Mother London is a novel by Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock

Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....

. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Although the city of London itself is perhaps the central character, it follows three outpatients from a mental hospital, a music hall artist, a reclusive writer and a woman just awoken from a long coma, who experience the history of the city from the blitz to the late eighties though chaotic experience and sensory delusions. The novel is a compilation of episodes, snippets and sidelines, rather than a single coherent narrative. A piece in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

called it 'a great, humane document' http://books.guardian.co.uk/lrb/articles/0,6109,401938,00.html.