The Coincidence Engine [Paperback]

For once, I'm really not sure what I think of this. It's certainly a promising first novel, a bold, intriguing premise - the hunt for a purported "coincidence engine", a device that can mess with probability, making vastly unlikely things happen. As if that wasn't enough, it's being tracked by the DEI, the Department of the Extremely Improbably, an organisation that makes Mulder and Scully's X-files look prosaic.

As the coincidence engine is borne unwittingly across the United States by a Alex Smart, student from Cambridge University, who is just trying to reach his girlfriend, a series of unlikely (well, they would be!) characters are on his trail. There is Bree, ex alcoholic, and her partner Jones, who has no imagination. They are agents of the DEI. There is a pair of ex Paras. There are various tramps and down-and-outs who seem to be significant (though I'm not sure why). We also hear the story of Banarchavsky, the mathematician who dreamed up the Engine. Through this cast of characters, Leith discusses theories of many worlds - NOT parallel worlds, as Banarchavsky irately points out: these are worlds where everything touches everything else, time does not flow and nothing is ever lost (see The End Of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe for a discussion of what that might mean).

So this is a meaty book, with interesting ideas and lots to think about. It's also well told, for the most part.

I do have reservations, though. The tone is uneven. At the start I read this as comic-serious, or serious-comic, not as zany as, say, Douglas Adams, but still light in tone. That is reinforced by the string of coincidences that intervene, often in comic ways, to save Alex, the hapless student, from his pursuers. The notion of the Coincidence Engine itself is of course gold dust for a novelist here, as it means anything can plausibly happen - but the trouble with this is that unless the author can exert strict control over his narrative it will - and does - get baggy.

Then, three quarters of the way though the book, Leith turns round, as it were, and tells the reader "actually, I hate Alex". One is left thinking "well, you wrote him." Seriously, one may like or dislike a character - I rather do like Alex - but he is as he is written: unless Leith is admitting that he failed with the character, what does this add? (Or is it some kind of meta stuff, in the voice of a narrator who isn't the author - in which case again, what is the point?)

Finally, in places the story does turn rather nasty - in Bree's earlier history, for example, and in several gory deaths. The tone of those episodes doesn't seem to me to fit very well with the lighter, even comic atmosphere elsewhere. Though perhaps Leith is being very clever and unsettling the reader through the contrast? Certainly the story is never less than compelling.

Overall, only three stars, even if that's slightly unfair - but I will watch for more by Leith.

Sam Leith's book has an entertaining plot, it is fast-paced and amusing - attributes which are rare enough in a novel - but its originality comes because at its heart it is a book that tackles some profound concepts.

I see this book as a philosophical novel that has been very well disguised as a good holiday read. The book does wrestle some challenging ideas, but don't be put off by mentions of maths or physics as it is more about crazily big ideas than formulas. In fact the book could be thought of as a fun mud-wrestle between an intelligent writer and a very big idea, but with a plot. Nope that analogy is not going to come off. It is a hard book to review, but easy one to read.

It will not be loved by all, but few will be able to deny that it is intelligent and original fiction. How refreshing to find a novel that is both deeply philosophical and very entertaining!

The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith
Bloomsbury £][
Reviewed by Leyla Sanai

Arriving with preview praise from William Boyd and Michael Moorcock, Leith's
debut novel is an ingenious if highly wacky adventure crammed with laughs. And, perhaps incongruously, beneath
the labyrinthine plot and sardonic Wodehouse with claws humour, there's
a seam of tender human observation.

As a non-fan of science fiction, the outlandish premise on the back
cover blurb - that a plane has assembled itself out of scrap during a storm -
initially raised serious doubts in this reader, sounding more of a
basis for a blockbuster kids' movie than a novel. But I underestimated
Leith: the mad-cap nonsense has a sketchy but passable safety net of maths to save it from haphazard nonsense . The events are still whimsical, but once you get past the first few pages it becomes apparent that they're not 100% raving fantasy since they're based,
albeit outrageously, within the possibilities of hypothetical physics.

