Expo 58 - Jonathan Coe

Yet again a novel that was suggested to be by my mother, and one that I didn't find particularly exciting at the time (and, oddly, one that I thought was surprisingly non-comical despite being by Jonathan Coe).

I read it a few months ago, and I already remember very little of its plot (a main character who is torn between his routine British life and the excitement of the Brussels Expo, some relatively low-level spying over ill-thought-out projects, and a fairly predictable love triangle). 

What has stuck with me, though, is the general hopeful mood of the era, at least in Western Europe, and that is really something we could do with these days. 

 

Middle England - Jonathan Coe

A rare Jonathan Coe book that I didn't enjoy, and yet one that I think serves an educational purpose (at least for non-British writers).

The characters that I loved so much in The Rotters' Club, and that I still enjoyed in The Closed Circle are back for a third time and, at this point, it's just a bit much: with age they've lost a lot of their charm and too many of them have turned into allegoric representations of the sections of society they belong to.

While some of the new characters that are introduced are interesting enough, most of them are rather one-dimensional. The themes discussed are so widely covered in the media these days, and in rather similar ways, that they don't really add anything new. And the ending of the book is not one of the typical chaotic and rocambolesque ones that Coe usually goes for, but rather a flat one that reminds the reader of a cheap romance.

Yet, for someone who doesn't live in the UK and knows little about the current political landscape, this book can be a really good introduction to Brexit and the awfulness of the current political discourse in Britain.

The Accidental Woman – Jonathan Coe

And this is the last of the books that I bought myself for Christmas.

Hmpf. It was alright as a read, but that’s pretty much about it. The humour in it wasn’t lacking, it was just not particularly Jonathan Coesque. And most of all, one thing is having an intrusive narrator – but this one was just a tad bit excessive.

Apparently Jonathan Coe wrote this novel while studying for his Masters – it’s nice to see that not all British authors are already great writers since their student years and that Zadie Smith remains very much a unique case!

The Dwarves of Death – Jonathan Coe

The joys of walking into Fopp and finding that it has changed its stock of books quite considerably! This was a Christmas gift to myself (one of the very few I have ever felt entitled to) alongside Brighton Rock and Coe’s The Accidental Woman.

According to Jonathan Coe’s website this is his weakest novel, and according to a number of people on goodreads, the plot twists in the book are just implausible and the focus on music excessive. I disagree with all those accounts. Sure, The Dwarves of Death doesn’t even come remotely close to What a Carve Up! or The Rotters’ Club, but it was a great read on the plane (not to mention the fact that I am currently reading The Accidental Woman and I am finding that to be quite a bit weaker than this book). Also, sure, the plot twists are implausible, but so are the ones of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (to which the absurdity of the novel made me think more than once) and this is not a problem for me. Lastly, obviously there is a lot of focus on music, but this is not overpowering and it feels great to read of the inability of the protagonist’s drummer to keep a beat, much like me.

But surely I am biased, as the book is set in the same area of London where I live, although man it has changed over the last 30 years!

The Closed Circle – Jonathan Coe

And for once a book that my aunt gave me in 2001 and that it took me 15 years to read.

And for once a book by Jonathan Coe that I liked, but not so much.

Probably the events described by Coe were just too recent to be observed with his normally hilarious humour, but I found The Closed Circle to be a bit too sad and bleak. Also, too much of the action takes place in London (it’s just more interesting when Coe talks about the Midlands). And lastly, even though the book has a number of Coe’s customarily dramatic plot-twists, these are just a bid bland (if not stale) if compared to the ones of The Rotters’ Club and What a Carve Up!

The Closed Circle is ultimately an interesting portrayal of Britain’s recent history and the problems of Blair’s (and the former director of my school’s!) Third Way, but it’s just not Coe at his best (or maybe the 70s were a lot more fun than the 90s, or maybe 18-year olds are a lot more fun than 40-year olds, or all of the above!)

What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe

One of the many books I snatched from Books for Free in Stratford before it closed (the reserves, unfortunately, are starting to slowly run out…). A few months ago I read – and really enjoyed – The Rotters’ Club, but found this novel to be on another level.

What a Carve Up is a cross between epic family novels (Solomon Gursky Was Here is the first one that comes to mind, because of the nature of the Winshaw family and the mischievousness of some of its older members – often more interesting than their kids), cheesy mysteries (Ten Little Indians) and the most enjoyable and ironic Alan Bennett works.

The constant alternation of styles, narrators and registers is obviously yet again a display of Coe’s considerable talent. And the fact that so much of the novel is set in Northern England is again a welcome departure from London-centred British literature.

Much like in The Rotters’ Club with Malcolm, even in What a Carve Up Coe kills off one of my favourite characters (Fiona) relatively early (I mean, not super-early, but the writing is on the wall from the start, so I don’t feel like I’m spoiling too much). Yet I don’t hate him for that. Although I really wish I knew what happened to Phoebe and Graham…

The Rotters’ Club – Jonathan Coe

A book that my mom tried to persuade me to read for years. All it took for me to read it was for my boss to recommend it…

There are a number of reasons why I particularly enjoyed this novel: being used to Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, Hari Kunzru, etc. it was refreshing for once to read a (relatively) recent light-hearted and socio-political British novel that wasn’t set in London. Also, despite the fact that my political allegiances lie elsewhere (very much so), it was a welcome change to read a novel about the personal growth and the self-doubts of a little Tory (despite the fact that Ben’s lefty friend Doug is clearly my favourite character).  Lastly, a scene in the final pages is set in the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, a place that was wonderfully quaint and still oozing – between its cracked walls and leaking pipes – of Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith when my dad took us there 20 years ago (before it got refurbished and very much revamped).

From a stylistic point of view, Coe does a great job of alternating registers and viewpoints. His little plot twists leave you disheartened (at the very end of the first part), warm inside (during a dialogue apparently with himself that Ben has mid-way through the second part), giggly (when you discover who is the actual author of some of the most hysterical letters that the editor of a school journal can ever receive), or give you hope for the future of mankind (with Ben’s decision to go home before the end of a disastrous family holiday in Wales).

It’s been a while since I’ve last expressed this trite idea – The Rotters’ Club is clearly not a masterpiece, but hell it’s a really enjoyable read…