Coincidence Engine, Sam Leith
Coincidence Engine, Sam Leith
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Coincidence Engine

Author: Sam Leith

Narrator: Jonathan Cowley

Unabridged: 9 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/07/2012

Synopsis

“A tremendous novel—droll, savvy, original. An invigorating blast of fiction.”
—William Boyd, Author of Any Human Heart and Restless.”
              
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. This piques the interest of the enigmatic Directorate of the Extremely Improbable. Their fascination with this random event sets into motion a madcap caper that will bring together a hilarious cast of characters, including: an eccentric mathematician, last heard of investigating the physics of free will; a lovelorn Cambridge postgraduate who has set off to America with a ring in his pocket and hope in his heart; and a member of the Directorate with no capacity for imagination.  What ensues is a chaotic chase across a fully realized, hyper-real America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and conspiracy.  The Coincidence Engine is a lively, boisterous debut that heralds the arrival of a major new talent.

About The Author

Sam Leith is a freelance writer and critic. A former liiterary editor of the Daily Telegraph, he now writes regularly for the Evening Standard, Guardian, Spectator, Wall Street Journal Europe, and Prospect. He lives in north London.Jonathan Cowley is a British actor living in Los Angeles. He received AudioFile Earphones Awards for his narration of The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen, and for his narration of The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart. He has narrated many audiobooks and can also be heard on both sides of the Atlantic narrating film trailers and documentaries.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kyle

A witty and deeply personal look at the different paths that life can take-whether by chance or by choosing. Bound within the context of a government spy thriller, this is a book that is at its best when asking the questions of what makes life meaningful and examining how our choices, good our bad,......more

Goodreads review by Chris

There is a certain self conscious humour to be to be found in a particular type of genre novel. Often the novel is apocalyptic, containing demons, angels and/or the afterlife and usually it contains up to the minute cultural references. You get the distinct impression that the author was so impresse......more

Goodreads review by Lucian

The premise of this novel is irresistible: the emergence of a device that twists probability (e.g. a hurricane assembles a jumbo jet using bits of scrap metal), and the chase across the US that ensues as rival entities hunt it down. And while all of this is taking place a student called Alex is trav......more

Goodreads review by Beth

This is one of the oddest books I have read in quite a while, and yet I really enjoyed it. There was a moment, near the end of the book, when I realized that it was meeting none of my expectations about what books generally do. I felt a bit tricked - I expected it to be something, & without any warn......more

Quotes

“A comic caper. . . . Pitched somewhere between the heartbreaking pitfalls of Jonathan Coe and the paranoid zaniness of Thomas Pynchon, this is a clever debut, well worth checking out.” — Sunday Times

“Witty and inventive, like something out of Hitchcock by way of Carl Hiassen, this tale of mayhem, murder and mistaken identity is a hugely entertaining, freewheeling riff on the paranoid, conspiracy driven American psyche.” —The Mail on Sunday

 “Blending elements of a road novel, a spy thriller and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of chance, it is gripping, funny and unsettling.” —Financial Times

“The silliness multiplies across Sam Leith’s pages like fractal rainbows. . . . Anarchic, psychedelic, with a serious delight in paradox. . . . For [Leith], silliness is not camouflage but its opposite: a tantalizing surface that attracts attention and draws it very much deeper.” —The Guardian

“A novel of ideas. . . . Sam Leith [writes] with admirable imaginative stamina, helped along by sharply observed and entertaining writing.” —Independent

“A comic thriller that, in its deliberate daftness, shows how disturbing daftness can be when taken to extremes.” —Times Literary Supplement

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