Mother London (1988) is a novel by Michael Moorcock. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Although the city of London itself is perhaps the central character, it follows three outpatients from a mental hospital – a music hall artist (Josef Kiss), a reclusive writer (David Mummery) and a woman just awoken from a long coma (Mary Gasalee) – who experience the history of the city from the Blitz to the late eighties though chaotic experience and sensory delusions. The novel is a non-chronological compilation of episodes, snippets and sidelines, rather than a single cohesive narrative. A piece in The Guardian called it 'a great, humane document'.
Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or london:
“Miracle had its playtime where
In damask clothed and on a seat
Chryselephantine, cedar-boarded,
His majestic Mother sat
Stitching at a purple hoarded
That He might be nobly breeched....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.”
—Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)