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Falling Out of Cars
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 is 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. A road novel like no other, FALLING OUT OF CARS explores a country, and a psyche, falling off the edge of reality.
345 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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801 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Noon
57 books862 followersJeff Noon is a novelist, short story writer and playwright whose works make extensive use of wordplay and fantasy.
He studied fine art and drama at Manchester University and was subsequently appointed writer in residence at the city's Royal Exchange theatre. But Noon did not stay too long in the theatrical world, possibly because the realism associated with the theatre was not conducive to the fantastical worlds he was itching to invent. While working behind the counter at the local Waterstone's bookshop, a colleague suggested he write a novel. The result of that suggestion,
Vurt, was the hippest sci-fi novel to be published in Britain since the days of Michael Moorcock in the late sixties.
Like Moorcock, Noon is not preoccupied with technology per se, but incorporates technological developments into a world of magic and fantasy.
As a teenager, Noon was addicted to American comic heroes, and still turns to them for inspiration. He has said that music is more of an influence on his writing than novelists: he 'usually writes to music', and his record collection ranges from classical to drum'n'bass.
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July 5, 2024
Jeff Noon's Falling Out of Cars is a bizarre, highly inventive and finely crafted road novel where the narrator, Marlene, aged thirty-five, keeps a diary as she rides in the back seat of her car through a blighted England. In this desolate, near-future landscape, nearly all men and women have fallen sick from what is called "the noise," a condition without surcease that blurs everything perceived, including, most dramatically (gulp!), one's sense of self.
Marlene is sitting in the back because Peacock, a gun toting war vet, and his attractive honey, t'ai chi practicing Henderson, are up front. They're on a quest at the bidding of an old guy, a magician or sorts, named Kingsley, searching for the charmed shards of a particular mirror. If all this sounds odd, you're right, it's most definitely oddball flaky with bits of Latin American-style magic realism added in.
To share hits of this Jeff Noon dark literary gem, I'll link my observations to a number of direct quotes taken from the first third of the novel.
“Many times before I have done this, and always each time the confusion takes over. I can bring to mind scattered details, emotions, overall moods; it's just that something is lost along the way. The noise is a dark hand, a soft hold, slow poison, sickness, it will not leave me go.”
For the past year, Marlene has been grieving over the death of Angela, her beautiful nine-year-old daughter, a loss caused by a combination of noise and an overdose of Lucidity (the drug taken to ease the sickness). And to compound her suffering, Marlene fears the noise will eat away her memory, wiping away any thoughts or feeling or recollections of her beloved Angela, leaving her with a hazy, barren numbness.
“She was a neat, serious looking young woman, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old. A girl, really....The girl had kept it going, for some reason, when all the mirrors had sickened, and been turn aside.”
They spot a hitchhiker holding a sign with one single word – “Wherever.” Marlene asks Peacock to stop. Now their threesome has turned into a foursome. The girl's name is Tupelo, her parents naming her after the town in Mississippi that was Elvis' birthplace, which speaks to the pervasive influence pop culture holds in this near-future, information-based world. And that business with the mirrors relates to the way the sickness makes a viewer's sense of self even more scattershot (I use the word scattershot purposely) since when one looks into a mirror it is as if one's own identity is shattered by a blast from a shotgun. But Tupelo is among those rare individuals exempt from the sickness, even when looking in a mirror.
“We're losing ourselves. We're losing all the traces, all the moments of the world, one by one. I have to keep writing.”
Prior to her divorce and losing her dear Angela, Marlene was a journalist. Marlene continues to put pen to paper and the written word serves as nothing less than her life raft even as she succumbs more and more to the sickness.
“Dominating the landscape was a large visual display advertising the Lucidity drug.”
Diseased England is so contaminated by the noise, the Lucidity drug (Lucy) is dispensed by the government. But here's something I haven't seen others reviewers suggest: Perhaps there are serious possible side effects when taking the drug; maybe, in some individuals, Lucy compounds the noise and increases a sense of disorientation. Might those in power benefit from huge swaths of the population reduced to passivity and helplessness?
“In those days the sickness had not yet found its way completely into the network, but calls were already plagued with interference, with hiss and crackle, ghosts on the line.”
The sickness is all pervasive, it even infects and scrambles technologies (the ultimate virus?). In other words, not even computer games, phones and other gadgets are immune from contamination. The devastation, disorientation and loss in Noon's England is so extreme, it can remind one of chronicles and novels about the country ravaged by the Black Death during the Middle Ages - Oisín Fagan's Nobber comes immediately to mind.
Recall I mentioned magic realism. One of the more intriguing episodes in the novel happens when Marlene enters The Museum of Fragile Things. She encounters a number of beguiling forms of art, including a small library where the words in books disappear once those words are read. And who does Marlene see amongst the volumes? Tupelo. A conversation ensues bordering on a magical mystery tour where language begins to disintegrate.
As I kept reading, I couldn't help thinking that Jeff Noon has given us a cautionary tale, one that has strong parallels with our current world of increasing technology, a world where the influence of literature and the fine arts is disappearing at an alarming rate. Added to addiction to things like TV, computer games, cell phones and Twitter-like internet sites, we now have not only booze and hard drugs shrinking people's minds and spirits but the widespread use of, to name just two, fentanyl and oxycontin. How far are we from an entire society of minds falling out of cars and not even realizing it is happening?
British author Jeff Noon, born 1957
July 12, 2017
this book was difficult to read and made me feel sad and strange. i finished it quickly because i didn't want to feel that way anymore.
May 30, 2018
Got to the end of this one , fell out of the car , went back to page one and and read it all over again . This is something I've never done before . Glad I did . This book is so full of original ideas and great writing it was worth the second read . --- From the cover --- "Jeff Noon is a punk Aldous Huxley stringing together images and oddities to assemble an apocalyptic dreamworld" * ARENA * . And that's all you should know before starting this great book except that if you skip this one you're really missing out on something special .
February 24, 2015
I'm a bit of a fan of Jeff Noon's work, and have been since I first read Vurt some time back in the mid-nineties, but I really didn't find that much to like in Falling Out Of Cars.
The story follows Marlene, Bev, Peacock and Tupelo, an unlikely set of companions, as they travel around a Britain that's caught in the grip of a seemingly unstoppable sickness in search of fragments of a magic mirror. Along the way they deal with their own gradual decline as the sickness takes a hold of all of them except Tupelo (who is apparently immune), and their relationship is stretched to breaking point as each of the protagonists loses faith in the quest.
I found that the characters in this book aren't all that engaging. The only one with any real substance is Marlene, the main protagonist and the book's de-facto narrator. The others all seem superficial, and we only get to hear the back story of one of those, and then only a fragment. We're given little or no reason to sympathise with these three secondary characters, and consequently it feels as though Marlene herself doesn't even care that much about them. When they all go their separate ways at the end I was just left thinking 'oh well,' and moving on, and that's after taking into account the fact that one almost dies and another is effectively abandoned at the side of the road.
The sickness itself affects the victims' perceptions, confusing their understanding of the world around them; it also somehow messes with communications media, including photographs, telephone calls, radio and television signals, and even road signage and the written word. In this respect it seems as though Noon is trying to use the sickness as some sort of symbol of the breakdown in communication between the characters, but if so I think maybe he's trying too hard. I couldn't take the narrative seriously because of the absurdity of the sickness affecting not just the human victims but also the digital and physical manifestations of communication.
We're given the impression that the mirror fragments they're searching for are from the self-same mirror that Alice Liddell fell in and out of in Through The Looking Glass, and in this respect the book ties in with a couple of Noon's other books, in particular Automated Alice. In one of the more surreal passages there's also a brief mention of a girl holding a doll, and both the girl and the doll have the same face (another allusion to the earlier book, in which Alice and her automated counterpart, Celia, end up looking alike). This inclusion of the mythical Looking Glass gives Noon free rein to bombard us with some hefty surrealism, and while I admit that these sequences are incredibly well written, I again think that he's trying too hard.
All in all this is a bit of a shame, because Noon has written some beautifully absurd things in the past that I've absolutely loved and engaged with whole-heartedly (Vurt? Pollen? Automated Alice?) Unfortunately, that simply wasn't the case with this one, and despite how beautifully he strings words together I found myself rushing through the last few chapters just to get it over and done with.
