-
Get a Free Issue
of our Ezine!
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)
This information about The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
.png)
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
