Jeff Noon's previous novels, Vurt and Pollen, have attracted a cult following with their psychedelic science fiction creation of the realm of "Vurt"--a region defined by illusion, dream and drug-induced fantasy. Noon has now decided to link up with an imaginative precursor by introducing Lewis Carroll's Alice as the protagonist in a new adventure that draws on Carroll's through-the-looking-glass inversions of reality, and adds a Jeff Noon menace and edginess absent from Carroll's Wonderland. Alice finds herself in 1998 Manchester when she enters an old grandfather clock, and soon becomes the prime suspect in the puzzling "Jigsaw Murders." Noon emulates Carroll's crazy wordplay throughout, and even adds his own illustrations inspired by those of John Tenniel, the famous interpreter of Alice.

This eclectic retelling of the classic "Alice in Wonderland" story sees Alice transported in time to 1998 - an automated age inhabited by weird and wonderful characters including civil serpents and policedogmen.

reviews
'Borges crossed with Philip Larkin on acid' Arena

'Destined for cult status?Cyberpunk at the cutting edge' Maxim

'Captures Carroll's style effortlessly?A weird Alice with a contemporary edge' Mail on Sunday

'A wild psychedelic vision?' Manchester Evening News

In the last years of his life, Lewis Carroll wrote a third Alice book. This mysterious work was never published and has only recently been discovered. Now, at last, the world can read of Automated Alice and her fabulous adventures in the future.

That's not quite true. Automated Alice was in reality written by Zenith O'Clock, the writer of wrongs, who sends Alice through time, tumbling from the Victorian age to land in Manchester at the end of the Twentieth century.

Oh dear, that's not at all right. Zenith O'Clock is a character invented by Jeff Noon, who really wrote this trequel to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. What Alice encounters in the automated future is mostly accidental too...a series of skewed misadventures, even weirder than your dreams.

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.

2008-07-24 Alice Again

It's sounds bizarre... and it is. Alice Liddle of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass is back. Whether you choose to believe Lewis Carroll was a reputedly paedophilic pervert or not, you can't deny that his literature for children is original, vivid, some may say unsurpassed. Or is it? Jeff Noon's giving him a run for his money, that much I know. Only this time Alice finds herself in a world of automated horses and whacky technology.

It's the future, 1996 to be precise*, and Alice finds herself trapped in a termite mound after chasing a parrot into a grandfather clock. Sounding familiar? She soon finds herself in a psychedelic Manchester that isn't quite like the one she left behind. She has until two o'clock to get back to 18-- for her writing lesson; but first she must catch Aunt Ermintrude's pesky parrot and find all of her missing jigsaw pieces, which isn't easy when she's the prime suspect in a string of grizzly murders that seem to crop up wherever she goes. On top of which there are speeding horseless carriages stampeding along every road, she hasn't done her homework and she has no idea which direction Dewsbury is in. Luckily her doll, Celia, is on hand to give her a leg up.

Noon effortlessly captures Carroll's style in this quirky trequal to the original classics. Unlike Carroll, however, Noon takes a slightly more menacing approach to recreating Alice's tale of adventure: the encounter with a doped-up snail can easily be associated with the caterpillar in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; however unlike the hookah smoking caterpillar this snail invites Alice to pop a "wurm", which takes her on a trip she'll certainly never forget. It is a tongue-in-cheek, absurdist romp, sometimes slipping from wry wit to sheer silliness in the form of completely pointless and juvenile toilet humour, which knocked it right down in my estimations. These lapses diminished the poignancy of the more satirical moments, of which there are plenty, and devalue the sheer aptitude of the puns, riddles and rhymes.

That said, it's an easy, fun read, intelligently devised and with authentic pictures in true Alice in Wonderland stylee, often with discreet references to Noon's other books tucked away in the milieu. A worth while venture for Carroll and Noon fans alike.

* OK, it's the future for a Victorian character