Sputnik Caledonia

By Andrew Crumey

Sputnik Caledonia was awarded the prestigious Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award and was shortlisted for The James Tait Black Prize and The Scottish Book of the Year Award. Robbie Coyle is an imaginative kid. He wants so badly to become Scotland's first cosmonaut that he tries to teach himself Russian and trains for space exploration in the cupboard under the sink. But the eplaces to which his fantasies later take him is far from the safety of his suburban childhood. In a communist state, in a closed bleak town, the mysterious Red Star heralds his discovery of cruelty and of love, and the possibility that the most passionate of dreams may only be a chimera... 'This a surprisingly moving novel about the impersonal forces - be they political, quantum, temporal or otherwise - that can threaten or shatter the bonds of love, and of family life. Never has astrophysics seemed so touching and funny.' Sinclair McKay in The Daily Telegraph. 'a stimulating read, full of political, philosophical and scientific thought experiments.' Jonathan Gibbs in The Independent. Andrew Crumey was born in Glasgow in 1961. He read theoretical physics and mathematics at St Andrews University and Imperial College in London, before doing post-doctoral research at Leeds University on nonlinear dynamics. After a spell of being the literary editor at Scotland on Sunday he now combines teaching creative writing at Northumbria University with his writing.He is the author of seven novels: Music, in a Foreign Language (1994), Pfitz (1995), D'Alembert's Principle (1996), Mr Mee (2000, Dedalus edition 2014), Mobius Dick (2004, Dedalus edition 2014) Sputnik Caledonia( 2008, Dedalus edition forthcoming in 2015)) and The Secret Knowledge (2013). Andrew Crumey's novels have been translated into 14 languages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dedalus
• Release date: Jan 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910213339

Andrew Crumey

Andrew Crumey was born in Glasgow in 1961. He read theoretical physics and mathematics at St Andrews University and Imperial College in London, before doing post-doctoral research at Leeds University on nonlinear dynamics. After six years as the literary editor at Scotland on Sunday he now combines teaching creative writing at Northumbria University with his writing.He is the author of seven novels: Music, in a Foreign Language (1994), Pfitz (1995), D'Alembert's Principle (1996), Mr Mee (2000, Dedalus edition 2014), Mobius Dick (2004, Dedalus edition 2014) Sputnik Caledonia(2008, Dedalus edition 2015)) and The Secret Knowledge (2013).Andrew Crumey's novels have been translated into 14 languages.

Reviews for Sputnik Caledonia

[ljbwell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For better or worse, I often judge books by their covers, which is what initially drew me to Sputnik Caledonia. The book gets off to a great start. Robbie Coyle lives in Kenzie, a Scottish suburb, in the 70s. He has a vivid imagination and dreams of joining the Russian cosmonaut program; he also drifts off into his daydreams, has a tendency to wet his bed, and is seen as a bit of a loner, weird kid by his peers. His father is a rather cranky conspiracy theorist with Communist leanings; his mother is more upbeat, rolls her eyes when the father gets started and provides a more balanced counter to the father. This section of the book develops interesting characters and is a wonderfully written slice of life. We get hints of things being slightly awry, for example, when Robbie hears voices through an old bakelite radio.(POSSIBLE SPOILER, OR AT LEAST FURTHER DETAILS) Then come the 2nd and 3rd parts. The 2nd part jumps 'ahead' to the Installation, where a 20ish year old Robert Coyle has been recruited from the military to join this highly secret, experimental mission; even he and the other recruits are not told much about the program. This is where the science fiction/alternate reality really kicks in. The Installation is in Scotland, but very cordoned off from its surroundings; higher-ranked residents have their own vouchers instead of money, can't discuss their jobs with lower ranks, and find release, well, of all kinds at the Blue Cat. This is an alternate Scotland, where Communism has prevailed and a space program is being developed. Without giving too much away, the 3rd part shifts yet again. (END)Again, I loved the 1st part of this book. I was less enamored of the 2nd part. The alternate reality is interesting, and the parallels to stories of life behind the Iron Curtain are clear. The 3rd part leaves the reader with a lot to debate in terms of what actually has happened. These are all positive points. It just felt that the writing and the characters so wonderfully drawn and captured in the 1st part get lost in the more strident, even stream-of-consciousness latter sections. The new characters in these sections just don't have the same depth. That said, it did leave me still thinking about it for several days and wanting to talk about it with others.

[jackdeighton · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In the first part of the novel a shy boy called Robbie Coyle is growing up in a village called Kenzie in 1960s Scotland with the ambition of going into space. Since his father is an ardent socialist and anti-American Robbie therefore wants to be a cosmonaut. A frequent attender at his local library, he devours knowledge about the Soviet Union and discovers that “Russian is a language where some letters are written back to front and others are completely made up.” Quotes such as this display Crumey’s excellent ability to inhabit the world of a pre-adolescent. As he matures he starts to hear a voice in his head. The section ends with that voice saying, “I guess we’re not in Kenzie any more.”The story then flips into a scenario of a Soviet-style Britain where a young adult Robert Coyle has been recruited into a space project to reach, before the wicked capitalists do so, what is possibly a black hole travelling through the solar system. The secret “Installation” where Robert is in training is suitably grim, the illustrations of the many compromises people have to make in such a society convincing, though whether dissidents could flourish there is another question. Perhaps this exists in the same British Democratic Republic which featured in the author’s Mobius Dick.This central section could be considered an Altered History novel where the Jonbar Hinge lies in whether or not a man named Deuchar died while trying to rescue twins from drowning many years before the time the action is set. Yet its juxtaposition with the preceding and following parts, set in the “real” world, argues against this. And Crumey’s treatment of his subject matter does not have the feel of SF. The Soviet section can be read to be implicitly a figment of Robbie’s imagination. The subtlety of the point of divergence also marks this out from SF treatments of Altered Worlds. While Crumey pushes credibility a little by having characters in the central section behave and speak, or have the same names as, those in the book-end segments he does certainly avoid the trap into which Philip Roth fell in The Plot Against America of restoring the altered world to normal by the end. The coda, a (present day?) exploration of the situation of Robbie’s ageing parents and a young boy who meets a mysterious stranger on a mission (which he is unwilling to explain) provides counterpoint and a resolution of sorts.Sputnik Caledonia is excellently written and engaging, with convincing characters, but not quite as full of verve as Mobius Dick.