The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe is a good writer and this is one of his most gripping stories. It gives you all the clues and yet you don't know how it's going to turn out. He takes you on a journey and tells you many things.

My only gripes about J. Coe are firstly, that he can't seem to stop himself from writing off and ridiculing people who, for example,  prefer Cliff Richard's pop to classical music. Let's laugh at people who are culturally poor! No, I don't like that kind of snobbery. Lazy stereotyping. He may not be able to help thinking it but he shouldn't write it. 

Coe tries very hard to put himself into the mindset of Maxwell Sim, the protagonist and narrator of this novel, who simply likes the design of motorway service stations, etc, and fits well into the commercial world, but Coe can't do this entirely successfully because he wants to intrude on the first person narrative with his own perceptive comments on the state of England problem, which Maxwell Sim would not perceive. That was the whole thing about Maxwell Sim, he was really not a perceptive person. It's an interesting melange of two worldviews told in one voice. 

It is a really gripping read though, very, very good.

Writers must show that they are aware that realism is a construct, etc, etc, and all the rest of the current orthodoxy in literary theory, and they feel the need to subvert the form by puncturing the fictional bubble. Ian McEwan is one of the worst. Unfortunately, it's a bit like when an arrogant magician says: "well of course I didn't saw the lady in half!!! Are you an idiot? Look, it's just a trick, etc, etc", you wondered why he bothered to trick you if he's just going to ruin the illusion afterwards.