It’s a testament to the quality of writing when some authors put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, but that’s not all that evocative or poetic) and start writing to you about a world in which you have very little idea of what’s happening. that’s going on, but I also don’t care. Cormac McCarthy can do this for me. Some writers simply construct sentences of such amazing quality that you are glad to have the opportunity to caress them with your eyes. Jeff Noon doesn’t pull this off in Vurt, but he’s not too far behind either.
It comes from the fine tradition of British authors writing in staccato, clipped street slang and drug slang. The pace is surprisingly fast, half the words seem made up or used in some unexpected context. Noon reflects the traditions of Anthony Burgess or Irving Welsh (writers of A Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting, respectively). The writing is simple, fast and almost impenetrable. There are few writers who manage to make their written voice so much like the characters they are writing. The prose in Vurt comes to you like you’re listening to a coke-high Robin Williams going a mile a minute. At no point does it feel like his characters are taking a breather, they always seem to be on the brink of the next bust drug deal or Vurt trip gone wrong.
He envisions a future world (I’m assuming it takes place in the future because of the technology he describes, but Noon doesn’t put much emphasis on the timeline) where people ingest feathers to enter some kind of communal dream world with a control. levels computer type. Different colored feathers take the user to different levels of sleep, with some of the rarer (stronger) feathers taking the user to a deeper, stronger, higher access level of sleep.
It’s confusing, and Noon never does much to disabuse us of our confusion. Somehow it doesn’t really matter that much. I can’t say I left the book feeling good about what I just read, or knowing much about the genesis of the Vurt world, but that’s okay. He does what good speculative fiction writers do and presupposes some facts about the world as he imagines it and then tells us a story about people we can or can’t relate to. In keeping with the tradition of British counterculture writers, I didn’t like any of the characters in Noon. They were conflicted and not very well.
The protagonist, Scribble, was very convoluted; he was driven to save her sister from a Vurt dream gone wrong, a dream in which he was responsible for bringing her. But Scribble was also selfish, venal, manipulative, and incestuous. I found myself still waiting for him to rescue his sister, not because I cared about her happiness or “relationship”, but because I hoped he would help me understand what was happening in the story and why.
Don’t misunderstand my initial comparison, Noon isn’t writing McCarthy-quality prose, but he does write very compelling passages that draw you in with their pacing and pacing. The world isn’t very well explained, but that’s okay too. If you can let go of that inner 5-year-old and ignore it by always asking “why?” So this is a good novel. It’s a challenging book to read, but only because you have to go through so much confusion before you get a sense of what’s going on. Vurt reads like the freshman novel that it is. It’s rough around the edges and lacks the polish that unfortunately homogenizes so much mainstream fiction. He pulls you into the thick of the action, steps on the accelerator, and kindly suggests you wait. It’s interesting and fresh and I recommend it, with all the caveats and caveats I’ve already listed.