I ended up trading in my hardback edition for the three-volume set, because the fucking size of it meant I wasn't getting any reading done. Anyway I've not even finished the prologue yet (paused for the Man Booker) so this is dispiriting to me. I was hoping it would very quickly pick up into a mad hodge-podge of non-linear history, a bit like From Hell of the Dr. Manhattan chapter of Watchmen, all shreds of Nottingham history mingling together.
That is definitely what it turns into, amongst other things. I wrote the only Goodreads review I've ever bothered to do. This is it:
This book is many, many things, but above all it’s a generous and thorough tribute to Northampton; probably the most generous and thorough tribute to an author’s hometown ever written.
Jerusalem is dense; dense with allegory, with semiotics, with character, with history, with imagination, with connections. Even the text itself is dense, closely typeset and smaller than average. It rewards patience. I read it slowly and carefully, but reaching the end I have the impression I’ve missed half of it. It would benefit from a second read, and a third, and more. To read this book once and think that you know what it’s about would be a mistake. But life is short and I want to write a review, so I’ll try to tell you anyway.
Broadly, it’s about an art exhibition prepared by a fairly thinly veiled author surrogate and the various subjects of her thirty-five pieces of work. It’s divided into three books. The first and third are collections of stories in a variety of styles, some more obviously connected than others. (Personally I love this sort of thing and this book is one of the best examples I’ve read). The middle book is a more straightforward story about a gang of child ghosts and their time-hopping adventures. It would probably stand up well enough on its own, and perhaps would have made a great graphic novel. But Moore isn’t interested in that this time. He’s got as many words as he wants and he’s going to take you on a unique ride.
Still, this book is littered with his usual preoccupations. Comics, science-fiction, Jack the Ripper, religion, politics, literature. And of course it also contains some frank descriptions of sex and a harrowing scene of sexual assault. So, watch out for that one. But, like his best work, it’s a skilled and heady mix of imagination and history. This book’s account of the afterlife must be one of the most clearly imagined and evocative there is. One suspects he knows something we don’t.
All this is my way of saying I think this book is fantastic. Imperfect and contradictory, and more than happy to test the patience of its reader, but fantastic.
PS: The book is also very long, but like most very long books, that’s the least interesting thing about it.
