Maxwell Sim seems to have hit rock bottom. Estranged from his father, newly divorced, unable to communicate with his only daughter, he realises that while he may have 74 friends on Facebook, there is nobody in the world with whom he can actually share his problems.
Then a business proposition comes his way - a strange exercise in corporate PR that will require him to spend a week driving from London to a remote retail outlet on the Shetland Isles. Setting out with an open mind, good intentions and a friendly voice on his SatNav for company, Maxwell finds that this journey soon takes a more serious turn....
"Max Sim is a middle-aged (48) British gent, all alone, setting off on a trip/adventure in the Shetland Islands to liven up his old age. This works! Because Max is a round character, in contrast to his VERY flat-character counterpart, Daisy Phillips, elderly (77) British lady, all alone, setting off on a trip/adventure to Long Island USA (in "Keeping Time" read just before this book!). Both of them are aging and lonely, think about things, are bugged by kids who want them out of their family home, need something more out of life, and go far far away to meet up with beloved people (and secrets) from their youth. Daisy's story is cookie-cutter romance with no depth; Max's is a real adventure of the mind, the emotions and dreams, the physicalness of loneliness. In Daisy's story the other folks are more interesting than she is; in Max's he is front and center of our attention. Each learns a shocking family secret (about Daisy's mother and about Max's father--guess gender had to be paired?) Each is redeemed by revelation, re-encounter and return. There is a playful meta-fiction thread in "The Terrible Privacy," Max chatting with his author and all, although it gets a bit overworked at the end. "Keeping Time" passes time on an airline flight; "Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim" invites re-reading.
=*=*=*=*=*=Spoiler Alert-->>
the kernel of the nut of the book
THE TERRIBLE PRIVACY OF MAXWELL SIM p. 262
. . . . . Shoulder to cry on. That's what I need, really. Someone to talk to about . . . all this. All this stuff. Everything that's come out in the last couple of weeks. Bit too much to cope with, really. Bit much to take in all at once. We all need somebody to talk to. How did you think you were ever going to manage it, Donald? Nine months at sea, was it? Ten, something like that? With no human company at all, just a radio transmitter that barely worked. Unimaginable. And, of course, you didn't manage it in the end. Was you over the edge, finally—the loneliness? The terrible privacy, as Clive called it? I'm not surprised. Nobody could be expected to handle solitude like that, and why should you be any different? You're human like the rest of them. But you should've turned back when you had the chance. When you first realised that the boat was never going to make it. I don't know, though, maybe things were already too far gone by then. Perhaps what you should have done, that day, when you realised the mess you'd got yourself into; instead of putting it all down on paper and trying to work out the way forward yourself . . . perhaps you should have used the radio, made contact with your wife somehow. I bet she would have told you to turn round and come back."
—
Kay (4 out of 5 stars)