have always preferred and which in my view deserves to be permanently on all the 'best of' lists. Together with the likes of Brothel in Rosenstrasse, Mother London, King of the City, Byzantium Endures and the best of the Jerry Cornelius books, it forms a substantially impressive canon worthy of the closest attention. The first story in this collection is a gem, A Winter Admiral, in the best traditions of the English short story, dealing with a lonely old lady who finds something special in her broom cupboard. London Bone has an imaginative element when a cultural spiv starts finds something everyone wants to buy beneath the soil of London and London Blood is about a South London girlhood in the 1920s.
There isn't a mediocre story in the whole collection and anyone who believes themselves properly literate should have read this book even if they have yet to read the great novels. It is a splendid introduction to Moorcock's range. He is, as many have said before me, a national treasure in his own right!

Variety and quality
Michael Moorcock really is an astonishing writer, capable of the subtleties of character shown here and of epics which somehow defy their expectations but remain epics, nonethless. It's as if Elizabeth Bowen, J.R.R.Tolkien and Anthony Burgess were all combined in a single writer. In a just world this book would be at the top of anyone's list and selling like hotcakes, it is so much better than most of what there is to offer. The opening story is a subtle one, about a widow living alone who hears an odd rustling in her pantry. This is followed by stories of the Clapham Antichrist, who has had a vision and wants to tell the world, a young woman's hatred of a local priest, and why she hates him, the discovery of a strange, valuable material in the earth of London and various others. All are surprising and subtle and the work of a master storyteller. If you enjoy the best short story writers, you will find Moorcock matches them, at very least. Sometimes, in my view, he betters them.
I even bought two extra copies to give to friends.