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The Coincidence Plot
Once there was a man who believed, like the philosopher Spinoza, that all things happen for a reason. Once there was a woman who found the idea nonsensical, even repulsive. They met. Perhaps for a reason, perhaps by chance. What happens next transforms their lives and those of the people they love.
Anil Menon’s novel The Coincidence Plot weaves the tale through multiple cities, circumstances and lives. Some characters seem to be the heroes of their own lives, while others seem to serve other designs. However, they are all connected by subtle parallels and strange coincidences. This ingenious novel, by a writer of remarkable originality, addresses one of life's simplest yet hardest to what extent are we truly free?
Once there was a reader who picked up this novel…
Anil Menon’s novel The Coincidence Plot weaves the tale through multiple cities, circumstances and lives. Some characters seem to be the heroes of their own lives, while others seem to serve other designs. However, they are all connected by subtle parallels and strange coincidences. This ingenious novel, by a writer of remarkable originality, addresses one of life's simplest yet hardest to what extent are we truly free?
Once there was a reader who picked up this novel…
228 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 26, 2023
1 person is currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Anil Menon
44 books30 followersAnil Menon is a leading Indian writer of speculative fiction, as well as a computer scientist with a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, who has authored research papers and edited books on Evolutionary Algorithms; his research addressed the mathematical foundations of replicator systems, majorization, and reconstruction of probabilistic databases, in collaboration with Professors Kishan Mehrotra, Chilukuri Mohan, and Sanjay Ranka. After working for several years as a computer scientist, he has directed his creative energies towards fiction. His short stories and reviews have appeared in the anthology series Exotic Gothic, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Chiaroscuro, Sybil's Garage, Apex Digest and other magazines. In 2009, Zubaan Books, India's leading feminist press, published his debut young adult novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Vodafone Crossword Book Award and 2010 Parallax prize. In 2009, in conjunction with Vandana Singh and Suchitra Mathur, he helped organize India's first in-residence, three-week speculative fiction workshop at IIT-Kanpur.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Menon
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Menon
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 2, 2023
This book is a mesmerizing exploration of fate, connections, and the intricacies of human lives. With masterful storytelling, Menon weaves together multiple characters, cities, and circumstances, creating a tapestry of subtle parallels and intriguing coincidences. This thought-provoking novel delves into the question of free will and captivates readers with its originality. The beautiful writing and compelling narrative kept me engaged from start to finish. A must-read for those who enjoy thought-provoking fiction that leaves you pondering long after you turn the final page.
July 9, 2023
The Coincidence Plot is a very intriguing read. The author effortlessly weaves together different people and circumstances, and the book is made very engaging by his beautiful style which alternates between everyday Indian and high-brow literature. Overall, I felt that the story itself is secondary to the experience offered by the writing style and narration. So read it for the journey and don't fixate on the destination. This was my first Anil Menon novel and I am sure I will be reading more in the future.
July 22, 2023
4 stars for me
Finished reading The Coincidence Plot earlier this morning and I must say I'm in awe of Menon's writing.
It was a total page turner and the variety with which diverse characters have been linked in the whole narrative is spectacular.
I loved this book very much and would recommend it to all!
Finished reading The Coincidence Plot earlier this morning and I must say I'm in awe of Menon's writing.
It was a total page turner and the variety with which diverse characters have been linked in the whole narrative is spectacular.
I loved this book very much and would recommend it to all!
January 15, 2025
The Watched Plot Never Spoils (a Novel)
---------------------------------
My partner shares his last name with Sylvia Plath’s husband. I met him soon after I wrote my novel Sylvia whose eponymous protagonist is named after the poet. We joke that we were fated to come together to create a happy sequel to one of the literary world’s great romantic tragedies. But I’m not sure I utter these words entirely in mirth. Since then, there have been a series of coincidences in our lives that bring me at loggerheads with my rationality. He, on the other hand, extends the Shakespearean lines about all the world being a stage and men and women mere players to propose that the characters outnumber actors and people play more roles than one – and when their stories loop and meet, they cause coincidences. Such theories make for dreamy speculation and whimsical art. Some do vacuously verbose PhDs on them and wangle for teaching jobs in deemed universities. Anil Menon, however, wrote a novel on the subject and it is excellent.
Coincidences have been the grist of the fiction mill for a long time. They infuse mystery into the everydayness of things. They hold stories together in unlikely ways. They make us fall out of our chairs or roll our eyes depending on their frequency or plausibility. They make the quotidian quotable. But they are no more (or less) surreal than real life, and therefore, need words to create magic on paper. The Coincidence Plot gives it the right words and draws a metafictional picture.
The novel is arranged in chapters with neat combinations of two characters each starting in the 1930s and jumping to current times to form an intricate mesh of perspectives and memories. It begins with the coincidental discovery of the same mathematical theory by two scholars separately. One beats the other to it and the whole book is the piecing together of the repercussions that follow in the lives of the people connected to the logician who missed it by a whisker. It spans Germany, India, and the USA, and culminates in two fiction writers – one literary, one commercial – racing to write the same (on the same subject and people) novel. Add to this early Indian cinema, Nazi bigotry, much philosophy, some mathematics, heartache, several kinds of marriages, medical negligence, separation, loss, ayurveda, mental health, death, artless love, artful sex (that carefully ensures no reader pulses are quickened), the hegemony of English, deep meditations – alternately eloquent discussions – on the craft of writing, tongue-in-(someone or the other’s)cheek (humour and otherwise), many languages, and large helpings of Spinoza. The novel is a potpourri of strange events threaded together with coincidences like a complicated but beautiful piece of embroidery. And all this is modern; it is brand new with no maudlin cultural equivocation or sociological explanations. With Himanshu Rai, Devika rani, Gödel, and even Chetan Bhagat playing cameos as themselves, it makes a fine example of real person fiction. It is the work of a writer who knows the first name of a 17th C Dutch philosopher is homonymous with a popular Gujarati surname and has hatched an elaborate plan to connect these two characters – one real, and one fictitious – in a most original story.
And the language is delightful. Take for instance, this description of the weather: ‘Everything in the world cried out to be turned into word and song. The monsoon wouldn’t arrive for another week, but it had sent postcards. Raindrops kept falling on my head.’ (Of course I sung the last sentence!) Or this rather wry classification of housing facilities in a university campus: ‘… the post graduate building (kettle, Nescafe sachets)… …upscale Management Development Centre (all of the above, plus toiletries, plus minifridge)… VIP guest building (all of the above plus plasma TV, plus tribal art)’. One can tell the author had fun writing it – and that joy is transferred to the reading. With all this, the book anticipates an intelligent reader in a way that seems like a compliment.
There are some gaps too, however: one might wonder how easy or difficult it was for someone from a traditional Gujarati business family to marry a woman pregnant with another man’s child? What was lifelike for her? How did the interreligious marriage of Xan and Farzana not elicit so much as a raised eyebrow let alone murderous reactions from all unconcerned? Why are these matters untouched? But upon closer reflection these seem less like oversights than deliberate omissions. It is as if the author, by taking these in his stride, wants to create readers who transcend the social drama overkill in their lives and literature.
The age-old standoff between stylization and plot in literary fiction has been laid to rest in this book by making the idea of the plot its subject and dressing it in lyrical finery. In a world suffering from dwindling readers, Anil Menon is safe as a writers’ writer.
---------------------------------
My partner shares his last name with Sylvia Plath’s husband. I met him soon after I wrote my novel Sylvia whose eponymous protagonist is named after the poet. We joke that we were fated to come together to create a happy sequel to one of the literary world’s great romantic tragedies. But I’m not sure I utter these words entirely in mirth. Since then, there have been a series of coincidences in our lives that bring me at loggerheads with my rationality. He, on the other hand, extends the Shakespearean lines about all the world being a stage and men and women mere players to propose that the characters outnumber actors and people play more roles than one – and when their stories loop and meet, they cause coincidences. Such theories make for dreamy speculation and whimsical art. Some do vacuously verbose PhDs on them and wangle for teaching jobs in deemed universities. Anil Menon, however, wrote a novel on the subject and it is excellent.
Coincidences have been the grist of the fiction mill for a long time. They infuse mystery into the everydayness of things. They hold stories together in unlikely ways. They make us fall out of our chairs or roll our eyes depending on their frequency or plausibility. They make the quotidian quotable. But they are no more (or less) surreal than real life, and therefore, need words to create magic on paper. The Coincidence Plot gives it the right words and draws a metafictional picture.
The novel is arranged in chapters with neat combinations of two characters each starting in the 1930s and jumping to current times to form an intricate mesh of perspectives and memories. It begins with the coincidental discovery of the same mathematical theory by two scholars separately. One beats the other to it and the whole book is the piecing together of the repercussions that follow in the lives of the people connected to the logician who missed it by a whisker. It spans Germany, India, and the USA, and culminates in two fiction writers – one literary, one commercial – racing to write the same (on the same subject and people) novel. Add to this early Indian cinema, Nazi bigotry, much philosophy, some mathematics, heartache, several kinds of marriages, medical negligence, separation, loss, ayurveda, mental health, death, artless love, artful sex (that carefully ensures no reader pulses are quickened), the hegemony of English, deep meditations – alternately eloquent discussions – on the craft of writing, tongue-in-(someone or the other’s)cheek (humour and otherwise), many languages, and large helpings of Spinoza. The novel is a potpourri of strange events threaded together with coincidences like a complicated but beautiful piece of embroidery. And all this is modern; it is brand new with no maudlin cultural equivocation or sociological explanations. With Himanshu Rai, Devika rani, Gödel, and even Chetan Bhagat playing cameos as themselves, it makes a fine example of real person fiction. It is the work of a writer who knows the first name of a 17th C Dutch philosopher is homonymous with a popular Gujarati surname and has hatched an elaborate plan to connect these two characters – one real, and one fictitious – in a most original story.
And the language is delightful. Take for instance, this description of the weather: ‘Everything in the world cried out to be turned into word and song. The monsoon wouldn’t arrive for another week, but it had sent postcards. Raindrops kept falling on my head.’ (Of course I sung the last sentence!) Or this rather wry classification of housing facilities in a university campus: ‘… the post graduate building (kettle, Nescafe sachets)… …upscale Management Development Centre (all of the above, plus toiletries, plus minifridge)… VIP guest building (all of the above plus plasma TV, plus tribal art)’. One can tell the author had fun writing it – and that joy is transferred to the reading. With all this, the book anticipates an intelligent reader in a way that seems like a compliment.
There are some gaps too, however: one might wonder how easy or difficult it was for someone from a traditional Gujarati business family to marry a woman pregnant with another man’s child? What was lifelike for her? How did the interreligious marriage of Xan and Farzana not elicit so much as a raised eyebrow let alone murderous reactions from all unconcerned? Why are these matters untouched? But upon closer reflection these seem less like oversights than deliberate omissions. It is as if the author, by taking these in his stride, wants to create readers who transcend the social drama overkill in their lives and literature.
The age-old standoff between stylization and plot in literary fiction has been laid to rest in this book by making the idea of the plot its subject and dressing it in lyrical finery. In a world suffering from dwindling readers, Anil Menon is safe as a writers’ writer.
July 25, 2023
The Coincidence by Anil Menon is a fascinating and thought-provoking science fiction story set in the future. It follows two main characters, Nalini and Ravi, who are trying to understand the patterns behind coincidences. They use a powerful computer program called PRIMORDIAL that can predict and even change coincidences. This raises big questions about free will and whether we can control our fate.
The story explores how technology can affect our lives and challenges us to think about the role of chance in shaping our destinies. It's an engaging and mind-opening read that makes you reflect on the nature of coincidence and our place in the world.
The story explores how technology can affect our lives and challenges us to think about the role of chance in shaping our destinies. It's an engaging and mind-opening read that makes you reflect on the nature of coincidence and our place in the world.
August 22, 2023
Intelligent, imaginative, intricate.
The section describing the writing of a novel in a later chapter is one of the greatest passages I've read on the process of creation by an artist.
The section describing the writing of a novel in a later chapter is one of the greatest passages I've read on the process of creation by an artist.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews