The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Jonathan Coe (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 8, 2011

Maxwell Sim can’t seem to make a single meaningful connection. His absent father was always more interested in poetry; he maintains an e-mail correspondence with his estranged wife, though under a false identity; his incomprehensible teenage daughter prefers her BlackBerry to his conversation; and his best friend since childhood is refusing to return his calls. He has seventy-four friends on Facebook, but nobody to talk to.

In an attempt to stir himself out of this horrible rut, Max quits his job as a customer liaison at the local department store and accepts a strange business proposition that falls in his lap by chance: he’s hired to drive a Prius full of toothbrushes to the remote Shetland Islands, part of a misguided promotional campaign for a dental-hygiene company intent on illustrating the slogan “We Reach Furthest.”

But Max’s trip doesn’t go as planned, as he’s unable to resist making a series of impromptu visits to important figures from his past who live en route. After a string of cruelly enlightening and intensely awkward misadventures, he finds himself falling in love with the soothing voice of his GPS system (“Emma”) and obsessively identifying with a sailor who perpetrated a notorious hoax and subsequently lost his mind. Eventually Max begins to wonder if perhaps it’s a severe lack of self-knowledge that’s hampering his ability to form actual relationships.

A humane satire and modern-day picaresque, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim is a gently comic and rollickingly entertaining novel about the paradoxical difficulties of making genuine attachments in a world of advanced communications technology and rampant social networking.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coe (The Rotters' Club) broadly satirizes the disconnectedness of modern life with the story of Maxwell Sim, who has 70 Facebook friends but no one he can turn to when his wife and daughter leave him. After a trip to Australia to reconnect with his estranged father leads nowhere, Trevor, one of Max's few real friends, offers him an unusual gig: drive a Prius to the northernmost tip of the British Isles as part of a promotion for a startup eco-toothbrush company. Max takes a meandering route that allows him to visit his ex-wife, check in on his father's long-empty apartment, and pay a visit to the parents of his childhood friends. He also develops a romantic fixation on the voice coming from his GPS, which he names Emma. True connection is elusive: Max gains insight to his marriage, but only after using a fake identity to befriend his ex-wife online; haunting incidents from his teenage years come into focus belatedly, and the clarity he finally achieves comes at the prompting of a stranger. 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. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review

“[A] witty, sympathetic, and often painfully funny take on real loneliness in the virtual, socially networked world.” —Library Journal

“Coe’s voice, spoken through Max’s perspective, effuses the novel with an easy, understated and satirical sense of humor that is a joy to read . . . An excellent and entertaining take on how our countless methods of modern communication are making it harder to truly connect.” —Katie Stroh, The Daily Texan
 
“[A] beguiling combination of picaresque comic adventure, meditation on the idea of meta-narrative, and thought-provoking reflection on the place of social media in our lives.” —Heather Paulson, Booklist
 
“Funny, acerbic and, most of all, a novel that could not have been born at any other time than the present.”  —“What We’re Reading Now,” NPR
 
“A smart satire of materialism and modern life . . . Coe is a funny writer, and it's a testament to his skill with character that for all of his hero’s maddening faults and failures, Sim never wears out his welcome . . . Much like its targets, the book stubbornly delivers moments of humor and humanity.” —Chris Barton, Los Angeles Times
 
“Touching and admirable . . . Coe masterfully equips [his] vibrant and ingenious novels . . . with trap-like ironies that snap shut on his characters without bending them out of shape.” —Mark Martin, Barnes and Noble Review
 
“Beguiling . . . Coe has devised a powerful structure upon which to hang his exacting sense of humor and acute social observations, [and he] leaves the reader uncomfortably engaged with the consequences of Max’s terrible privacy, an unbearable loneliness that I would wager many of us share in this globalized world of greater and greater connectedness in which we are anything but connected.”  —Martha McPhee, San Francisco Chronicle

“Coe’s ninth novel cleverly plays with the reclusive-in-plain-sight notion and pokes gentle fun at our society’s love affair with modern gadgetry. It is a compelling, poignant read.” —Sara Vilkomerson, Entertainment Weekly
 
“On the one hand, [Coe’s] novels are immensely pleasurable in traditional ways: rich in characterization, emotionally resonant, thoughtfully plotted. On the other, he’s committed to unorthodox, even daring formal conceits, which energize his books by shaking them out of any possible complacency . . . Coe manages all that while also being very, very funny. There are many contemporary writers who can make you laugh, but Coe is one of the few whose comic set pieces do that and feel like miniature works of art. He has a genius for perfectly constructed jokes with hilarious payoffs.” —Ed Park, Bookforum
 
“In his sparkling and hugely enjoyable new book Jonathan Coe reinvents the picaresque novel for our time.” —Yorkshire Evening Post
 
“Clever, engaging, and spring-loaded with mysteries and surprises.” —Caroline McGinn, Time Out
 
