The Great When by Alan Moore
The undisputed king of comic books returns with a new novel set between two different worlds
Not content with being the undisputed king of comics, Alan Moore kicks off his new series of ‘Long London’ novels with The Great When. 18-year-old Dennis Knuckleyard (bearing a name which, he explains, must have been the fanciful invention of his estranged father) works for a second-hand bookseller in 1949 London. By accident, he buys a book that doesn’t – or rather, shouldn’t – exist. When he goes to return it at the behest of his employer, the man who sold it to him has mysteriously died.
If all that sounds slightly hard to grasp, consider yourself in the same boat as the young protagonist at its centre. What follows is a classic hero’s journey à la Joseph Campbell and an Alice-style tumble into wonderland. The book comes from ‘the other’ London, a Neverwhere-esque alternative world beneath ours. Warned against disposing of the book willy-nilly, can Dennis make it there and back again without losing it to the thugs that see his book as their passport into The Great When?
Moore loves a winding sentence and his prose rewards concentration, but he makes knowing pleas for his reader to stick with him throughout. A scene in which our hero reads a story that will help him make sense of things sees him struggle with ‘the stuffiness of the tale’s presentation’ before being won over by ‘the burnish of its language and its atmospherics’. Such is the experience of reading this book. The Great When is a tongue-in-cheek romp from a master storyteller.