An eccentric maths professor has been working in secret for years,
conjuring up a machine that can affect the natural order of
probability. Academic opinion is split on whether he's still the genius
he once was or if he's mad. Two opposing teams are determined to
ensnare this machine: the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable
(DEI), a government department concerned with national security, and an
arms company (MIC).

Into this mix is thrown a hapless geek studying maths at Cambridge.
Alex has decided to propose to his girlfriend in the US, and travels
out there to act on this whim. A maelstrom of events tails him, enacted
by a cast of beautifully idiosyncratic characters. On the DEI's side
there is ex-cop, ex-alcoholic Bree, a junk-food gorging mother
estranged from her only child, who comes alive in the humane,
unglamorous way that Frances McDormand's character in the Coen
Brothers' Fargo did. Bree is teamed with Jones, an intriguing character
suffering from a medical condition that causes him to lack imagination,
which means he is unable to understand jokes. This wildly creative
condition is one of many examples of Leith's combination of
intellect and esotericism: Jones is alternately fascinating and
hilarious as well as well as inspiring a tidal wave of sympathy.

On MIC's team are a couple of hard-boiled ex war veterans, Sherman and
Davidoff. Leith avoids cliche' by injecting vast amounts of
mordant humour, such as Sherman's contempt for his ineffectual boss.

While the plots of many novels are conveniently and implausibly oiled
by coincidences (Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie tales, Barbara
Trapido), here, coincidence arises because of the story and not despite
it, so it's easy to relax and become sucked into the vortex of fun. The
first treat is Leith's effortless ability to be sharply witty on every
page. Even insignificant characters are injected with entertainment
value coupled with Leith's hawkish acuity: the gormless young cop
`whose Adam's apple bobbed up and down his neck like a fisherman's
float after a motorboat has passed', who `looked ahead, gulped and
bobbed'; a tramp who `was barking like a seal'; an indignant maths
professor (not the hermit) who is manhandled `as if he were not a small, bald professor
of mathematics but a small, bald bicycle.' The effect is like watching
a particularly good episode of Blackadder, although that description
doesn't do justice to Leith's other talents: his brusque jocularity
masks an ability to also be piercingly perceptive, as in his portrayal
of a vulnerable middle-aged woman whose home has been robbed, or the
pangs of pain induced by the revelation that Jones sobs every night
for his long-dead mother. Leith's insight also comes to the fore in his
ability to analyse Alex's feelings: having travelled to the US on
impulse, he is seized by a numb uncertainty when he arrives, yet
propels himself on in his pursuit of his girlfriend. The sections
describing his emotions - his self doubts about what such beautiful
girl can see in him; his feverish panic when they meet that they aren't
having enough *fun*, or that a natural pause has occurred in the
conversation - are deeply intuitive and astute: here is an author who,
like Boyd, can do heartbreak as well as belly laughs.

Apart from the initial turn-off of such an impossibly silly premise, which, with a generous pinch of imagination, is mitigated by the maths, weak points are few. A development involving Bree's daughter borders on the sentimental and breaches credulity. A sub-department of the DEI that studies so-called psychics is similarly unnecessary since, unlike the professor's work, telepathy has no scientific basis. Sometimes the
prof's utterances sound less than convincing, as when he states that
time can't be measured because it's a dimension (surely that's the very
reason it *can* be measured: a better argument to invoke for the
difficulty of measuring time would have been folds in space-time.) The
couple of occasions when an omniscient narrator appears and addresses
the reader in the first-person are jarring. And on p 121, a sum of
percentages comes to 110% instead of 100%.

But these are nit itches in a luxuriant mane of imaginative
fiction. Richly comic, exuberant, fiendishly smart and yet startlingly
sensitive, The Coincidence Engine effervesces with vitality. It's certainly not serious fiction, it's a storm of anarchic fun and shows that Leith has a comic voice up there with the best.