Jerusalem

Starred review from July 25, 2016
Reviewed by Heidi MacDonald
In this staggeringly imaginative second novel, Moore (Watchmen) bundles all his ruminations about space, time, life, and death into an immense interconnected narrative that spans all human existence within the streets of his native Northampton, U.K. Reading this sprawling collection of words and ideas isn’t an activity; it’s an experience.
The book is divided into three parts, each 11 chapters long, with a prelude and “afterlude.” The bookends involve Alma Warren and her brother, Mick, who as a child choked on a cough drop and died, only to be revived; their inquiries into the mysteries of death provide a faint glimmer of plot. The first section crisscrosses Northampton with startling chapters that introduce sad ghosts who drift around town, have sex with each other, and seek nourishment in the form of strange plants known as Puck Hats. Living characters include Ern Vernall, who survives a sanity-ending encounter with a talking painting while trapped on scaffolding, and Alma and Mick’s grandmother, May, who grieves the death of her too-beautiful daughter and becomes a “deathmonger,” overseeing local funerals and births. The second section takes place entirely between Mick’s death and his revival, with a long adventure in an afterlife only Moore could have imagined. The third and most difficult part is written in a series of literary pastiches, including a Beckett-like play and an entire chapter written in a language invented by Lucia Joyce, the institutionalized daughter of James Joyce.
Throughout, Moore conjures the specter of Joyce’s Dubliners, with dense paragraphs that go inside the minds of all the characters as they traipse about town. Some are stunningly aware of their location in Moore’s four-dimensional reality (Snowy Vernall, who experiences life as a constant state of déjà vu) and some painfully mired in a sordid now (mediocre middle-aged poet Benedict Perrit, who lives with his mother and finds inspiration only in the bottle).
Moore’s love of allusions, both historical and literary, leads him to create a web of references that may prompt attentive readers—and not just the future term paper writers who will find this a gold mine—to read along with a highlighter in hand. It’s all a challenge to get through, and deliberately so, but bold readers who answer the call will be rewarded with unmatched writing that soars, chills, wallows, and ultimately describes a new cosmology. Challenges and all, Jerusalem ensures Moore’s place as one of the great masters of the English language. (Sept.)
Heidi MacDonald is the graphic novels reviews editor for Publishers Weekly and editor-in-chief of the Beat, a news blog about comics.

Starred review from July 1, 2016
Mind-meld James Michener, Charles Dickens, and Stephen King and you'll approach the territory the endlessly inventive Moore stakes out in his most magnum of magna opera.Moore, the influential conjurer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and other dark graphic masterpieces, seeks here to capture the gritty, sweaty demimonde of Northampton, England, between covers. It's the Northampton of the wrong side of the tracks, a place where it's necessary to ration the coins in one's pocket carefully, staying in of an evening so as not to have to "go through the humiliating pantomime of taking charity" from someone with not much more in the way of cash to spare. Alma Warren, her name the first words in the book, is just 5 years old when we meet her, thrust into a bewildering world among people who speak a language doomed in the face of globalism: "'E ain't gunner urcha," says her mother of a fellow cowled and masked like a "phantom burglar" (shades of V), "un 'e dun't see people very orften. Goo on in un say 'ello or else 'e'll think we're rude." In this gloomy milieu of wet cobblestone streets and decaying buildings, Alma and her kin and acquaintances serve as focal points and guides. Moore constructs a world seen from many different points of view, from wizened old masked men to reticent, fearful children and not much more confident adults in search of some measure of happiness, or at least a little sex ("He has more sperm in him than he knows what to do with and the planet circling about his axis seems to share the same promiscuous excitement"). Many storylines dance through Moore's pages as he walks through those humid streets, ranging among voices and moods, turning here to Joycean stream-of-consciousness and there to Eliot-ian poetry ("Their gait resembling the Lambeth Walk/While in the upper corners of the room/Are gruff, gesticulating little men"), but in the end forging a style unlike any other. Magisterial: an epic that outdoes Danielewski, Vollmann, Stephenson, and other worldbuilders in vision and depth.

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Starred review from July 1, 2016

This latest work by Moore (Watchmen; V for Vendetta; From Hell) is difficult to define by flimsy constraints such as genre. In fact, during a first read-through, it's hard to say what this literary behemoth is even about. Ten years in the making, it is, on one hand, a fictional history of Northampton, England, stretching out over millenia. On another hand, it is a story of siblings Michael and Alma Warren, their extended family, and how they and their ancestors shape the fortunes of the denizens of The Boroughs, the ghetto in which they live. But also, and more importantly, it is a story about everything: life, death, the afterlife, free will, famous Northamptonians (John Clare, Oliver Cromwell, Philip Doddridge) rubbing elbows with prostitutes and drug addicts over time and space. It is about how, no matter what happens in life, we all go to the same place when we die; how everything, literally everything, is determined by four angels playing a game of snooker. It is confusing, hilarious, sad, mind-blowing, poignant, frustrating, and one of the most beautiful books ever written. VERDICT More of a work of art than a novel, this book simply needs to be read.--Tyler Hixson, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016

Comic books master Moore (e.g., V Is for Vendetta) turns out an epic that might have biblical or Blakean connotations but is actually a mythic representation of his hometown, Northampton, England, where time has shifted to allow saints, kings, and demons to brush robes with the contemporary lowlife.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016

This latest work by Moore (Watchmen; V for Vendetta; From Hell) is difficult to define by flimsy constraints such as genre. In fact, during a first read-through, it's hard to say what this literary behemoth is even about. Ten years in the making, it is, on one hand, a fictional history of Northampton, England, stretching out over millenia. On another hand, it is a story of siblings Michael and Alma Warren, their extended family, and how they and their ancestors shape the fortunes of the denizens of The Boroughs, the ghetto in which they live. But also, and more importantly, it is a story about everything: life, death, the afterlife, free will, famous Northamptonians (John Clare, Oliver Cromwell, Philip Doddridge) rubbing elbows with prostitutes and drug addicts over time and space. It is about how, no matter what happens in life, we all go to the same place when we die; how everything, literally everything, is determined by four angels playing a game of snooker. It is confusing, hilarious, sad, mind-blowing, poignant, frustrating, and one of the most beautiful books ever written. VERDICT More of a work of art than a novel, this book simply needs to be read.--Tyler Hixson, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.