Mark Watson (1) (1980–)

James Chiltern has hit rock bottom. His relationship has ended, he has lost his job after getting the blame for something he didn't do, he has fallen out with his sister, and life holds nothing for him. So he decides to end it all and let all of his 158 phone contacts know via text message, before boarding a sleeper train to Edinburgh where he plans to kill himself.

To him, it signifies an ending. But to some of those contacts, it's just the beginning of a race against time to find James and show more make him realise that life is worth living.

I raced through this book in just a few days - considering I was on holiday at the time, doing lots of sightseeing and theatre visits, that's pretty fast. But it's a long time since I've read a book like this that I just couldn't wait to pick up again.

We only get to know a few of James's contacts - his former best friend and employer, his sister, his mother, his flatmate and his ex-girlfriend. All of them are horrified by what they read and all of them have different ways of coping and trying to help. Meanwhile, James is unaware of their efforts, and as he travels up to Edinburgh he ruminates on how he ended up where he is in life. What went wrong and how it all just kept on going wrong.

In addition to James and his contacts, we also meet other characters, and throughout the story we gain insight not just into James's life, but also the lives of others. (Just like life, everyone is fighting their own private - or not so private - battles.)

I don't want to say too much more about the plot as I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that Mark Watson is as engaging a writer as he is a comedian and I thought the story unfolded beautifully. This was the first book I have read by him, but I will absolutely be reading more. show less

This novel has a thesis. It is that the world, the world we live in, is completely deterministic. One action or event sets off another, which sets off another, and so on in an unbroken chain. As one character puts it, “Whatever’s meant to happen, happens.” Watson’s authorial voice is surprisingly consistent on this point across the span of the entire novel. Thus the novel progresses from a single minor event, a failure to act on the part of our protagonist, Xavier Ireland, which sets show more in motion a chain of seemingly unalterable effects involving eleven different people. Indeed, so thoroughly determined is the world that even minor characters often have announced of them precise details of what they will be doing or saying 20 years hence. It’s not just that what happens happens, it’s that everything that is going to happen is laid down.

That’s a surprising thesis for a novel to maintain, though of course the characters and events of novels are certainly determined by their authors. But it would not seem to leave a great deal of room for action, for intention, for drama. So it won’t come as a surprise to learn that the characters themselves in Eleven are not, typically, collaborators in maintaining the apparent thesis that the novel has undertaken. In fact, the over-riding feature of many of the characters is guilt, a condition, I would say, markedly at odds with the deterministic thesis.

Xavier’s life is literally turned upside down by guilt (he is a transplanted Australian now living in London, England). The main action of the novel takes place almost six years after the events that have driven him from his homeland. And once again Xavier seems to be the origin of a further sequence of unfortunate events. But if the universe is indeed ordered by causal chains, then surely those chains reach all the way back. There is no justification, within the logic of this novel, for why a chain would only go back as far as one of Xavier’s acts of commission or omission. How can he be responsible?

And so the novel fights against itself and never quite pierces the murk of conflicting and contrasting conceptions of action, agency, cause, and culpability. show less

James Chiltern composes a text message, sends it to all 158 of his contacts, puts his phone into flight mode, and leaves home. He is now locked into the course of action he has announced to them: to commit suicide. You don't back out of an announcement like that, and he has ensured that nobody can contact him to talk him out of it.

James' message pings around the world, reaching his ex-friend on the road to Newcastle, his ex-lover in Germany, his estranged sister in Melbourne, and his mum in show more Bristol. Aghast, these contacts scramble to try and find James and stop this from happening, involving their own contacts in the effort. As they recall their interactions with James, the events that drove him to this pass become clear.

This is a very good book about the loneliness some feel, even in a world supposedly connected by technology to the nth degree. James' battle with depression is sensitively told. I might have given this 5 stars, except that I felt the ending was a bit contrived and unsatisfying. show less

This book really makes you think about the people who pass through your life every day, some noticed, many not. And how one single choice on our part can end up having repercussions in untold numbers of other lives. In this book, eleven people are effected by the ripple effect of a simple choice, one that perhaps each of us has made at some point or another in our lives. This book follows the course of those ripples in a sometimes confusing but always entertaining and engaging way. It's show more clever, complicated, and packed with heavy stuff served in a delightfully light tone. I can't tell you more without spoiling it, but I do highly recommend you read it because I'd LOVE to talk to someone about this book! show less