A Novel
by Jonathan Coe
Maxwell Sim can't make a meaningful connection. His absent father is preoccupied with poetry; he maintains an e-mail correspondence with his estranged wife under a false identity; his daughter prefers her BlackBerry to his conversation; and his best friend won't return his calls. He has seventy friends on Facebook, but nobody to talk to.
Max tries to stir himself out of this rut by quitting his job to accept a strange business proposition: to drive a Prius full of toothbrushes from London to the remote Shetland Islands in a misguided promotional campaign for a dental-hygiene company. Instead, he makes a series of awkward, cruelly enlightening visits to figures from his past, falling in love with the soothing voice of his GPS system ("Emma") en route. Eventually he comes to wonder if perhaps it's his utter lack of self-knowledge that's hampering his ability to form actual relationships.
Jonathan Coe outdoes himself with this humane satire and modern-day picaresque, a gently comic and rollickingly entertaining story about personal attachments in the digital welter of instant communication.
"Coe has a lot of fun skewering the way technology and social media have become buttresses of society, but the antic plot and unfortunately precious conclusion water down the thoughtful points." - Publishers Weekly
"As the tale unfolds, unfortunately, Maxwell Sim's story becomes implausible and what began as a sharp picture of the emptiness of modern life ends up becoming vacuous. It's a pity, because Coe is a clever, talented writer who consistently produces engaging novels." - The Guardian (UK)
"Coe brilliantly evokes the debilitating loneliness of complete isolation, how the mind can sabotage itself." - The Telegraph (UK)
"Coe has always been a virtuoso of voice...There are many memorable comic moments along the way here." - NewStatesman (UK)
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Copyright Viking Publishing.
Jonathan Coe was born in 1961 in Lickey, a suburb of south-west Birmingham. His first novel, The Accidental Woman was published in 1987. His best-selling novels include What a Carve Up! and The Rotters' Club (2001). He is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including both Costa Novel of the Year and Prix du Livre Européen. He won France's Prix Médicis for The House of Sleep and Italy's Premio Flaiano and Premio Bauer-Ca' Foscari.
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