I'm not going to say I absolutely hated this book, but I would only recommend it to completists who just have to read everything Noon has written.
The story follows Marlene, Bev, Peacock and Tupelo, an unlikely set of companions, as they travel around a Britain that's caught in the grip of a seemingly unstoppable sickness in search of fragments of a magic mirror. Along the way they deal with their own gradual decline as the sickness takes a hold of all of them except Tupelo (who is apparently immune), and their relationship is stretched to breaking point as each of the protagonists loses faith in the quest.
I found that the characters in this book aren't all that engaging. The only one with any real substance is Marlene, the main protagonist and the book's de-facto narrator. The others all seem superficial, and we only get to hear the back story of one of those, and then only a fragment. We're given little or no reason to sympathise with these three secondary characters, and consequently it feels as though Marlene herself doesn't even care that much about them. When they all go their separate ways at the end I was just left thinking 'oh well,' and moving on, and that's after taking into account the fact that one almost dies and another is effectively abandoned at the side of the road.
The sickness itself affects the victims' perceptions, confusing their understanding of the world around them; it also somehow messes with communications media, including photographs, telephone calls, radio and television signals, and even road signage and the written word. In this respect it seems as though Noon is trying to use the sickness as some sort of symbol of the breakdown in communication between the characters, but if so I think maybe he's trying too hard. I couldn't take the narrative seriously because of the absurdity of the sickness affecting not just the human victims but also the digital and physical manifestations of communication.
We're given the impression that the mirror fragments they're searching for are from the self-same mirror that Alice Liddell fell in and out of in Through The Looking Glass, and in this respect the book ties in with a couple of Noon's other books, in particular Automated Alice. In one of the more surreal passages there's also a brief mention of a girl holding a doll, and both the girl and the doll have the same face (another allusion to the earlier book, in which Alice and her automated counterpart, Celia, end up looking alike). This inclusion of the mythical Looking Glass gives Noon free rein to bombard us with some hefty surrealism, and while I admit that these sequences are incredibly well written, I again think that he's trying too hard.
All in all this is a bit of a shame, because Noon has written some beautifully absurd things in the past that I've absolutely loved and engaged with whole-heartedly (Vurt? Pollen? Automated Alice?) Unfortunately, that simply wasn't the case with this one, and despite how beautifully he strings words together I found myself rushing through the last few chapters just to get it over and done with.
I'm not going to say I absolutely hated this book, but I would only recommend it to completists who just have to read everything Noon has written.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 24, 2008
FALLING OUT OF CARS is the sixth novel from Jeff Noon and it takes form of entries in a personal diary that belongs to the lead female character, Marlene Moore. We have tasted in Noon’s other works the Vaz smeared tickle of VURT’s data feathers, the nasal-cavity sting of Manchester’s POLLEN and the time travelling antics of his AUTOMATED ALICE but this piece is a road novel for the post-psychedelic generation gone wrong, unwoven, ripped at the seams.
Assaulted by the everyday set of five immiscible senses, Marlene Moore yearns for her stolen normality, the drug Lucidity her only saviour. We are talking about a global view of England where the mirrors no longer work, where the clocks have fallen into a coma, the telephones are nothing more than nauseous crosswinds.
Travelling the length and breadth of England, our heroine gathers around her a ragtag band of similar social dropouts and brain-warped has-beens, insane criminals and the criminally insane. There are horrors and delights along the way; the bar room where everyone is a silver-nitrate snapshot of flesh and bone, beings reborn in the developing solution; the Gallery of Delicate Things where books sacrifice their words in the act of being read; respectively. All magical and trippy as you like.
The diary form is a great device and this reviewer would have preferred a purer depiction that contained NO DIALOGUE; an anecdotal style that would have added further occlusion to the telling of the tale, an extra choux-pastry layer of disturbed thinking and muddled reason. Will these black scrawls of ink be able to save our heroine from her impending madness, her slow and relentless sensory unweaving?
"If you can read this, you are alive." the signposts scream along the way and you know, they are right.
It’s the freakiest, most twisted, truly disturbing, speed read horror ride I've read in a long time.
