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A review by steveatwaywords
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
And I thought I admired his graphic novels . . .
Yes, Jerusalem is huge (over 1200 dense pages), and yes it is enormously ambitious in a modernist sense. Yes, it harkens richly to the densest passages of Joyce or Blake, and yes it takes enormous liberties with a novel's form or structure. Yes, it spends seemingly incredible time with the minutiae of daily living as it does with its loftier cosmic themes, but this is not an act of a writer out of control, as many reviewers suggest: no, this is a writer expansive in his reach and recognizing that the schemes of the universe's engineers are every bit as significant as a troublesome bout of urination in an abandoned public toilet. Early on in the novel, what seems to be an angel speaks to one of the characters: "This will be very hard for you." Advice for readers.
Still, give this novel its necessary reading space and its breadth and re-figuring of nothing less than the nature of existence reveal themselves: the sense of humor of angels, the ultimate power of a Destructor, the nature of time and its end, the sensibility in madness, the holy brevity of the flesh, the history of an author's home town, the curving Escher-like significance of narrative, whether autobiography or cosmogony.
Each thickened scene is a new stain on our fingertips and it leaves its marks backwards and forwards in the text. You will learn the deep-storied streets of Northampton in routes unwalked by most of its own inhabitants. And along the way, we find a kind of wonder that visits too few stories, one that requires less the music-swelling climaxes of character awe and more like the velocity of a falling cough drop or the advice of a 19th century midwife.
Yes, this is a novel largely impossible to summarize. As I write this, the ambitious annotators out there seem to have abandoned their attempts far short of completion. Outside of a fairly handy family tree posted, there are no real resources to help you along the way. Looking for a trusty and comfortable quest story? Abandon that hope. Want to know what's it like to wear a necklace of dead rabbit pelts? As it happens, you may be in luck.
So yes, this is a monumental achievement of a (post-)modernist novel in the contemporary moment, and yes, I will be reading it again to see what I missed wading in the first time, and yes, I will read more of Moore so long as he writes it, it seems. And yes, and yes.
Yes, Jerusalem is huge (over 1200 dense pages), and yes it is enormously ambitious in a modernist sense. Yes, it harkens richly to the densest passages of Joyce or Blake, and yes it takes enormous liberties with a novel's form or structure. Yes, it spends seemingly incredible time with the minutiae of daily living as it does with its loftier cosmic themes, but this is not an act of a writer out of control, as many reviewers suggest: no, this is a writer expansive in his reach and recognizing that the schemes of the universe's engineers are every bit as significant as a troublesome bout of urination in an abandoned public toilet. Early on in the novel, what seems to be an angel speaks to one of the characters: "This will be very hard for you." Advice for readers.
Still, give this novel its necessary reading space and its breadth and re-figuring of nothing less than the nature of existence reveal themselves: the sense of humor of angels, the ultimate power of a Destructor, the nature of time and its end, the sensibility in madness, the holy brevity of the flesh, the history of an author's home town, the curving Escher-like significance of narrative, whether autobiography or cosmogony.
Each thickened scene is a new stain on our fingertips and it leaves its marks backwards and forwards in the text. You will learn the deep-storied streets of Northampton in routes unwalked by most of its own inhabitants. And along the way, we find a kind of wonder that visits too few stories, one that requires less the music-swelling climaxes of character awe and more like the velocity of a falling cough drop or the advice of a 19th century midwife.
Yes, this is a novel largely impossible to summarize. As I write this, the ambitious annotators out there seem to have abandoned their attempts far short of completion. Outside of a fairly handy family tree posted, there are no real resources to help you along the way. Looking for a trusty and comfortable quest story? Abandon that hope. Want to know what's it like to wear a necklace of dead rabbit pelts? As it happens, you may be in luck.
So yes, this is a monumental achievement of a (post-)modernist novel in the contemporary moment, and yes, I will be reading it again to see what I missed wading in the first time, and yes, I will read more of Moore so long as he writes it, it seems. And yes, and yes.
Content Warnings
There is scarcely no sensitive topic I can think of which is not addressed somewhere in this novel. Its themes and contents are recommended only for mature readers, and various sudden provocative passages will surprise or shock along the way. Because many of them are through the eyes of limited characters, the topics are often offered in insensitive and offensive circumstances and vocabulary.