SOURCE: "Madchester," in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 7, No. 286, January 21, 1994, p. 41.

[In the excerpt below, Barrett relates the plot of Vurt, praising it as "an astonishing novel in story, style and emotion."]

[In Jeff Noon's Vurt] Vurt is a type of virtual reality (but without computers), and a kind of drug. You put a coloured feather in your mouth and you're in a dreamworld—or a nightmare. Scribble is searching for his kid sister (and lover) who went into a Vurt world with him and never came back. He roams the backstreets with a gang of friends, trying to find a dealer who will supply him with a Curious Yellow feather, so he can go back to the same world to find her.

The Vurt worlds are appealing and terrifying, mystical and murderous; the real world is gritty and realistic. Noon's Manchester has Bottletown, a housing estate with a...