Assaulted by the everyday set of five immiscible senses, Marlene Moore yearns for her stolen normality, the drug Lucidity her only saviour. We are talking about a global view of England where the mirrors no longer work, where the clocks have fallen into a coma, the telephones are nothing more than nauseous crosswinds.
Travelling the length and breadth of England, our heroine gathers around her a ragtag band of similar social dropouts and brain-warped has-beens, insane criminals and the criminally insane. There are horrors and delights along the way; the bar room where everyone is a silver-nitrate snapshot of flesh and bone, beings reborn in the developing solution; the Gallery of Delicate Things where books sacrifice their words in the act of being read; respectively. All magical and trippy as you like.
The diary form is a great device and this reviewer would have preferred a purer depiction that contained NO DIALOGUE; an anecdotal style that would have added further occlusion to the telling of the tale, an extra choux-pastry layer of disturbed thinking and muddled reason. Will these black scrawls of ink be able to save our heroine from her impending madness, her slow and relentless sensory unweaving?
"If you can read this, you are alive." the signposts scream along the way and you know, they are right.
It’s the freakiest, most twisted, truly disturbing, speed read horror ride I've read in a long time.
February 4, 2020
I've read several Noons over the years and while they are always twisted, dark and sometimes a little confusing, they are also incredibly imaginative and I've enjoyed all of them. In fact, I've been enthralled by his created worlds.
But this one...not only did it go off the rails, the train crashed, burned and took out a small village in another dimension.
What seemed like an interesting, and classically Noonian, premise of a virus that creates "noise" and distorts mirror images, was soon lost in the vague meanderings of what I hesitate to call a plot. I don't mind a disjointed story and I'm ok with going with the flow, assuming that things will be drawn back together later on...but, in this, the parts just drifted further and further away from each other. Little teasing hopes of possible cognisance were repeatedly dashed as chapters floated in the ether, huge doses of "eh?" pooling in the gaps between them.
Frustrating and disappointing.
But I'll still try him again as Needle in the Groove and Automated Alice in particular were excellent.
But this one...not only did it go off the rails, the train crashed, burned and took out a small village in another dimension.
What seemed like an interesting, and classically Noonian, premise of a virus that creates "noise" and distorts mirror images, was soon lost in the vague meanderings of what I hesitate to call a plot. I don't mind a disjointed story and I'm ok with going with the flow, assuming that things will be drawn back together later on...but, in this, the parts just drifted further and further away from each other. Little teasing hopes of possible cognisance were repeatedly dashed as chapters floated in the ether, huge doses of "eh?" pooling in the gaps between them.
Frustrating and disappointing.
But I'll still try him again as Needle in the Groove and Automated Alice in particular were excellent.
October 30, 2008
I read this book in New York . . . and it's my joint fave (with Vurt). Though this isn't a straightforward narrative, it's no less interesting. I wasn't a huge fan of Needle in the Groove, hated Nymphomation and Automated Alice was average, but this is really something else.
Think Pulp Fiction meets Through the Looking Glass with cataracts over both eyes.
Also think Fear & Loathing if it was set in a near-future Britain. With broken mirrors in suitcases and rogue soldiers like 28 Days Later. This is the ultimate postapocalyptic road novel.
Think Pulp Fiction meets Through the Looking Glass with cataracts over both eyes.
Also think Fear & Loathing if it was set in a near-future Britain. With broken mirrors in suitcases and rogue soldiers like 28 Days Later. This is the ultimate postapocalyptic road novel.
August 17, 2020
Brilliant as always. Jeff Noon has the knack of writing such unusual but realistic stories that you can't help but to identify with the characters and the situations they find themselves in.
If you can read this. You are alive...
If you can read this. You are alive...
June 10, 2020
reminiscent of the odd group dynamics and aimlessness found in Delany's Dhalgren. Not on the same but had similar feel for me.
August 16, 2025
Very enjoyable read, Noon at his weird engaging best, a road novel about loss, longing, memory, it moved along at a gently even pace, through the lives of a small group of people, on a alt day Britain where people suffer from a sickness, that's affecting most people, even those taking the drug to try and stay normal.
