Es una obra bastante difícil de leer, para poder acabarla nos tiene que pillar con muchas ganas. En mi caso gané interés a medida que iba leyendo cada uno de los capítulos, aunque ninguno se relaciona con el anterior, todos narran la vida de la ciudad de Northampton en diferentes épocas. Such an ending could easily be egotistical but instead it's deftly handled and a perfect fit. As the author seeks inspiration to finish his book we pound the streets of Northampton with him - and we know it. The town comes alive for us both as it is and as it has been. Ultimately though, this final reveal is shown as the curtain, for this novel isn't about Northampton or even England - the star of the show isn't even the characters, it's history. History, as Moore says in this chapter, burns hot.

It's a brave thing to begin your debut novel in the first-person voice of a child with developmental issues. A child that cannot distinguish dreams from reality; that cannot understand how to lie; that is incapable of looking after himself. It's a braver thing too when that's not the focus of the novel. and is largely about the author's difficulty finishing a difficult project that is the book you're reading. On one Moore sees magic as a system to understand the "cold mechanics" of an area beyond scientific reach. But he knows he is open to ridicule. "I don't think many Booker writers would want to risk talking like this. It's like Brian Eno said about artists - they're superstitiously terrified of their own talent. If you really start thinking about 'inspiration', it's uncomfortably close to being spooky. It can make you sound silly." Quizá, “La salida de incendios de Phipps”, el relato que cierra el libro, en el que Moore es quién nos habla y quién revela sus intenciones y sus fuentes es el que me resultó menos apetecible, aunque paradójicamente, fuera escrito con la intención de ofrecer más luz al origen de la concepción de todos los anteriores.This book took me a LONG time to get into. I tried to read it once about 5 years ago, and only got into the 2nd or third story before I lost interest in it. Partly this is because the first story is very long (compared to the rest of the ones in the book), and extremely difficult to read. It's written in the manner of a brain-damaged adult living 3000 years ago, so I had to work hard to keep up with the tone and stream of consciousness style.

None of the stories are what you would call pleasant. They deal with violence, madness, death, mutilation, betrayal, Master storyteller Alan Moore ( Watchmen) delivers twelve interconnected stories of lust, madness, and ectasy, all set in central England and spanning over six thousand years, the narratives woven together in patterns of recurring events, strange traditions, and uncanny visions. First, a cave-boy loses his mother, falls in love, and learns a deadly lesson. He is followed by an extraordinary cast of characters: a murderess who impersonates her victim; a fisherman who believes he has become a different species; a Roman emissary who realizes the bitter truth about the Empire; a crippled nun who is healed miraculously by a disturbing apparition; an old crusader whose faith is destroyed by witnessing the ultimate relic; two witches, lovers, who burn at the stake. Each related tale traces a path in a journey of discovery of the secrets of the land. It was so dark that every time I started a new linked story, my mind raced ahead to find the dark ending and so anticipated several evils before they arrived...the story was still struggling along spewing more uneasy atmosphere.

Success!

rails altogether and abruptly given us a brilliantly multi-faceted gem of purest literature. Top Shelf has made a Trust in the fictive process, in the occult interweaving of text and event must be unwavering and absolute. This is the magic place, the mad place at the spark gap between word and world.” The first edition: design by Gary Day-Ellison, illustration by Robert Mason. The photo on the left shows Thomas Tresham’s Triangular Lodge, a folly outside Northampton encoded with references to the Holy Trinity via a profusion of triangles and tripartite details. Tresham’s Lodge is described in the Gunpowder Plot chapter of Alan’s novel; the triangles on my cover may be taken as a reference to this.

Blending history with wild imagination, this collection of remarkable tales submerge you in the power of language and unveil the deepest secrets hidden in the land. Spoken by an exceptional cast, from Maxine Peake to Sleaford Mods vocalist Jason Williamson, this is epic cinema for the ears, firmly rooted in the author’s home town of Northampton. The final story descended into poetic babbling, basically. I was left wondering if the author wrote it while using drugs.Another problem with the painting was that it was done by an American. And there is a storied history of Americans feeling like they’re better than Canadians, and Canadians feeling like they exist to do the things that Americans can’t do right. There’s a lot of animosity there. Yeah, someone probably could do a version of Voice of Fire for a whole lot cheaper. But the painting, and its previous relationship with Canada at the World's Fair, made it something that the National Gallery thought might be a sweet sentiment. This sweet sentiment was not enough for angry Canadian folks in 1992 when, perhaps proving their point, it came to light that in 1992, when the work was first acquisitioned, the museum had displayed it upside down. In a story full of lust, madness, and ecstasy, we meet twelve distinctive characters that lived in the same region of central England over the span of six thousand years. Their narratives are woven together in patterns of recurring events, strange traditions, and uncanny visions. First, a cave-boy loses his mother, falls in love, and learns a deadly lesson. He is followed by an extraordinary cast of characters: a murderess who impersonates her victim, a fisherman who believes he has become a different species, a Roman emissary who realizes the bitter truth about the Empire, a crippled nun who is healed miraculously by a disturbing apparition, an old crusader whose faith is destroyed by witnessing the ultimate relic, two witches, lovers, who burn at the stake. Each interconnected tale traces a path in a journey of discovery of the secrets of the land. These lives (from the historic period onwards, all protagonists and events, save authorly embellishment, did occur), these tales, are points, glittering and flowing as they are pulled around and down through a vortex. Like in Cloud Atlas that structure is sign-posted by the author, whereas that felt patronising though, here I felt it merely honest: there was nothing of the smug reveal about it but rather the smile of a friend as he says 'you've caught me'. Why? Because of what lies at the heart of the vortex.

Voice of the Fire" is really like no other novel and you'll not hear people praising it as they do "Watchmen". Within The story follows the lives of twelve people who lived in the same area of England over a period of 6000 years, and how their lives link to one another’s. Each chapter carries the reader forward in time, but circles around the centre of Northampton, drawing in historical events and touchstones, before finally segueing into metafictional narrative in the closing chapter, as the author himself comments directly upon the previous chapter’s ambiguous closing line, before relating a personal (possibly fictional) anecdote about Northampton which relates a personal experience of local myth, and features an appearance by his daughter and son-in-law, the writers Leah Moore and John Reppion. Throughout, the image of the fire sparks resonates between the tales, while Moore finds a different voice for each character – though most are inherently duplicitous in some manner, leading to a further commentary on the disparity between myth and reality, and which is more likely to endure over time. Bruce Barber, Serge Guilbaut, John O'Brian, Voices of fire: art, rage, power, and the state, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8020-7803-6.great amorphous sky-beasts who occasionally devour the sun and then, presumably, spit it out again. (He isn't nearly Durante las primeras páginas de este libro se narran las vivencias de un infante con retraso mental y dificultades para distinguir los sueños de la realidad. Habla un inglés primitivo, siempre en present perfect tense y desconoce de muchas palabras. Al final de ese relato hay una visión: la cabeza de un soldado romano, un padre que perdió a su familia en una invasión, las últimas brujas quemadas en la hoguera, el juez Augustine Nicolls, Francis Tresham, Simon de Senlis, John Clare y todos los acontecimientos que hicieron a la ciudad. Desde sus cimientos como aldea de distintas tribus pre-célticas hasta imponente ciudad de la post guerra que es hoy. Las cenizas de todos los fuegos que se alzaron en la colina de la bestia resuenan una y otra vez por las páginas. Todas las voces que contribuyeron a la historia geográfica del lugar están presentes. Es así, Voice of the Fire, un viaje histórico que reconstruye desde la ficción los cimientos de lugar especial del que no se habla tanto como uno esperaría.