Mother London, Michael Moorcock
Mother London, Michael Moorcock
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Mother London

Author: Michael Moorcock

Narrator: Nicholas Boulton

Unabridged: 20 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/20/2025


Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award, award-winning author of the Elric series Michael Moorcock offers a captivating and immersive portrait of London from World War II through the 1980s through the eyes of three outpatients from a mental hospital.

In this masterful exploration of the human condition, three outpatients from a mental hospital—a music hall artist, reclusive writer, and a woman just awoken from a long coma—experience the history of London from the Blitz to the late 1980s through a chaotic experience of sensory delusions. Believing themselves to hear voices from London’s past, their fragmented and poignant stories create a tapestry of episodes, snippets, and sidelines that capture the essence of those living on society’s fringes.

What The Guardian calls “a great, humane document,” Mother London is a literary work that transcends time and place and is a must-read for literary and historical fiction fans alike.

About Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock is one of the most important and influential figures in speculative fiction and fantasy literature. Listed recently by The Times (London) as among the fifty greatest British writers since 1945, he is the author of 100 books and more than 150 shorter stories in practically every genre. He has been the recipient of several lifetime achievement awards, including the Prix Utopiales, the SFWA Grand Master, the Stoker, and the World Fantasy, and has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He has been awarded the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the John W. Campbell Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. He has been compared to Balzac, Dickens, Dumas, Ian Fleming, Joyce, and Robert E. Howard, to name a few. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Craig on April 13, 2020

This is a very long and extremely literate novel; it's hard to believe it was written by the same man who wrote the three slam-bang Kane on Mars (for example) books, that the same writer produced this very carefully and thoughtfully crafted book. It's a non-linear and borderline-ambiguous biography......more

Goodreads review by Ian on April 09, 2024

CRITIQUE: Prologue 1 (David Mummery's Priväte Memento Möri) "The V-Bomb moves with steady grace before the blustering East wind as it crosses the channel and reaches Brighton, passing low enough over the town for people in the Pavilion Gardens to see it rush by... "...the yellow fire from it......more

Goodreads review by Blair on March 08, 2013

A deeply humane and thoroughly wonderful novel that enters into the mind of London itself through a host of eccentric and compelling characters. Moorcock is best known for his science fiction but he should just be recognised as one of England's best living novelists. A beautifully done time travelin......more

Goodreads review by Gerald on May 25, 2016

Slightly mixed feelings... love the prose. Feel like I could read it forever... as I did when I read King of the City. But King of the City had a very good plot, this was slightly lacking in plot... definitely had an amazing narrative drive. However, the non-linear narrative, whilst ultimately reward......more

Goodreads review by Simon on December 19, 2012

Originally published on my blog here in August 2001. Much of Moorcock's fiction is set in London, and Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove in particular are home to many of his characters, including Jerry Cornelius and Maxim Pyat (in old age). This novel is a celebration of the city over a period roughly......more


Quotes

"Nicholas Boulton’s dignified English voice sets the stage for this novel about several mental hospital outpatients who are experiencing various aspects of life in London in the period from WWII to the 1980s. Golden Voice Boulton’s narration is descriptive and employs various emotions when needed, such as gravitas for the bombings of London in the 1940s...The story is alternatively imaginative, delusional, incoherent, and out of context as the characters live inside their own minds, stringing together stream-of-consciousness thoughts to dramatic effect."