April 1, 2020
A road trip across a wasted England, where everyone seems to be suffering from a mysterious disease that distorts and torments visual perception, breeding fear and psychosis. It's worse than a decade of Tory government.
Marlene Moore is protagonist and guide through a dissipating dreamscape. As she succumbs to the illness her account becomes increasingly more opaque and disconcerting.
Noon's strangest ride, which is saying something. Soporific at times, yet hypnotic and potent.
The literary equivalent of a Spaceman 3 album.
Marlene Moore is protagonist and guide through a dissipating dreamscape. As she succumbs to the illness her account becomes increasingly more opaque and disconcerting.
Noon's strangest ride, which is saying something. Soporific at times, yet hypnotic and potent.
The literary equivalent of a Spaceman 3 album.
February 25, 2015
A seriously weird book, even by Jeff Noon's standards. There are some wonderfully trippy set-pieces and some typically beautiful writing, but at the same time I was rather unsatisfied at the conclusion and it's a pretty bleak tale of loss, loneliness, disassociation and madness.
The reader needs to put some work in to figuring out what was real and what wasn't. Clues are given, but pretty much every event is wide open to interpretation, so if you like nice neat resolutions this book definitely won't be for you.
The reader needs to put some work in to figuring out what was real and what wasn't. Clues are given, but pretty much every event is wide open to interpretation, so if you like nice neat resolutions this book definitely won't be for you.
October 18, 2009
‘Well there’s the trouble, you see. Nobody knows much of anything any more.
There’s no big picture. We’re all just doing stuff, going places, falling out of cars.
Running away. Fucked up, strung out, broken. Mended with bits of glue, string,
masking tape. Stealing things.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Plenty’
‘Tonight’s the last.’
‘The last?’
‘The last piece. I’ve had enough.’
Page 253
Falling Out Of Cars
There’s no big picture. We’re all just doing stuff, going places, falling out of cars.
Running away. Fucked up, strung out, broken. Mended with bits of glue, string,
masking tape. Stealing things.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Plenty’
‘Tonight’s the last.’
‘The last?’
‘The last piece. I’ve had enough.’
Page 253
Falling Out Of Cars
January 17, 2008
Oh man. I was really disappointed by this book. I'm a huge fan of Jeff Noon, and his writing has just gotten...weird. He has gotten far too experimental for my tastes, and that makes me sad. I love his early work a LOT, and have gone through a lot to get my hands on his work since it is hard to get in the states. So this book pretty much annoyed me.
August 12, 2018
Chaotic writing with a lack of finality and purpose that I understand is probably the point, but still left me wishing for more substance to hold onto.
April 1, 2019
I have no idea what was going on in this book, or what it was about.
None.
None.
June 9, 2021
Just finished my 4th or 5th reread, the first in many years. Falling Out of Cars remains my favourite Jeff Noon novel, which I know is probably unusual. I think maybe because it is *so* invested in its portrayal of loss, of grief, *so* committed to its premise of how communication and memory break down and become unreliable, reading it can feel like you're as lost as the characters. I guess those elements become more poignant each time I've read it as the years progress, as structures change and people fall away or appear to uncertain fates.
This book doesn't have the exuberance of the Vurt novels or the whimsy of Automated Alice (although Alice is referenced once or twice), but it's still full of inventive touches and a believably strange world. If it were ever to be filmed, I feel like Dennis Kelly (of Utopia fame) would do a perfect job of it... but writing that makes me wonder if he'd read it, if it was a partial inspiration for the disintegrating road trip of that excellent series.
Jeff Noon writes so beautifully about sadness, about (waking) dream states and the pros and cons of drug use, and this novel is a looping requiem for shared and personal memories of the past in a world that has - if any at all - an uncertain future.
"If you can read this sentence, this one fragile sentence, it means you're alive."
This book doesn't have the exuberance of the Vurt novels or the whimsy of Automated Alice (although Alice is referenced once or twice), but it's still full of inventive touches and a believably strange world. If it were ever to be filmed, I feel like Dennis Kelly (of Utopia fame) would do a perfect job of it... but writing that makes me wonder if he'd read it, if it was a partial inspiration for the disintegrating road trip of that excellent series.