“A brilliant depiction of 21st century life [and] a truly magnificent novel…Coe manages to make me howl with laughter and sob with tenderness within the same sentence.” —Patrick Neate, The Bookseller
 
“Classic Coe.” —Vogue
 
“[Coe] gives us witty and tender humanity, and reminds us that while the winners write the history, it is life’s losers who have the best stories.” —Simon Baker, The Spectator
 
“An amiably lunatic journey into the unknown…Coe’s satirical eye is as dependable as ever.” —Financial Times
 
“Most entertaining…A parable about the feeling many now have of not being in control of their own story.” —The Independent
 
“Cunningly plotted, extremely well-written and very, very funny.” —The Telegraph
 
“Exceptionally moving…[it tells] us something about loneliness, failure and the inability to cope that we haven’t quite read before.” —The Guardian
 
“Masterly…[Coe’s] eye for the details of contemporary life remains as sharp as ever.” —Daily Mail
 
 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Printing edition (March 8, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307594815
• ISBN-13: 978-0307594815
• Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 6.5 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #921,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Brush after each chapter. March 28, 2011

By Dick Johnson TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

It's pretty unusual to read a coming-of-age novel about a 48 year old man. But, that seems to be what Coe has given us. We travel with Maxwell from London to the Shetland Islands. Or, that was the plan. We may not get to see those famous ponies and Shelties

Maxwell isn't really someone I'd want as a friend. He seems to be more like someone who needs to be claimed from a shelter - for a pet. While that sounds cruel, it isn't. He just needs a keeper; or, perhaps, a trainer.

Coe writes in a very low key manner that just kind of gets us to each stage of the book in its own good time. We aren't rushed or challenged by the book, but sit in the back seat while Maxwell follows his "made up as he went" agenda.

If the Product Description (above) piques your interest, and you like to chuckle at the foibles and inadequacies of others (this is fiction), then give this a try. You don't have to drive too many miles each day and can spend your nights in decent surroundings. You don't even need to bring a toothbrush.

I'm going to check out some of Jonathan Coe's other books.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Coe Drops a Rare Dud June 6, 2011

By A. Ross HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The titular character of this low-key character study is an Englishman in his late 40s who has been understandably mired in deep depression for the six months since his wife and teenage daughter left him. He's an epically milquetoast fellow who seems perpetually three steps slower than the modern world, and whose job (customer service clerk for a department store returns division) is a very telling marker of his absolute meaninglessness. He's the kind of guy who, when he does start sharing his interior life, does so with spectacular ineptitude.

The book opens promisingly enough, with him about to return from a visit to his father in Australia. Minor adventures ensue on the flights home, and he meets an interesting young woman who introduces him to the story of Donald Crowhurst. (He was an amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in a "round-the-world" race in 1969. Although he was judged to be the winner, later examination showed that his logbooks and records had been falsified, and that he was clearly going insane, and probably committed suicide.) Upon his return to England, Maxwell Sim is hired by an old friend to participate in a promotional road-trip to publicize a new line of toothbrushes. Thus, he embarks on his own solo journey toward madness, with the voices in his head coming from his on-board navigation system.

The terrible privacy of the title is essentially loneliness, and Coe appears to be trying to criticize the new modes of social networking and communication (Facebook, texting, etc.) that have grown ubiquitous in the last ten years but have not necessarily improved our ability to truly connect as humans. The book also has a secondary critique of the McDonaldsization of the Western world, as all places become interchangeable combinations of franchise locations. Unfortunately, neither message carries with it any great insight or particular depth or resonance. Nothing Coe has to say on either topic is new or noteworthy, and even worse, Max is a fairly unsympathetic and tedious protagonist for most of the book.

I generally like Coe's writing, and I absolutely loved What a Carve Up! and The Rotters' Club, but this one is a dud. There are some grand revelations at the end that feel cheap in that kind of movie plot way, the one or two key secrets that explain all the angst and unhappiness of a life. Real life is generally more complicated and nuanced than that. There's also an annoying metafictional coda chapter involving the author, which is really best left unread. There are scenes here and there that will remind Coe's fans of some of his best writing, but these are too few and unconnected to the main narrative to rescue this ill-conceived book.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Neither Here Nor There March 7, 2011

By Brian J. Greene VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I have no qualms about putting a book down if I find early into reading it that it doesn't do much for me. So the very fact that I almost finished this one proves that it entertained me to an extent. I can't say I loved it, can't say I hated it, but I DID keep coming back to it, at least for a time. It's the story of a guy in his mid-40s whose life is falling apart,and who is not only not helped but pushed even deeper into his personal abyss by modern day technological social mechanisms. His lifeless relationships with his father, estranged wife and daughter, friends, co-workers seem realistic and make the character and the tale believable. But there's not enough spark in the writing, and the characters don't come to life enough, to make you care all that much. The elements of the storyline are, likewise, nicely envisioned yet flatly written. So, the book is both boring and readable, interesting yet completely forgettable. It didn't hurt me to read it, but didn't do a hell of a lot for me, either.