Denny Dover is now out of work and moving to the wastes of Skerring to lick his wounds. A former rock star and existential maverick this East End lad-made-good lived it up with the best. But his childhood friend Sir John Barbican-Begg (deceased, allegedly) is resurrecting events from the past.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
King of the City
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Amazon Review
Michael Moorcock at his unbeatable best: King of the City is a thunderous 400-odd page salvo that is another great London novel as well as a scarifying picture of excess and corruption, seen through the eyes of sleazy photographer Denny Dover. For those who relished Moorcock's massive (and massively entertaining) novel Mother London and enjoyed his epic literary novel Gloriana, King of the City will be manna from Heaven.
Since the demise of Princess Di brought about a change in the English soul, the new thinking has kicked tabloid paparazzi photographers like Denny out of work. He fetches up in the benighted wastes of Skerring on the south coast of England, only to sink into dreams of his days as a substance-abusing, sexually omnivorous rock star and existential maverick. Denny is galvanised when his childhood friend, massively wealthy magnate John Barbican-Begg, proves that rumours of his death are greatly exaggerated. Denny has to deal with both his collusion in Begg's avaricious ambitions and--far worse--the apparent seduction of his beautiful cousin Rosie. Comparisons with Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities will be thrown up but although this shares the same glittering surface (and is couched in language that is similarly elegant, demotic and malignantly witty), Moorcock essentially concentrates on four characters rather than the more scattershot approach of Wolfe. This is a shame, as Moorcock could have fleshed out some of the minor characters. No matter: for those who lived through the 1960s, this will be the definitive document. For those too young to remember it, a trip in this particular time machine will plunge them into a dizzying and phantasmagoric world in which anything goes.
The treatment of modern Britain is equally vivid, etched with a razor-sharp scalpel. The mixture of fictional and real-life characters is brought off with the kind of panache we have come to expect from Moorcock and the more serious issues he takes on (imperialism, greed, personal integrity) are perfectly integrated into the Dickensian canvas. But, finally, it is the language that will soon have people quoting wholesale from the book:
The one big lesson American consumerism taught Europe is how to strip your own psychic assets. How to sell your self-respect in return for a handout and the chance of a class-action court case. How to squeeze a handsome buck out of a murdered ancestor, maximise the profit on your birthright ... now we're all plodding through the same toxic haze of urine, grease, carbon monoxide and degenerated plastic that has eaten away the city's deregulated gilt and left us coughing up crap.--Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Michael Moorcock was born in England in 1939. He has written many novels and has won the Guardian Fiction Award for Condition of Musak and was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize for Mother London. In recent years he has achieved an international reputation and is now recognised as a major contemporary novelist. A longtime resident of London, he now lives near Austin, Texas, with his wife.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By "redbab"
Format:Paperback
I got this for Christmas and had finished it the day after Boxing Day. What a trip! One long rush of words and ideas that makes all the Will Selfs and Nick Hornbys look like witless amateurs. I wish I'd know about this book sooner. I enjoyed Mother London enormously. It is a warm, generous, deep and moving book. King of the City reads as if that generous heart has finally taken all it can stand. Its clever understanding of Blair's arrogance and dreams, its description of the Royal Family, its anger over Rwanda and Bosnia anticipate the worse that was to come. Yet that love of London -- for all that this London is mainly invented (though very credible) -- shines through and the coda in the bleak seaside town reminds you of every bad British holiday you've ever taken. I can't recommend King of the City enough.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This was brilliant. It's out in ordinary paperback now and about the best six or seven quid's worth of EVERYTHING I have read in a very long time. I've already bought three copies to give away. I know rock and roll bands and Moorcock really captures the feel of the early and mid-70s during the last real UK rock and roll revival, when throwing the baby out with the bathwater was the object of getting rid of the bathwater. If you want to know about all the great, largely unpublicised rock and rollers of the seventies, this is like a STIFF ALBUM come to life -- Costello, Lowe, Parker, Edmunds, Stone -- they're all in this. This was a huge, seminal time in British rock and roll. Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric and Billy Bragg all turn up in this, in one way or another. Moorcock is the ONLY novelist who can write about rock and roll from the point of view of someone who has been in a successful rock band right at the centre of the 'alternative' culture of the seventies, and has his gold discs and collapsing nostrils to prove it! History of Notting Hill in the days before Amis and Hollywood reduced the place to sentimental fiction. This is a bitterer voice than Mother London and nicely offset by London Bone, which came out with the paperback of King. Bone in some ways is a more familiar, humane Moorcock voice than this. More like Mother London. But I loved this book just as much. Hits you the same way a good Stiff record used to hit you when I was a lad in the Seventies and we still thought we could make the world rock to our our own tunes. Roots info and a great tale, masses of characters, London lore, tremendous and mentally stimulating analysis of our consumerist society and a very funny denouement indeed! Gripping story, laugh-aloud jokes, memorable characters, wise words, fine prose. Hours of happy reading. If I knew you I'd give you a copy, too. KH.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is Moorcock face to face with the world's events as they unroll just as in the Jerry Cornelius stories. This is Jerry grown up and looking back on a life packed with sex, drugs, rock and roll, politics and social observation.
The best book he's done in years and so much better than any of the bloodless choices for the Bookers and the Whitbreads. A real novel for our time. If the attack on the WTC puzzled you, this might offer a bit of illumination. It did me. Thoroughly recommended.
The best book he's done in years and so much better than any of the bloodless choices for the Bookers and the Whitbreads. A real novel for our time. If the attack on the WTC puzzled you, this might offer a bit of illumination. It did me. Thoroughly recommended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Academic Tosh
I gave up on this book. There is no storyline, no characters, no plot. I can't understand how this book has so many rave reviews. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mrs A
5.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't Michael Moorcock ever get fed up with it
Fed up with these brilliant literary novels being described, even here, as 'science fiction and fantasy' ? Read more
Published on 20 Dec 2003 by Arnold Gold
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fast, furious, funny
-- and even more up to the moment than when it was written.
Denny Dover, photo-journalists, gets mixed up in some bent
corporate politics which is destroying the section... Read more
Denny Dover, photo-journalists, gets mixed up in some bent
corporate politics which is destroying the section... Read more
Published on 11 July 2002
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll in London
This book is brilliant. It captures the mood of seventies and eightees London, all the way up to the near future. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2002
5.0 out of 5 stars
A reaction to me-ism and the selfish nineties
He's a slippery old bugger, this Moorcock. As soon as you think you've got him pinned down, he's off again doing something totally unexpected. Read more
Published on 12 Jan 2002
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mother London 2002
Where Mother London ended around 1990, this book starts in the late 50s, describes the bohemian scene of the 60s and 70s and the cynical 'me' years of the 80s and 90s. Read more
Published on 28 Nov 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not sf or fantasy
This book was first listed as 'Fiction and Literature' and is now listed as 'Science Fiction'. It is no more science fiction than The Brothel in Rosenstrasse, The Chinese Agent,... Read more
Published on 26 Jun 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best thing he's done, ever.
This is definitive Moorcock. Rock music, substance abuse, London, corruption. The city is as much a character as the protagonists (and there are a more than few nods to other... Read more
Published on 18 Jun 2001 by Peter Fenelon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refreshing
This is fast-moving, hard-hitting as the latest London thriller and it's ANGRY. I bought this at the same time as Maureen Duffy's CAPITAL, which I would also thoroughly recommend,... Read more
Published on 4 Jun 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great!
This was a wonderful read. I've never read a modern novel so full of ideas and life. Makes you laugh, cry and think. Stunning. Moorcock is a marvel.
Published on 3 Jun 2001
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