Jeff Noon is the author of six acclaimed novels, Vurt, Pollen, Automated Alice, Nymphomation, Needle in the Groove and Falling Out of Cars, and two collections of short fictions, Pixel Juice and Cobralingus. He lives in Brighton.
If Lewis Carroll had sent Alice off on an adventure into the future, what might it have been like? Noon (Pollen, 1995) answers this question in his wild and farcical third novel. Puns, riddles, numerical puzzles and cockeyed literary references abound in this tale of Alice's trip through her Great Aunt Ermintrude's clock into an unlikely alternate-universe version of Manchester, England, circa 1998. Among the many strange characters Alice meets are her termite-driven, robot "twin twister," the Automated Alice of the title; Captain Ramshackle, a Badgerman and Randomologist; and a Crow-woman/scientist named Professor Gladys Chrowdingler who puts cats in boxes that may or may not render them invisible. Alice soon finds herself involved in the investigation of a series of murders. The victims are discovered with their body parts carefully rearranged and pieces from a jigsaw puzzle on their persons. Because the pieces come from her own jigsaw of the London Zoo, Alice soon finds herself under suspicion and on the run from the Civil Serpents, who themselves may be trying to cover up an even darker crime. Lewis Carroll's odd sense of humor doesn't appeal to all readers and neither will Noon's, but Noon does a fine job of imitating Carroll while adding more than a dash of his own postmodernist sensibility. Will Alice find all of her missing jigsaw pieces and return to the 19th century? Only the Radishes of Time will tell. Line drawings by Harry Trumbore. (Oct.)
Noon's third novel (e.g., Vurt, LJ 10/1/94) will disappoint his fans and not win him any new readers. Alice, Lewis Carroll's heroine, goes on a third fantastic journey as she travels from her life in 19th-century Manchester, England, to 1998. While dreading an upcoming grammar lesson with her dreadful great-aunt, Alice is more concerned with the whereabouts of 12 missing pieces from her jigsaw puzzle and the stubbornness of her great-aunt's parrot Whippoorwill, who will not return to his cage. Alice enters the innards of a grandfather clock in order to recapture the parrot and emerges in a confusing world where she is the prime suspect in a series of murders. In contrast to the whimsical and inspired wordplay found in Norman Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth and Carroll's two Alice novels, this novel beats us over the head with heavy-handed puns and anagrams. Never funny, never philosophical, the book just meanders on. Not recommended.‘Nancy Linn Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Pérez-Reverte, Arturo.
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