Voice Of The Fire (25th Anniversary Edition) s/c back

Moore's first prose novel preceding JERUSALEM (and the now the prose short story collection ILLUMINATIONS).

Structurally and linguistically, this book was deliciously clever.Alan takes the geographical location which will become Northampton and charts six millennia of its legend and lore - its memory, if you like - through the eyes of its inhabitants, beginning with a narrator for whom concepts of the imagination, from dreaming to lying, are entirely alien. The language is therefore initially pared down to the purely physical so that, for example, instead of "smelling" something, the narrator "sniffs" it. As we move through the centuries each new narrator sees the evolving strata of event and repercussion through the eyes of their time, as events in previous chapters come back - or indeed forwards - to haunt them.Alan's wit is as sharp as ever, and black humour abounds. Once instance I'm tempted to refer to as gallows humour, were it not after the fact - you'll see!The finest testament I can think of is that every time Moore concludes a chapter and bids farewell to its protagonist, I truly wish he hadn't, for I fell in love with each and every one of them, including the last.