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:
“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”
—Shirley Temple Black (b. 1928)
“Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)