Review of Vurt by Jeff Noon

It's a testament to the quality of writing when some authors put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, but that's not nearly as evocative nor poetic) and start writing you a world where you have very little idea what is going on, but you also don't care. Cormac McCarthy can do this for me. Some writers just construct sentences of such staggering quality that you are pleased to have to opportunity to fondle them with your eyeholes. Jeff Noon doesn't quite manage this in Vurt, but he's not too far away, either.He comes out of the fine tradition of British authors who write in a form of staccato, clipped street/drug argot. The pacing 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, rapid-fire and nearly impenetrable. There are few writers who manage their written voice to sound so much like the
characters he is writing. The prose in Vurt comes at you like listening to a coked-up Robin Williams yak at a mile a minute. At no point does it feel like his characters are taking a breath, they always seem to be on the verge of the next busted drug deal or Vurt trip gone wrong.He imagines a future world (I assume it takes place in the future because of the technology he describes, but Noon doesn't make much of a point about the timeline) where people ingest feathers in order to enter some sort of communal dream world with a computer-like control of the levels. The different color feathers take the user to different levels of the dream, with some of the rarest (strongest) feathers taking the user to a deeper, stronger and higher access level of the dream.It's confusing and Noon never does too much to disabuse us our confusion. Somehow it doesn't really matter that much. I can't say I put the book down feeling good about what I just read, or knowing a lot about the genesis
of the Vurt-world, but that's ok. 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 to whom we may or may not be able to relate. Staying in the tradition of British counter-culture writers, I didn't really like any of Noon's characters. They were conflicted and not very good.The protagonist, Scribble, was very convoluted; he was driven to save his sister from a Vurt-dream gone bad, a dream that he was responsible for bringing her into. But Scribble was also selfish, venal, manipulative and incestuous. I found myself still hoping he would rescue his sister, not because I cared about his happiness or "relationship," but because I hoped it would help me understand what was happening in the story and why.Don't misunderstand my initial comparison, Noon is not writing McCarthy quality prose, but he does write very compelling passages that pull you along with their rhythm and pacing.
The world isn't very well explained, but that's also ok. If you can put aside that your inner 5-year-old and ignore him always asking "why?" then this is a good novel. It's a challenging book to read but only because you have to slog through so much confusion before you have a handle on what is happening. 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. It yanks you into the middle of the action, mashes its foot down on the accelerator and suggests that you kindly hang on. It is interesting and fresh and I recommend it, with all the caveats and warnings I've already listed.

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