Middle England

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.

This novel explores racism, political correctness, the changing British economy, and the Brexit vote in Middle England. Thanks to the author's humor and empathy, combined with the charming narration of Rory Kinnear, the audio experience is absorbing and even joyful. Kinnear creates multiple distinctive characters, including Benjamin, semiretired, diffident, and still working on his million-word novel (with music!); Benjamin's niece, Sophie, an academic who runs afoul of a self-righteous activist student; and Doug, a bullish and leftist columnist who is unexpectedly dating a Tory after divorcing. Kinnear expertly conveys Coe's absurdist wit as evidenced by the feud between two clowns who entertain at children's parties, a Booker Prize nominee and guest lecturer on a cruise ship who presents a long list of demands, and Doug's sparring with a political communications director who willfully misunderstands every question he asks. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine