I wasn’t sure about this at first, it felt like it might end up being nauseatingly whimsical, but once I got into it I really enjoyed it. It’s a tightly written, nicely constructed puzzle of a book with some lovely prose, vibrant characters and a subtle charm. Interesting, fun and really readable. ( )

Well this was certainly different. I found some of the detail a bit boring but overall it is a good book ( )

The main feeling after having finished this book was relief that I'd finally finished it. Not that there weren't parts that were interesting, but on the whole, the subject didn't grab me and the characters weren't particularly engaging and spent a lot of time sitting around discussing philosophies of life.
Azalea has had a bizarre life filled with one unhappy coincidence after another--such that she feels she has an inescapable destiny. The parts of the book where she tells about her life were the parts I found most appealing. She meets up with a rationalist who doesn't believe in coincidence and he tries to convince her these are random patterns. ( )

Originally posted at https://olduvaireads.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/tlc-book-tours-coincidence-by-j-w-...

Coincidence can be said to be a rather convenient way to move a plot forward. Yet this book, which revolves around coincidences, works. And was quite a delight to read.

Thomas Post, who ”seems to roll along, a curious, angular fellow, a lummox, tall, awkward, in an ill-fitting jacket and large round spectacles” is the “coincidence man”, or as the original UK title of the book goes, “the Coincidence Authority”. He is a lecturer in Applied Philosophy and has devoted his studies, his life really, to coincidences.

He meets Azalea Lewis, coincidentally (or not?) as they take a tumble down the escalator at a Tube station. She teaches at the same university, and has quite the story to tell. She has come to believe that she will die on June 21, Midsummer’s Day, following in the footsteps of several of her family members.

Post is captivated – by her coincidences and her looks – and is determined to investigate further.

“Azalea’s coincidences were off the scale,” he says quietly. “They could not be explained. Not by mathematics, at least. In fact…” he lifts his face and the sun catches his countenance with its glare, “…they might even be proof that our universe is not a place we thought it was.”

Ironmonger interweaves this with the background of Azalea’s life, from her bizarre abandonment at a fairground in Devon in 1982 at the age of three.

“Azalea was well nourished, suitably dressed and clearly well cared for; her hair had been combed and her fingernails trimmed. It all added to the general sense of mystery that clung to her apparent abandonment. Who would do this to a child like Azalea?”

The police do their duty: call in a child psychologist to talk to her, speech therapists to determine her accent, media reports and all that. But no one comes to claim her. She is assigned a foster family then eventually placed for adoption.

“So Azalea Ives became Azalea Folley, and the events of 21 June 1982, when a small girl was discovered to be lost at a traveling fair, were gradually forgotten.”

Then her residence in Uganda with her adopted parents, teachers at a mission school, also the haunting ground of the Lord’s Resistance Army which has a fondness for recruiting child soldiers.

It is quite an ambitious book but Ironmonger has created something quite readable and well constructed, right from its beginning at the Devon fair, urging the reader on to turn the pages to find out about the coincidental life of Azalea and the Coincidence Man Thomas Post. ( )

With his themes of Africa and philosophy this author has got all dressed up in Alexander McCall Smith's clothes, and they fit him really well. In fact he bulks them out somewhat with a plot you can get your teeth into, and writing that is clear, readable and informative. I admired the way the story began close to the end - when many of the mysteries seemed to have been cleared up - and also the way the narrative skipped around in time while never leaving the reader confused. The only bum note - for me at least - came close to the end when the story's resident philosopher Thomas receives an unlikely lecture from someone he has never met before, someone who addresses him using his first and second names together (nobody ever does that in real life, and it always gets on my nerves when it happens in books). But for that this would have been a five star for sure. ( )