Subject: Review of Pollen by Jeff Noon (fiction, sf, mystery)

From: [email-masked] (Steve Brock)
Date: 22 Feb 1996 03:13:23 GMT

POLLEN by Jeff Noon.  Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 E. 50th St.,
N.Y., NY  10022, (800) 733-3000, (800) 659-2436 FAX.  336 pp.,
$23.00 cloth.  0-517-59990-2

                     Reviewed by Steve Brock

     "Because I was tired...  This was why the pollen came 
     to visit.  Because I wes tired of being only told.  I 
     want to live, Sibyl.  Like yourself.  I want a flesh 
     and blood life.  A life of surprises, a life of pain.  
     A life ending in death.  I am jealous, yes, I admit it.  
     Death means so much to your species.  Without it where 
     would you be?  Death is your fuel, the parent of your 
     desires, your art.  I want to feel that hunger..."
                                  -- John Barleycorn

     Jeff Noon's second book of a near-future Manchester, England,
takes place about fifteen years later than the events narrated by
Scribble in "Vurt" (1995).  In the rich and multi-layered "Pollen,"
Manchester is peopled by a much more complicated citizenry.  In
addition to dog-people, robo-people, shadow-people (dodos), and
zombies, readers are introduced to several characters from the Vurt
world (accessed by placing a color-coded feather in the throat) who
long to experience reality.
     Most of "Pollen" is narrated by Sybil, a shadow-cop, who, with
dog-cop Zulu Clegg (don't call him "Zero"), investigates the murder
of a renegade cabdriver who was found with a cluster of flowers
crammed down his throat, their roots growing into his heart and
lungs.  As Sibyl and Zero, oops, Zulu track down the killer,
Manchester residents are suffocating from an increasingly
concentrated cloud of pollen wafting from flowers that are
sprouting up everywhere.  Every few pages, Noon has a character
sneeze: "aaaaaaachhhooooooooshhhhhhh!!!!"
     When the Chief of Police quashes their case before the killer
is found, Sybil and Zero go it alone and uncover a deeply-
entrenched, high-level conspiracy that allows Vurt creatures to
dwell in the real world, assisted in doing so by a virus that makes
ebola look like grains of pepper.
     The real fun of the book, however, isn't the story, but the
sheer exuberance with which it is told.  Using elements of
cyberpunk and mythology combined with fantasy, the police-
procedural, and 1960s Rock-and-Roll, Noon confidently infects each
of his characters with a streak of independence, while at the same
time, due to the ability of different species to interbreed,
members of the general society seem to be losing the traits that
make them distinctive.  It's this balancing act that makes "Pollen"
hard to put down.
     At the same time, however, I must warn readers not to begin
the book while they (or their friends and loved ones) are
experiencing allergic symptoms or the flu.  If they do so, the
slightest evidence of an approaching sneeze will cause them to
cringe, remembering passages such as "all around me crossbreeds
were sneezing out gobs of snot from their snouts, the sunshining
day rained on by dog-mucus."  About halfway through the book, for
example, I stopped into Boulder's Stage House Books and asked my
friend Jason how he'd been.  "Lately I've been pretty sneezy," he
replied.  "My, look at the time," I had to say.  "Gotta run." 
Grade: B+.

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%A Noon, Jeff
%T Pollen
%I Crown
%C New York
%D 1996
%G ISBN 0-517-59990-2