Jeff Noon
Paperback - Black Swan (2003) |
 |
Falling Out of Cars
A road novel like no other, Falling Out of Cars explores a country, and a psyche, falling off the edge of reality.
In a world overflowing with images, how can you tell who you really are?
Marlene Moore wasn't even sure why she accepted the job, except that it gave her the chance to just get in her car and drive. To escape, to keep moving, to maybe find a destination for herself. Now she's journeying around England, a land that turns stranger and more dreamlike, the further she travels. Slowly, day by day, Marlene is falling prey to a sickness, a disease that seems to change the world around her. And the job itself turns out to be far weirder, and more dangerous, than she ever imagined.
`If Needle in the Groove was a novel written to be sung, then Falling Out of Cars is fragments of a diary as ambient music . . . One of Noon’s strengths in this book is the way he presents the impossible as ordinary . . . Falling Out of Cars is part of Noon’s continuing revolt out of genre and into creative resistance against all traditional forms of fiction, as if he believes that the ultimate incomprehensibility of narrative. This is a road novel, stripped of plot and meaning. What you get is what you read. Anything else might risk making life comprehensible; and one gets the feeling that, for Noon, this would be to collude with his readers’ Guardian
`Though one is loathe to resort to the old ‘like X on acid’ trope, this inexplicably titled novel really does recreate the woozy weightlessness of a bad (road) trip, or at least a severe hangover ... Clever’ The Times
`Jeff Noon has an unsurpassable talent for creating worlds both recognisable and utterly removed from our own ... This is classic Noon - strange, compelling and disturbing’ The List
‘To his fans Jeff Noon is a punk Aldous Huxley stringing together images and oddities to assemble an apocalyptic dreamworld ... [Falling Out of Cars] is a futuristic road trip in which Marlene, a journalist, narrates how she and a bunch of groupies drive around the UK searching for fragments of a mirror in a bid to tame a bizarre wasting disease that manifests itself as noise and makes photos lethal’ Arena
`Falling Out of Cars is described as a road novel ... The virtue of the narrative is that it keeps on going, like the road itself. We don’t know where - road atlases seem scarce - but go it does and the reader feels compelled to go with it. There are moments of grace and beauty, such as, in the surprising Museum of Fragile Things, a room devoted to books whose text disappears as you read it. It’s one of many tantalising, disturbing ideas in the novel ... Falling Out of Cars - Brighton Rock with drugs - may be set in the future, but it’s imbued with the spirit of the present’ Time Out
`This is an immaculate British road novel; a melancholic, enigmatic odyssey that transforms our bleak little island into an uncanny fantasy world’ SFX (five-starred review)
`Falling Out of Cars takes what could be a familiar premise - the quest through a collapsing society - and distorts it into an inventive and moving journey. An enjoyably chilling and disorienting read’ Leeds Guide
`Fragmented and Lynchian, this is a mournful, achingly lonely book packed with resonant, filmic imagery. Its refusal to resolve itself will either irritate you or make perfect sense’ Sleazenation
`Noon’s sixth novel is a remarkable achievement. Keeping up with his imagination is rather like wrestling a wisp of smoke. Falling Out of Cars rewards readers with some unforgettable passages and deeply haunting imagery . . . What’s it all about? Self-awareness, identity, self-image, semiotics, maybe all of these, maybe none. This is certainly Noon’s finest novel’ Big Issue in the North
`Falling Out of Cars is the place where Jeff Noon’s expansive imagination has found its poetic equal. The end result is both compelling and lovely. Book of the Year! No doubt about it! Manchester Evening News
About The Author
Acknowledged as one of the most exciting new authors today, Jeff Noon is the author of five novels: Vurt, Pollen, Automated Alice, Nymphomation, and Needle in the Groove; and a collection of short stories, Pixel Juice. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1995, and lives in Brighton.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Falling Out of Cars
(Doubleday,
2002)
Black Swan Pbk Nov 03
Needle in the Groove
Nymphomation
Automated Alice
Pollen
Vurt
Falling Out of Cars
by Jeff Noon
