The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe

Coe is a strenuously post modern author. By that I mean he build narratives only to destroy them as part of his art and as part of his construction of his tales. In some senses this is his theme and it's on show here to a fault.

Now Coe gets away with what, in others, might be pretensions of grandeur because he can write about people with a sense of their feelings, a sense of their struggles and a sense of their failure to grasp what he shows the reader to be 'obvious'. It's in grappling with the ordinary that Coe brings his stories to life and allows the reader to move through his mcguffin without feeling manipulated. There's also a sense of delight one feels - as if you're in an aquarium with your hand pressed against the glass and can feel the shudder as a large shark drifts by.

I think Coe also brings in unconventional characters (like Carl Hiaasen can) whose stories you feel could fill the pages of their own novels as people who populate his world. A world that is both conventional (family dinners, going to work, failing relationships) while still managing to hold together how the modern world has changed our mainstream manners, morals and cultural reference points.

I haven't always gotten on with Coe's novels but I really enjoyed this tale of a man newly alone, thoroughly depressed and realising his entire journey has been one in the doldrums of life.