With a name like Dennis Knuckleyard, our protagonist should be a villain. He is, however, a feckless, naive 18-year-old orphan living with a verbally abusive landlady and employer, Coffin Ada, in late 1940s London. He survived the Blitz, but that bombing is integral in utilising London as this mind-bending novel’s locale.
Coffin Ada, the proprietor of Lowell’s Books and Magazines, sends Dennis off to purchase a box of books. He achieves a startling bargain from the seller, but the extra book he brings back, London Walks, by Reverend Hampole, sends Ada into a fearful tailspin, because she knows Jack Spot, who is a villain, wants that book. Dennis’s life is in danger. Fleeing from Spot’s henchmen, Dennis stumbles into an altogether different London – a magical place with vibrant colours and anthropomorphic elements more dangerous than Spot’s men. He’s led out and deposited back into the drab, bomb-damaged city, where he’s taken in by a young sex worker, Grace, with whom he immediately falls in love. Dennis receives help from a select few who traverse between the two Londons, but not all are on his side.
The London with which we’re familiar is rendered as pale in comparison to the vibrant, ‘real’ thing: the ‘Great When’.
The Great When is an exaggerated fever-dream of the other. Bombs have loosened the fabric between the two. Moore’s use of peculiar imagery and arcane language suits the ‘superior’ London perfectly. Humour softens Dennis’s travails – Moore writes with his tongue firmly in his cheek, his brain actively engaged and his imagination in hyperdrive. Terrific stuff.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Moore is an English writer widely regarded as the best and most influential writer in the history of comics. His seminal works include From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He is also the author of the bestselling Jerusalem. He was born in Northampton, and has lived there ever since.
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