Middle England

June 15, 2019
Benjamin Trotter, friends, and family return (The Closed Circle, 2005, etc.) to observe, mostly with dismay, the run-up to Brexit in a divided Britain. In April 2010, just after the funeral of his mother, Benjamin listens impassively for what is obviously not the first time as his father, Colin, rails about "political correctness" ruining everything once great about Britain. Ugly though usually veiled comments by others make it clear that those words are used to denigrate anything that acknowledges England is no longer an all-white, all-Christian nation; immigrants and people of color make easy scapegoats in the anxious years after the economic meltdown. As the narrative moves toward the Brexit vote in 2016, Coe, with his usual acuity, tells the story of a collective meltdown through its impact on individuals. Benjamin's journalist friend, Doug, spars with vacuous Tory flak Nigel as David Cameron's government blunders toward the referendum it thinks it can manipulate to its own ends. Benjamin's niece, Sophie, an art historian, finds her new marriage to sweet, totally unintellectual Ian strained when the promotion he'd counted on goes to a nonwhite colleague and he starts listening to his genteelly racist mother, Helena. Helena is hardly worse than Doug's daughter, Coriander, a nihilistic teen who incarnates every cliché about sanctimonious ultra-leftists. Coe's marvelous humor is still in evidence, but it's got a decided edge: There's a cruise on which elderly passengers keep dying, inept middle-aged sex, and a bemused friend's suggestion, when confronted with Benjamin's decades-in-the-making mess of a novel, "Have you ever thought of taking up teaching?" Actually, a very slimmed-down version gets Benjamin longlisted for the Booker Prize, one of the semioptimistic touches (he loses) that include Nigel's experiencing something almost like an attack of honesty post-Brexit and Benjamin's sister Lois' finally overcoming her PTSD from a 1974 Irish Republican Army bombing--because things are so much worse now. Coe's empathy for even the most flawed people and a bedrock, albeit eroding, faith in human decency keep his text from being bitter, but it is deeply sad. Sharply observed, bitingly witty yet emotionally generous, and as ominous as the times deserve.

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June 24, 2019
Coe’s excellent novel, the third in a trilogy, picks up his characters’ lives roughly a decade after the events of The Closed Circle and finds them settled into “the quiet satisfactions of under-achievement” in later middle age in England. Benjamin Trotter, the sentimental would-be novelist, has retired to a bucolic converted mill house; his old classmate Doug Anderton, a leftist journalist, lives comfortably off his wife’s fortune; and his sister, Lois, has reached a pleasant, if unexciting, plateau in her career and marriage. Their sense of complacency is lost soon enough; Brexit, and the larger referendum on British identity, looms over the novel, throwing established characters into bewildered frustration and new, younger characters—notably Benjamin’s niece Sophie, an art historian, and Doug’s teenage daughter, Coriander—onto the front lines of the culture war. Doug spars with a flippant young communications staffer for then–prime minister David Cameron, who seems to speak a different language; Sophie’s marriage is upended by conflicting views on Brexit, and she finds herself the target of Coriander’s campus activism; Benjamin’s ailing father clings to life just long enough to vote “Leave.” It’s a neat pastiche of the cultural flash points of the past decade, done with humor and empathy. While Coe’s own politics will be clear to the reader, the novel is a remarkable portrait of a country at an inflection point.

Starred review from July 1, 2019
Coe (Number 11, 2017) returns to characters he introduced in The Rotters' Club (2002) in this biting critique of Brexit-era England. The ensemble cast of this politically charged comedy of manners reflects the divisive issues that dominate public and personal discourse, such as nationalism, immigration, microaggressions, outrage culture, and political correctness. Coe masterfully displays his highly tuned ear for dialogue as he captures the elegiac notes of a widowed retiree's lament for a dying age awash in the Orwellian doublespeak of a brash political strategist and the unscrupulous sensationalism of journalism vying for website clicks. Meanwhile, once promising writer Benjamin Trotter's magnum opus has ballooned to more than 10,000 pages, symbolic of the life he has avoided living while brooding over his unrequited love for Cicely. Coe's singular achievement is the dexterity with which he illustrates the generational conflicts and the nuanced experiences of aging, loneliness, declining health, and the seemingly irreversible march toward obsolescence as the inevitable cyclical counterpart of youthful idealism and romanticized enlightenment. Timely and timeless, this plaintive, clarion call is an acerbic, keenly observed satire peppered with the penetrating wit for which Coe is so justly admired. Like his protagonist, who receives a surprise Booker Prize nod, Coe too should be similarly rewarded.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2019

The Rotters are back. When last seen (in Coe's The Closed Circle), these old friends, who first met at an elite school in the Seventies, were approaching middle age with disillusionment over their relationships, their careers, and Tony Blair's government. In their third outing, at the dawn of the Brexit era, their discontent intensifies. This new installment centers on Benjamin Trotter, would-be author, living in a mill house on the Severn River outside Birmingham, England. Ben's newly widowed father represents the generation that barely recognizes the changing landscape of a postindustrialized, multiethnic Britain. On the other end of the spectrum is Ben's niece, Sophie, an art history teacher, whose career may be derailed by a student's overzealous support for a transgender classmate and whose marriage is also under strain from the polarizing effect of Brexit. VERDICT With stories ranging from the heady days of the London Olympics to the unholy mess that is Brexit, this multistranded novel depicting the ever-widening gulf between the well-intentioned but misguided Left and the angry Right. Coe astutely blends political insight with assured storytelling. [See Prepub Alert, 2/4/19.]--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2019

Newlyweds Ian and Sophie differ over England's future, austerity-crazed political commentator Doug is challenged by his radical teenage daughter, middle-aged Benjamin struggles with a new career, and Benjamin's father cheers on Brexit. John Llewellyn Rhys Prize winner Coe (Number 11) captures recent England.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.