Jeff Noon writes so beautifully about sadness, about (waking) dream states and the pros and cons of drug use, and this novel is a looping requiem for shared and personal memories of the past in a world that has - if any at all - an uncertain future.
"If you can read this sentence, this one fragile sentence, it means you're alive."
June 19, 2017
Обожаю мира Джефри Нуна: в своей утрированности, сюрреалистичности, обособленности и антиутопичности - они удивительно точно каждый раз выхватывают реальность, раскладывают ее на атомы словно под микроскопом, препарируют - если угодно.
Вот и брошенные машины о переизбытке информации, о людях не справляющихся с потоком, о безумии, отчуждении, о тщетности и поисках чего-то чистого и незараженного - это такое зеркало окружающего мира, где любви уже не суждено сбыться, можно только выживать, закрывшись в клетке собственного я.
«Я упала на пол, проклиная себя, свою слабость, и любовь, что приходит всегда слишком поздно и слишком медленно. Любовь, замкнувшуюся в себе. Которая уже никогда не раскроется.»
Вот и брошенные машины о переизбытке информации, о людях не справляющихся с потоком, о безумии, отчуждении, о тщетности и поисках чего-то чистого и незараженного - это такое зеркало окружающего мира, где любви уже не суждено сбыться, можно только выживать, закрывшись в клетке собственного я.
«Я упала на пол, проклиная себя, свою слабость, и любовь, что приходит всегда слишком поздно и слишком медленно. Любовь, замкнувшуюся в себе. Которая уже никогда не раскроется.»
January 28, 2024
Bless you, Mr. Noon. Thank you, Jeff. In a world were there are so many stories, yours are always a safe bet for the strange, the weird, the atypical, the addictive... A big example for me.
This story, again, shows how crazy it can get. Melancholic at times, Lynchian at others, but always in that typical Noon-sauce. This road story is a must-read for Noon fans, a safe bet for weird fiction and surreal fans, and a recommended read for anyone I'll introduce to Jeff Noon.
Alice and Lynch on their honeymoon, and you're halfway on the craziness.
This story, again, shows how crazy it can get. Melancholic at times, Lynchian at others, but always in that typical Noon-sauce. This road story is a must-read for Noon fans, a safe bet for weird fiction and surreal fans, and a recommended read for anyone I'll introduce to Jeff Noon.
Alice and Lynch on their honeymoon, and you're halfway on the craziness.
July 17, 2018
Все вот эти описания про панк и новый уровень, все они верно отражают суть книги. Читаешь и не понимаешь, что откуда взялось, но атмосфера передана так, словно ты всё свое время проводишь в этом мире брошенных (не только) машин.
Книга для тех, кто может наслаждаться чтением без поиска причин происходящего.
Книга для тех, кто может наслаждаться чтением без поиска причин происходящего.
August 13, 2018
Психоделическая заморочка.. в мире постапокалипсиса..
February 21, 2019
Dear mister Noon,
Can I have some of the drugs you were on when you wrote this book
Sincerely,
JK
Can I have some of the drugs you were on when you wrote this book
Sincerely,
JK
March 3, 2024
I am biased as massive fan of Jeff Noon - although this isnt the top of his fans list the boomk still creates a deep dark atmosphere the seeps from the pages that only Jeff Noon can do
December 19, 2024
Utterly boring. I finished it in 2011...I can't remember any of it, now.
May 13, 2025
re-read.
it's like the whole world has gone crazy.
the whole book is a bit strange and disjointed , prefer his earlier work
it's like the whole world has gone crazy.
the whole book is a bit strange and disjointed , prefer his earlier work
August 25, 2016
I think my friend said it best by saying this book will make you feel as though you're going insane at some points.
Falling out of Cars is about a road trip, set in a world ridden with disease, where the only drug that can quell its affects is government-issued 'Lucidity'.
This is a fascinating novel which is the type of book that should be confusing, but the writing is so exquisite that its strangeness never spoils its enjoyability.
The narration is beautiful. The novel is told from a diary, yet much of it is also stream of consciousness. It is gripping witnessing the world from the point of view of someone particularly affected by the disease. As the narrator becomes more ill, and her backstory clearer, the reader can easily sympathise with the protagonist, despite obscurities.
The characters in this book are always interesting to listen to, especially as the dialogue is realistic, concise, and energetic.
This novel is not going to age with time. Its landscape, character, and themes will always be relevant. This is a great book to talk about with others, or just to analyse on your own. But as the writing is so wonderful, it can also be enjoyed just as much if you're not one to look for hidden meanings.
I zoomed through this novel. On each page I turned I found an intriguing, exciting, disturbing, beautiful scene. Though I am an avid reader of horror, I found certain parts of this novel chilling to read. The novel isn't necessarily horrific, and it certainly isn't gory, but the atmosphere Noon creates, and the imagery that we see through the narrator's eyes, are both fascinating and strangely unsettling without being overt - maybe its even because it isn't obvious.
Overall, Jeff Noon should be more widely recognised as a fantastic writer with life-long appeal. Falling out of Cars is a wonderful introduction to his work that offers both a thoughtful narrative and a fascinating road trip. However, there is not a true resolution or a clean-cut explanation of what is and has been happening in this novel, so if you're someone who needs everything nicely tied up, don't read this.
Falling out of Cars is about a road trip, set in a world ridden with disease, where the only drug that can quell its affects is government-issued 'Lucidity'.
This is a fascinating novel which is the type of book that should be confusing, but the writing is so exquisite that its strangeness never spoils its enjoyability.
The narration is beautiful. The novel is told from a diary, yet much of it is also stream of consciousness. It is gripping witnessing the world from the point of view of someone particularly affected by the disease. As the narrator becomes more ill, and her backstory clearer, the reader can easily sympathise with the protagonist, despite obscurities.
The characters in this book are always interesting to listen to, especially as the dialogue is realistic, concise, and energetic.
This novel is not going to age with time. Its landscape, character, and themes will always be relevant. This is a great book to talk about with others, or just to analyse on your own. But as the writing is so wonderful, it can also be enjoyed just as much if you're not one to look for hidden meanings.
I zoomed through this novel. On each page I turned I found an intriguing, exciting, disturbing, beautiful scene. Though I am an avid reader of horror, I found certain parts of this novel chilling to read. The novel isn't necessarily horrific, and it certainly isn't gory, but the atmosphere Noon creates, and the imagery that we see through the narrator's eyes, are both fascinating and strangely unsettling without being overt - maybe its even because it isn't obvious.
Overall, Jeff Noon should be more widely recognised as a fantastic writer with life-long appeal. Falling out of Cars is a wonderful introduction to his work that offers both a thoughtful narrative and a fascinating road trip. However, there is not a true resolution or a clean-cut explanation of what is and has been happening in this novel, so if you're someone who needs everything nicely tied up, don't read this.
December 3, 2011
No-one can explain why the noise affects some things, some activities, more than others, just like some people suffer more than others. But the game of chess had been one of the first to lose all sense of its rules. Clocks, mirrors, chess . . .
The world has been swept by an epidemic of a strange disease, affecting almost everyone. It seems to act by disrupting the receipt of visual and auditory information, leaving the sufferer overwhelmed by 'noise', overloaded by a surfeit of incomprehensible visual data, unable to read signs, recognise faces or tell the time. Only their daily doses of Lucy (the drug Lucidity) enable most people to function at all in this strange new world where it can be fatal to look at your face in a mirror while suffering an attack.
The effects of the disease sound rather like a more extreme and long-lasting version of the visual disturbances of a migraine aura. In my case I find it hard to look at things, since everything I look at has rippled edges as if I was looking through flawed glass or water, while someone I know basically goes blind, with the whole of her field of view taken over by flashing turquoise zig-zags. But back to the book . . .
Fleeing from her everyday life after the death of her daughter, Maggie has taken a job for a man called Kingsley, driving round England and collecting the broken pieces of a mysterious mirror. The book is her diary of the road trip, trying to hold herself together as the disease affects her increasingly badly, while stealing the pieces of mirror from their crazed owners with the help of the travelling companions she has picked up en route. The pieces of the mirror are dangerous artifacts, and have a very bad effect on the people who look into them, but it never becomes clear exactly what the mirror's power is or how it is linked to the disease, if at all.
