Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd

SPOILERS!! (sort of)

An extremely dense and difficult book. The kind of book I didn't particularly enjoy reading but am glad I did read, because I got something from it that I know I couldn't get anywhere else. It's hard to find anything to say. Should I try and interpret the story as a story at all? Or just focus on ideas? Even then it's obscure. I think it's a book all about outsiders. Dyer and Hawksmoor are united by their outsider status. If I had to go for a literal interpretation of the story and to solve the mystery (ha!) I'd say Hawksmoor was a reincarnation (or something) of Dyer, and was the murderer. But that doesn't really matter. "Poet's novel" is right.

From Hell - Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

A deep, dark, winding, labyrinthine work of art. In Moore's words, a whydunnit rather than a whodunnit, so deeply researched that almost everything that happens either did happen or could have. The appendix telling the story of "ripperologists" through the ages is a work of art in its own right. General consensus among Mooreites is that From Hell is his crowning achievement, but I'm not sure it's better than Watchmen... Either way, he's a visionary for our times and should take a place in the same line as Milton and Blake.