Are you in a book club? Looking for the next book club pick that will rival your previous good picks? I’ve stumbled across this one that proves to be a keeper. It’s called Coincidence and it’s JW Ironmonger’s US fiction debut. Ironmonger (dontcha love that name?) was born in East Africa and has been previously published in the UK where he now lives.
Ironmonger prolly lives in a quaint little house near 212B Baker Street. Not really, because that street is in London and Ironmonger (can’t stop saying that name!) lives in Shropshire, which, according to Wikipedia, is west of there.
So, more like a quaint little village that Hyacinth Bucket lives in.
Back to Coincidence:
Azalea Lewis’s life has been dominated by coincidences – a bizarre, and increasingly troubling, series of chance events so perfectly coordinated that any sane person would conclude that only the hidden hand of providence could explain them.
On Midsummer’s Day, 1982, at the age of three, Azalea was found wandering a fairground in England, alone, too young to explain what had happened to her or her parents. After a brief investigation, she was declared a ward of the court, and placed in foster care. The following year, the body of a woman – her mother – was found on a nearby beach. Everyone had forgotten about the little girl, and no connection was ever made. The couple who adopted Azalea brought her to Africa where – on Midsummer’s Day, 1992 – they were killed in a Ugandan uprising while trying to protect their children. Azalea is spared on that day, but as she grows into adulthood, she discovers that her life has been shaped by an uncanny set of coincidences – all of them leading back to her birth mother, and the three men who could have been her father, each who have played an improbable but very real role in her fate.
Troubled by what she has uncovered – and increasingly convinced that she, too, will meet her fate on Midsummer’s Day – she approaches Thomas Post, a rational-minded academic whose specialty is debunking our belief in coincidence, the belief that certain events are linked, even predestined by the hands of fate. Even as they fall in love, Thomas tries to help Azalea to understand her past as a series of random events – not divinely predetermined. Yet as the fateful date draws closer, Thomas begins to fear he may lose her all together; that she may throw herself into the very fate she fears.
I know right? Can’t wait to read it!! Doesn’t this sound like the perfect book club book?
And who doesn’t’ love the name Azalea?