Overall I would rate this book as confusing but interesting - I could have done with more loose ends being tied up, but it's another find from the library book sale that was well worth the 30p I paid for it.
The world has been swept by an epidemic of a strange disease, affecting almost everyone. It seems to act by disrupting the receipt of visual and auditory information, leaving the sufferer overwhelmed by 'noise', overloaded by a surfeit of incomprehensible visual data, unable to read signs, recognise faces or tell the time. Only their daily doses of Lucy (the drug Lucidity) enable most people to function at all in this strange new world where it can be fatal to look at your face in a mirror while suffering an attack.
The effects of the disease sound rather like a more extreme and long-lasting version of the visual disturbances of a migraine aura. In my case I find it hard to look at things, since everything I look at has rippled edges as if I was looking through flawed glass or water, while someone I know basically goes blind, with the whole of her field of view taken over by flashing turquoise zig-zags. But back to the book . . .
Fleeing from her everyday life after the death of her daughter, Maggie has taken a job for a man called Kingsley, driving round England and collecting the broken pieces of a mysterious mirror. The book is her diary of the road trip, trying to hold herself together as the disease affects her increasingly badly, while stealing the pieces of mirror from their crazed owners with the help of the travelling companions she has picked up en route. The pieces of the mirror are dangerous artifacts, and have a very bad effect on the people who look into them, but it never becomes clear exactly what the mirror's power is or how it is linked to the disease, if at all.
Overall I would rate this book as confusing but interesting - I could have done with more loose ends being tied up, but it's another find from the library book sale that was well worth the 30p I paid for it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 13, 2015
Powerfully written; this contains almost hallucinogenic passages in the depiction of the protagonist Marlene's gradual succumbing to the ravages of "the sickness" - a disease that pollutes and corrupts people's ability to perceive and process information from their senses (particularly sight).
And yet, and yet ... as the other characters fall by the wayside, the plot trundles towards what we know can only be – what inevitably has to be – a vague open-ended conclusion. No resolution, no deus ex machina sudden cure: I know if we had been given one it would feel forced, like a cheat after the journey we've been on with Marlene, but still I always feel slightly less than gruntled when I get to the end of books that finish with a repeat and fade diminuendo rather than a grand crescendo. Maybe it's just me.
And yet, and yet ... as the other characters fall by the wayside, the plot trundles towards what we know can only be – what inevitably has to be – a vague open-ended conclusion. No resolution, no deus ex machina sudden cure: I know if we had been given one it would feel forced, like a cheat after the journey we've been on with Marlene, but still I always feel slightly less than gruntled when I get to the end of books that finish with a repeat and fade diminuendo rather than a grand crescendo. Maybe it's just me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2011
Очень тревожащая книга. Старую добрую Англию охватила странная эпидемия: люди не могут читать, слушать музыку, концентрировать внимание на чем-либо - всё расплывается, теряет чёткость. Четверо странным образом собравшихся людей колесит по городам, собирая осколки зеркала для человека, который с их помощью вероятно сможет найти способ излечить заразу. Пока же им остаётся ежедневно принимать капсулы "Просвета", облегчающие симптомы и позволяющие поддерживать иллюзию нормальной жизни. Из книги не узнать, что это за эпидемия, как и почему она началась, как было найдено лекарство. Бессвязные записки одной из героинь наполовину состоят из воспоминаний о дочери, умершей от эпидемии, так что нам остаётся только догадываться. Не поняла, в общем.
July 20, 2012
It’s a little too meandering, even for Noon. Still, it’s beautifully written. If you’ve never read any of Noon’s stuff, I cannot recommend Vurt highly enough. Noon uses words so beautifully, I'm convinced nothing by him is ever a waste of time. There are some absolutely gorgeous passages in Falling Out of Cars, particularly the scene in the museum where there's a book exhibit. The text of the books disappears as you read it, never to be seen again. It's breathtaking and beautiful. But I wouldn't recommend starting with Falling Out of Cars. I don't know why Jeff Noon isn't better known because, although his work may not be the most accessible, even the books I'm not particularly into are stunningly lyrical.
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