The Coincidence Engine
A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in, the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician — last heard of investigating the physics of free will and ranting about the devil — vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate are closing in on Alex Smart — a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off with hope in his heart and a ring in his pocket to ask his American girlfriend to marry him. At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable — an organisation so secret that many of its operatives aren't 100 per cent sure it exists — Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and a very large number of unhealthy but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work.
3.4 out of 5 based on 10 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
288 |
| RRP |
£12.99 |
| Date of Publication |
April 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-1408802342 |
| Publisher |
Bloomsbury |
| |
A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in, the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician — last heard of investigating the physics of free will and ranting about the devil — vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate are closing in on Alex Smart — a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off with hope in his heart and a ring in his pocket to ask his American girlfriend to marry him. At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable — an organisation so secret that many of its operatives aren't 100 per cent sure it exists — Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and a very large number of unhealthy but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work.
Reviews
The Literary Review
Jonathan Barnes
“[Reviewing a batch of debut novels] It is Sam Leith ... who manages to temper most successfully the first novelist’s impulses towards formal originality and pyrotechnics of style with the telling of an engaging story involving believable characters ... Although Leith cannot resist the occasional self-referential flourish ... he sticks mostly to ensuring that he retains his readers’ attention...”
01/04/2011
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The Independent
Peter Carty
“If this is a scenario to make readers nervous, wary of whimsical self-indulgence or portentous post-modernism, fear not. Sam Leith pulls it off with admirable imaginative stamina, helped along by sharply observed and entertaining writing.”
22/04/2011
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The Spectator
John Preston
“One of the pleasures of Sam Leith’s debut novel is its sureness of tone ... The pace never lets up, nor does the invention. Reading The Coincidence Engine is a bit like being stuck in a spin-dryer on maximum revs. But there’s plenty here for your brain to chew on long after your eyeballs have stopped rotating in opposite directions.”
23/04/2011
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The Sunday Times
Anthony Cummins
“One of the reasons The Coincidence Engine works is that — for all the obvious quirkiness — it takes its vast transatlantic cast seriously … Pitched somewhere between the heartbreaking pratfalls of Jonathan Coe and the paranoid zaniness of Thomas Pynchon, this is a clever debut, well worth checking out.”
10/04/2011
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The Times
Kate Saunders
“A superbly entertaining brain-twister.”
16/04/2011
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The Guardian
Colin Greenland
“... an absurdist novel of ideas, comparable to the books of Robert Anton Wilson: anarchic, psychedelic, with a serious delight in paradox ... At the same time his playfulness leads always to a kind of melancholy.”
02/04/2011
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The Evening Standard
Nicholas Lezard
“"Philip K Dick meets Evelyn Waugh," is how Michael Moorcock describes the novel in a publicity quote; I would say it's more Thomas Pynchon meets Dirk Gently-era Douglas Adams. If this kind of thing appeals and if you are not too fussed about prose style then there is much innocent pleasure here.”
31/03/2011
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The Daily Mail
Hephzibah Anderson
“The intrusion of a first-person narrator is too erratic to really come off, but it’s an otherwise confidently told puzzler with brains, brawn and an abundance of madcap mischief.”
31/03/2011
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The Observer
Killian Fox
“At times, The Coincidence Engine reads like a lighthearted imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel … Luckily, the book picks up as it goes along. This is because Leith eases up on the zaniness and lets his characters be (relatively) normal.”
03/04/2011
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The Times
Catherine Nixey
“Paradoxically, the more interesting the events in this book become, the less interesting each event feels ... Coincidences, and the interest we find in them, are in the eye of the beholder. By the end of this book, little seems improbable or coincidental. And, painful though it is to admit it — for Leith is a great writer — not all that much seems interesting, either.”
24/03/2012
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