Today’s book review from the past is my 2011 write-up of Sam Leith’s effervescent and hilarious comic novel The Coincidence Engine.
Mathematical Mayhem
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 April 2011
The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith
Bloomsbury
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 watchinga 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.
Flaws are few. 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 might have been distortions of 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.