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back, but at the moment I’ve got no interest.
“What I will say is that to a certain and very important
degree, Needle In The Groove is that last Vurt
novel. Because all the books in the Vurt sequence
have been about the same thing. Which has got nothing
to do with feathers, nothing to do with anything
‘science fictional’ at all. It’s to do with the search for
a new family. The escape from a broken family, the
setting up of a new, alternative family, and the search
to repair a broken family.
“Needle In The Groove and Vurt could almost be
mirror-images of one another, in that sense. The difference
being that at the end, Elliot manages something
that Scribble from Vurt hasn’t got a chance in hell of
sorting out; his relationship with his father. So if you
take this sequence of books as being about that subject,
which I do, then Needle finished it. Obviously, the
hardcore Vurt fans are going to say I’m being daft with
all this,” he laughs, “But you know, this is what I write
about. This is my subject.”
It does make sense; both Vurt and Needle are ostensibly
about single protagonists, whereas Nymphomation
and Pollen are ensemble pieces. There is indeed a
mirror-image, even though each book in the sequence
has gone further back into the past.
“Yeah, and now I’m doing a historical novel! I just
hope people are picking up on these elements in my
work. I hope they’re not becoming so enamoured with
BUY Jeff Noon books online from and
the superficial subject matter that they can’t see, I am
on a journey here, and travelling a certain road I have
to go down.
“I liken my position at the moment very much to J.G.
Ballard. Ballard built up a very rich series of techniques
over 20 years or so while his work was ‘hidden’ in
sci-fi. And then, with Empire Of The Sun, he started to
write about things which were more real, using those
techniques he’d built up. That’s quite interesting to me
at the moment, with Needle In The Groove as the start of
that. Using all these techniques to focus on something
that’s quite real, quite emotional and to do with the way
people live their lives now.”
Certainly, no-one could accuse Noon of not developing
his style. It’s one of the things which makes his work
stand out from the crowd, a style which has become
more fluid and, dare I say, “dubbed” as time goes on. In
a sense, Noon’s work is more to do with the way stories
are told than the stories themselves.
“I’m glad you say that, actually. I’m a storyteller, and
I love telling stories, but the way that I tell the stories is
what really excites me. The writers I admire are those
people of whom you can read two sentences and just
know it’s them. Those are the people I like. It’s the
same with music, everything.
“I do think this whole kind of ‘dub fiction’ thing I’m
on at the moment is exciting for me as a writer. I hope
it’s exciting for the reader. You just don’t know what’s
371
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