Automated Alice [Hardcover]

Jeff Noon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 1996

On a dull and rainy afternoon, in 19th-century Manchester, desperate to avoid the question of ellipses (on which her strict great-aunt Ermintrude is sure to test her this afternoon), Alice works on a jigsaw puzzle, only to find (frustratingly)  that  12 pieces are missing from the picture of the London Zoo. Lamenting aloud, Alice is answered by her great-aunt's very talkative parrot, Whippoorwill.  Prompted by Whippoorwill's increasingly intriguing riddles, Alice frees the him from his cage. Suddenly, in pursuit of the elusive bird, Alice falls into the workings of a grandfather clock and emerges in the Manchester of 1998-a world of automated wonders and inspired nonsense with a distinctly 19th-century flavor.

Whippoorwill leads Alice along with a series of enigmatic riddles, and Alice soon encounters a part-man, part-badger named Captain Ramshackle, Professor of Randomology, and the logical side of her own self in the person of an automated garden statue name Celia.  While  word of Alice's arrival spreads and she becomes the prime suspect in a series of Jigsaw murders, Alice discovers, in the unlikeliest of places, in the curiousest of future worlds, one after another of her missing Jigsaw pieces.  Not until she finds all 12 will she get to the radishes of time that will allow her to elude the Civil Serpents and return to her own time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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.

From Publishers Weekly

If Lewis Carroll had sent Alice off on an adventure into the future, what might it have been like? Noon (Pollen, 1995) answers this question in his wild and farcical third novel. Puns, riddles, numerical puzzles and cockeyed literary references abound in this tale of Alice's trip through her Great Aunt Ermintrude's clock into an unlikely alternate-universe version of Manchester, England, circa 1998. Among the many strange characters Alice meets are her termite-driven, robot "twin twister," the Automated Alice of the title; Captain Ramshackle, a Badgerman and Randomologist; and a Crow-woman/scientist named Professor Gladys Chrowdingler who puts cats in boxes that may or may not render them invisible. Alice soon finds herself involved in the investigation of a series of murders. The victims are discovered with their body parts carefully rearranged and pieces from a jigsaw puzzle on their persons. Because the pieces come from her own jigsaw of the London Zoo, Alice soon finds herself under suspicion and on the run from the Civil Serpents, who themselves may be trying to cover up an even darker crime. Lewis Carroll's odd sense of humor doesn't appeal to all readers and neither will Noon's, but Noon does a fine job of imitating Carroll while adding more than a dash of his own postmodernist sensibility. Will Alice find all of her missing jigsaw pieces and return to the 19th century? Only the Radishes of Time will tell. Line drawings by Harry Trumbore.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (October 8, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517704900
• ISBN-13: 978-0517704905
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,621,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable sequel to Lewis Carroll, November 14, 2002

By 

F. Orion Pozo "Orion Pozo" (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Automated Alice (Paperback)

Automated Alice is a sequel to Lewis Carrol's two books about Alice. Instead of going down a rabbit hole or through a mirror, in this book Alice travels through a grandfather clock to Manchester England in 1998. However this is not the Manchester of our experience. It is a world populated by half-humans who ride on mechanical horses. Its computers are powered by termites called Computermites. Her adventures in this strange world bear enough resemblances to the original stories to make this an enjoyable sequel. Alice must figure out the puzzle of how to get back to her own time with the help of a parrot that speaks in riddles and an automated Alice with a termite brain. There are some wonderful word plays and mathematical concepts in the story. It is a short enjoyable tale that should please Alice fans of all ages. If you haven't read the original stories, skip this book.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Self-Indulgence For Noon, Boredom For His Readers., October 3, 2000

By 

James Wilkinson (Leeds, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Automated Alice (Paperback)

Now I'd just like to point out that Jeff Noon is an astonishingly talented writer; his first two books, "Vurt" and the slightly more accessable "Pollen" both display a phenominal imagination which is admirably transferred to paper by Noon's considerable writing abilities. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but believe me: Jeff Noon has Talent.

...not that you would be able to tell from "Automated Alice". In this book, Lewis Carroll's Alice visits the English city of Manchester where she climbs inside an old granfather clock and finds herself swept away into the future, where animal people are being mysteriously "jigsaw murdered". Now this doesn't sound too bad - an Alice book with an adult bent - but Noon's writing style makes the whole thing a struggle. His Alice, for example, makes fatuous comments constantly, whether they are amusing or not. At least a fifth of the book is taken up by pointless and unfunny word-games that even Carroll would have avoided. Granted, there was a fair bit of silly word play in Carroll's books but he knew where to draw the line; Noon crosses it so far that he's just a speck of dust on the horizon.

In fact, aside from the protagonist and - good grief! - a scientific explanation for the Cheshire Cat's invisibility, there really is very little connection between Carroll's books and this one. The dreamlike quality of Wonderland and Looking-Glass, with their ever-shifting locations and nonsensical conversations, are replaced with a join-the-dots "plot" and some indecipherable bumph involving Lewis Carroll himself.

The whole book is nothing more than one huge pet project for Noon (tellingly, he appears in the book under the pseudonym Zenith O'Clock - High Noon, see? - and whines about how nobody liked his first two books) and like most pet projects should not have left the author's mind.

Still, the illustrations and cover are delightful, and Noon's subsequent work - especially Pixel Juice - is of equal, if not better, quality to Vurt and Pollen.

Sweet dreams.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Trequel, May 28, 2004

By 

K. Bergherm "Katilo" (Westmont, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Automated Alice (Paperback)

Jeff Noon wrote this amazingly entertaining and imaginative book as a trequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Alice suddenly finds herself transported to 1998 Manchester and becomes the prime suspect in the Jigsaw Murders, as she tries to gather the pieces and find her way back home to her own time and reality. As she is escorted on her journey by Celia, an automated version of herself, she makes the acquaintance of many strange creatures, all suffering from Newmonia (not to be mistaken for pneumonia). In true Carroll fashion, Noon uses crazy wordplay throughout often confusing not only the fictitious characters, but the unsuspecting reader as well. I found this book very delightful!