Yesterday I finished Alan Moore’s novel Jerusalem, which I enjoyed very very much and which I recommend, sort of, with caveats.

Which is what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the book, but I want to talk about caveats, and content notes, and trigger warnings, and that sort of thing.

First, the book: It is an immersive, multi-dimensional look at the city of Northampton, where Moore was born and still lives. It sweeps back and forth across time, between life and death, through about two dozen viewpoints.* It plays with language and perception and narrative in a way that’s satisfying without being alienating. It’s a disjointed sort of collage in which the full picture, even the plot, doesn’t become clear until very near the end, and even so the individual pieces are so satisfying that it never becomes an impediment to enjoying the book. In some ways it functions as a summary and commentary on Moore’s career, and in the denouement there are even a succession of self-reflexive critical reactions to the work itself and the author, many of them unflattering.

*Relevant: of those two-dozen viewpoints, only about 1/4 are female characters.

Do I recommend reading it? That depends.

If you are fan of Moore’s work, then probably yes, although the novel is a very different animal from his comics. If you liked From Hell and the later installments of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, then you’ll probably appreciate this. If you thought the horror comic subplot in Watchmen was unnecessary and distracting, you’re probably not going to like this.

If you have a tolerance for fiction that is a little bit oblique and challenging, and for play with language that can approach the frustrating (I spent three days slowly working my through one 36-page chapter), then you may well love this.

And here’s the big one: If you are someone who avoids reading male authors because of the way they tend to write about women, and if you are someone who has trauma related to rape and sexual abuse, then you should probably not read this book, because there is graphic-but-not-exploitative depiction of rape and less-graphic-and-still-not-exploitative-but-no-less-upsetting depiction of child abuse. There is also violence.

The above is a Trigger Warning.

Trigger Warnings are something that some people apparently have a big problem with.

For instance, Hannah Hart:

I was looking through Hannah Hart's new book Buffering and opened to this paragraph which made me roll my eyes so hard they hurt. pic.twitter.com/tfsss5UEZ4

— Na'amenally Scary