The Body Library - an extraordinary novel that set my imagination on fire, a full ten hour blaze, the time it took for me to read its 380 pages. I also listened to the audio book expertly narrated by Toby Longworth. Jeff Noon has quickly become one of my all-time favorite authors.
In A Man of Shadows, a morose, tough guy private detective by the name of John Nyquist hunts for a runaway teenager in the cities of Dayzone (perpetually day) and Nocturna (perpetually night) with the misty Dusklands in between, all the while forced to deal with thousands of artificially constructed clock times and timelines.
Noon's second Nyquist mystery, The Body Library, takes place in Storyville, a city where all the streets and buildings are named after authors, a city where everyone is a storyteller or listener of stories or reader of stories, a city where stories and narratives come alive in ways most uncanny. Since I LOVE novels where books, reading, writing and writers play a prominent part, I cherish every page of Body Library.
Noon frames his tale thusly: an agency hires Nyquist to report on the movements of one Patrick Wellborn during the city's international festival of words. But then it happens right on the first pages: Nyquist kills Wellborn in an act of self-defense and, as if a fly snagged by a Venus flytrap, the private eye is immediately swallowed up in a Storyville turned ghastly Horrorville.
With all its weirdness and freaky surrealism, The Body Library would make the perfect candidate for director Richard Linklater to once again employ distinctive digital technology and animation as he did in his film based on Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly. I'm not usually a moviegoer but I'd pay good money to watch such a movie again and again - Noon's story is that good.
The British author told an interviewer he always wanted to write straight crime fiction in the tradition of Ross Macdonald but bizarre images and crazy scenes kept pulling him off in wild and weird ways - case in point: the Nyquist novels. Jeff went on to say his goal is to create stories that are brilliant, magical and completely insane along with giving a reader unending intense pleasure.
Jeff Noon certainly achieved what he set out to accomplish in The Body Library. The events and happenings in the novel are forever unpredictable and contain breathtaking shocks and surprises. Thus, so as not to take anything away from a reader's enjoyment when turning the pages, here's a handful of sparkling candy for your glazzies, a dozen short, quick hits in the spirit of what could be a trailer for a Richard Linklater Body Library film:
LOCOMOTIVE LETTERS
In the book's opening pages two lovers enter a library and discover a man who might be dead, a man whose every inch of skin is covered in words – and the words move as if insects crawling over his skin!
HORROR HIGHRISE
Tower Five, Mellville Place is a sinister highrise apartment building that figures prominently in Noon's plot, sinister in the sense that one might have to deal with realms cutting our familiar three-dimensional world into tiny pieces. Beware.
QUIZZICAL KID
Once in Tower Five, Nyquist spots Calvin, a boy sporting white hair in a pudding-bowl style and the letters ABC on his shirt. Calvin is perhaps six or seven years old and his fingertips are black and smeared as though he has been playing with ink. Calvin hands Nyquist a key to apartment 67...and things swiftly take a nasty turn.
FEMME FATALE
What's a noir murder mystery without a Femme Fatale? Nyquist quickly forms a relationship with Zelda, an attractive fallen woman who owns a backstory with a wollop.
PSYCHOTROPIC PAGES
Set fire to pages from a certain book and you'll soon find the smoke contains hallucinogenic properties more powerful than LSD. I wonder what Timothy Leary would have to say.
TITILATING TITLE
The Body Library, a title that turns out to be a truncated version of Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library - and between the covers is a book coauthored by a Dadaist, a work containing much hidden, diabolical meaning.
ALPHABUGS
Storyville features flying bugs like lightning bugs only these bugs, alphabugs, light up with different letters of the alphabet - and sometimes these aphabugs can gather together to spell out words.
KAFKA'S CASTLE
Can you believe there are “word police” and “story cops” reporting back to The Grand Hall of Narrative Content in Kafka Court where stories are examined to make sure those stories don't stray off proper story paths? Does this sound like government censorship as conducted in the former Soviet Union? Surely this is one of the eerier aspects in an otherwise seemingly innocent Storyville.
HYPNOTIC HYPERTEXT
Have you ever been pulled into a story so deeply it's as if you've been hypnotized? In Storyville, the hypnotic might lead you to a building where you'll crossover and you yourself will become a fictional character, a second self.
LIFE STORY/STORY OF LIFE
Nyquist attempts to compose an autobiographical narrative entitled A Man of Shadows. Could this be the very same book as Jeff Noon's first Nyquist Mystery?
NYQUIST'S NARRATIVE
Nyquist to the rescue! Is it possible Nyquist coming to grips with a tragic part of his past will effect a transformation for scores of women, men and children in Storyville? Such is the magic of fiction as nonfiction. Or, is that nonfiction as fiction?
NYQUIST NOIRGUY
Through all the surrealism and freaky happenings, one thing remains constant: John Nyquist might be a surly, glum gumshoe but, in the tradition of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, he doesn't veer from his quest for the truth and his desire to do good.
Again, I created a trailer for the novel. And I didn't even reference a number of the key characters. I urge you to read this Jeff Noon knockout, soon.
British author Jeff Noon, born 1957
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