Anyone who still believes that all science fiction involves spaceships and aliens will get a shock from Falling Out Of Cars. The novel is set in a near future world almost the same as this one. The only minor difference is that reality - or at least human perception of reality - is collapsing.

The Britain of Falling Out Of Cars has succumbed to a sickness. The exact nature of the sickness is unclear but the results are obvious: one's perception of reality twists, bends and almost snaps. Music is heard (and played) in random snatches, words fade from books as they are being read and time is fluid. The worst culprits are mirrors which supply only twisted and painful reflections.

The only way to retain some hold on "reality" is regular doses of the drug "Lucy" (lucidity) -which has been conveniently discovered and produced by a large pharmaceutical giant. No, stop thinking that - it's not that kind of book. No intricate conspiracy plots here.

The story centres on Marlene, a reporter whose daughter died during the onset of the sickness. She is on a mission to retrieve the scattered pieces of a strange mirror. This mirror has magical properties, each fragment being capable of warping reality in some peculiar way.

Marlene travels with two other people and along the way they hook up with a third, one of the rare people immune to the sickness. The story is based on their journeys around southern England as they attempt to fulfil Marlene's mission and regain the missing pieces of the magic mirror.

The book is written in many short sections, often a page or less in length. This means that there is a lot of white space and relatively few words. That doesn't make it an easy read. The shifting nature of reality and the numerous images and references mean that Falling Out Of Cars requires concentration.

On the surface it's a Kafkaesque story about P.K.Dickian themes - the nature of reality and our perception thereof. Then there is the question of how much the break-up of Marlene's reality is a metaphor for her reaction to the death of her daughter. We have some fairly obvious but fun references to Lewis Carroll. We also have a deeply self-indulgent subtext about the powers and responsibilities of a writer when creating a world.

Unfortunately the plot, such as it is, is as fragmented as the magic mirror. I got the distinct impression that Noon didn't really have any plan for the book, that he just made it up as he went along. As such the story weaves around confusingly and you're never quite sure what Noon is trying to say. An example is the conspiracy theory aspect I mentioned earlier in this review. At the beginning of Falling Out Of Cars much is made of Lucy and the corporation that manufactures it - but this then fades away as if Noon got bored of that strand. Ultimately the book just seems to peter out without reaching any form of closure.

It would be easy to say that this is all deliberate and sits naturally with the fractured, confusing reality of the story. That would also be a cop-out. The truth is that this book wanders around in an interesting fashion without ever getting anywhere. That approach can work occasionally (think Roadside Picnic / Stalker to which Falling Out Of Cars bears distinct similarities). In this case the novel's not quite strong enough to support a structureless structure.

Noon's writing and use of imagery is superb, this is a highly evocative and disturbing novel. There's undoubtedly a lot of great stuff in this book. Unfortunately there's probably too much. If Noon had been more selective and more certain about what he was trying to achieve then this might have been a great novel. As it is, Falling Out of Cars is an intriguing but unsatisfying read.