Review of The Great When by Alan Moore

Post-war London, the occult, alternate worlds, serial killers, blah, blah, blah... Acknowledging the keywords of a contemporary novel is uninspiring, to say the least. They push a book deeper into the milieu of modern publishing rather than distinguish it. But, what if I tell you Alan Moore's 2024 The Great When likewise possesses a superb authorial voice, characters with character, and a twisty story that constantly surprises? Hopefully sounds a bit more intriguing. Let's set the hook deeper.

The Great When follows one Dennis Knuckleyard, used bookshop assistant, in the post-WWII years of London. But it's not the London you know. Superficially it looks like your London, but there are doors, entryways to another, darker, surreal London. Dennis gets himself into a spot of trouble one day in Soho picking up a box of vintage Arthur Machen books. One of the books in the box exists only in fiction, but there it sits in Dennis' hands. The young man's world turned sideways in the aftermath, he is forced to explore the London you don't know to get rid of the book, meeting all manner of gangsters and artists, harlots and killers along the way.

If you've seen Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, then add a layer of occult and the surreal and you're starting to get an idea of what The Great When is. It captures modern crime in blackly humorous fashion. It's characters drip off the pages while the tongue-in-cheek dialogue set them on fire. This is a novel with Soul. You may dislike the story, the characters, the fantastika, or anything else. But there is no denying the power of Moore's voice. Like Ritchie's movies, it pulls you along a dark road, smiling.

The unseen power is Moore's dynamic diction. Baroque if anything, the author continually takes the long way round to a point, stopping by to sniff the flowers of sarcasm and detail along the way. Scenes, let alone moments, are truly unpacked. Dialogue is firecracker after firecracker. And the setting is described in curlicues and filigrees. Moore's mental thesaurus seems to know no end. The English language taken out of the barn and given proper, open range exercise.

If I had a quibble, there are times Moore's dense diction in fact gets in its own way. The baroque, playful style works well in the moments the narrative is in reality. The reader gets vivid pictures of who, what, and how. But when reality is twisted sideways, these gnarled descriptions lose effectiveness. The surreal element get lost among the strong visuals Moore creates in the reality-driven scenes. The reader is supposed to feel the weirdness, the oddity of Other London, but due to the fact the descriptions struggle to stick out, it doesn't hit as hard as perhaps it could have.

If the internets are correct, The Great When is the first of a quintet of novels. Don't worry. There is no cliffhanger, or responsibility, or expectation the reader needs read the next book to discover what happens next. It's a nicely self-contained novel the reader can walk away from.

In the end, if you enjoy the rich usage of language, irreverent characters and dialogue, and a twisty-turn through mid-20^th century London—both real and surreal, then have a go at The Great When. (China Mieville's Kraken forms a reference point for imagining this novel.) The title may be a Great Letdown, but the story behind it is as dark and colorful as a reader may want.