This is the complex and highly entertaining account of a group of people connected by a tragic event aboard an aeroplane in the 1970s. Some are connected directly to the event, others more tenuously. But all are fascinating in their own way, all have their little quirks, and in a long book all have a chance to shine.

It’s a sort of take on the six degrees of separation idea, and I guess if you drew a diagram with all the characters on it, with lines showing the connections between them, the result would be the sort of horrendous tangled knot my i-pod headphones tend to get in when left in my pocket. My brain wasn’t big enough to hold all the links, or to fully understand every single facet of the story, but what I did like very much was the attention to detail, and the little moments of humour. Like where Sam the voice-over artiste was in a lift and was astonished to find his own voice telling him what floor he was on.

There was a serious side to it too. Death is never far from the thoughts of the characters, and in particular the last words of suicides or accident victims. At one point “Unfunny John”, a stand-up comedian whose entire act consists of him shooting himself in the head, suggests that planes should be fitted with individual blackboxes – one for each passenger “just in case they found themselves next to a stranger who meant nothing to them. They could record a message to a loved one, or to humanity. It would be a valuable contribution to the understanding of the human condition”. His companion points out that it would never happen – it would serve to make passengers more nervous – but I thought it was an interesting idea all the same.

It’s a quirky book, eschewing chapters in favour of short snappy sections numbered backwards from 840 to 0 in the manner of a countdown. Some sections consist of nothing but an ellipsis, most are no more than a paragraph or so and make the most of the author’s economical, punchy writing style. For all its quirks it is fundamentally a great read, I do hope there will be more from this author. ( )