The Rotters' Club

In this novel of enormous reach, Coe attempts to give epic significance to the 1970's in Birmingham, England. Abandoning the extremely tight, limited focus he employed in The House of Sleep, Coe here employs a huge cast of characters, eight or ten of them teenagers (somewhat difficult to keep track of because they are not yet fully formed or unique), along with their parents and their parents' lovers, their brothers and sisters and the brothers' and sisters' lovers, and their teachers and some of their lovers. Starting with a meeting in 2003 between the adult children of some of the characters from the 1970's, the novel switches back and forth in time through several different points of view, offering insights about what has happened in the interim. The teenagers' lives are depicted in minute detail as they work on school magazines, collect new rock albums, create their own bands, score with girlfriends, and do all the superficial things teenagers do the world over, told from the well-developed, if not particularly compelling, perspective of the `70's. Coe can be very funny, and his view of teenage life is often amusing, but the teenagers also reveal their intolerance of differences, their casual cruelty, doubts about religion, ignorance of the political system, and general insulation from the forces which are shaping their world. Their parents' lives are completely separate from their children's, dealing with union vs. management issues, Labour vs. Tory political goals, a stagnant economy, resentment over immigration, IRA activity, some anti-semitism, and a belief that their dreams probably will not come true. These huge and important themes seem a bit jarring when juxtaposed against the superficial, day-to-day activities of the teenagers who are the main characters. Coe has enormous, very obvious talents, but this book feels fragmented, with too many characters pursuing too many different ends, the ultimate goal seeming to be the recreation of the entire sociopolitical history of 1970's Birmingham. At the end of 400+ pages of this book, Coe himself states that a second volume will continue this story, perhaps the author's acknowledgment that his reach has exceeded his grasp with this one. Mary Whipple

I've read two other works by Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up and the House of Sleep, but this novel is the most entertaining and engaging of all. Coe has captured an era of development, not just culturally in the 1970s, but psychologically in his rich characters. There are teenagers painfully growing up, and there are their parents, painfully growing up as well. Invoking the explosive backdrop of seventies IRA violence, labor unrest, and right-wing political and racial nastiness, Coe fashions the lives of his complex characters as they navigate through a troubled timeframe in Birmingham, England. I cared about these people because they were real, they were funny, and they were invested with vulnerable, human, and universal emotions. I can't ask for much more from this author, who is, in my estimation, one of the most underrated and inventive out there. Congratulations! I very much look forward to the promised sequel.

Sorry that all the others feared manipulation by this wonderful book. I was, quite simply, entranced. In part, no doubt, as an ex-pat contemporary of the novel's protagonists. Even as a Londoner, I remember strikes, dreary three day weeks, coming home from school in the dark fog during powercuts, and the terrifying rise of Maggie. 70's Birmingham, with all its class struggles and grimy angst, looked quite familiar to me (I don't know what part of London Philip from Atlanta must have grown up in). But anyone, especially the 40-somethings, should be touched by this book and its flawed heroes. I can't wait for the next.

Incredible but true. Jonathan Coe's "The Rotters' Club (RC)" was at the top of nearly every London book reviewer's year-end recommended reads list last year. I was curious but sceptical, expecting another lightweight Nick Hornby type novel to while away the weekend but, seriously folks, there's more depth to RC than meets the eye. Heartwarming, touching and poignant, it is also fun, friendly and easy to read but it isn't pulp fiction. It may even be literature.RC captures perfectly the political climate of 70s UK before Thatcher squashed the trades unions and steered England back onto its capitalist path. There's no doubt we're in the midst of a class war and Coe deftly throws us a shocker a quarter of the way through to remind us of the horrors of war and conflict - but RC isn't all grim and horrible. Hardly. The fellas on the shopfloor may be fighting their bosses by day, but they don't forget to have their bit of fun by night. Meanwhile, their children - the gang of four, whose varied exploits this novel is occupied with - experience the pains and the usual ups and downs of adolescence. Though awkward, irritating, confused, self conscious and love lorn, these kids dare to dream and it is the honesty and spontaneity of their dreams that make them such an endearing bunch. Nobody is painted in black or white. Even Cicely Boyd, the golden girl of every boy's wet dream, isn't a caricature of the school flirt we might expect. Maybe it's too early to tell. Let's see how the story pans out in the sequel promised to us. And a sequel there must be, for the last chapter ("Green Coaster") is all build-up and no climax, a tease with the promise of a pay-off in the next instalment. Coe is also a master of wit and comedy. Benjamin's encounter with God viz the just-in-time appearance of a mysterious pair of swimming trunks is just one unforgettable and funny episode RC offers. There're loads more to delight you. Instantly accessible and great fun, I know why the reviewers loved it.

Coe has constructed a novel which produced some of the most visceral responses to writing that I have ever experienced. I use the term constructed with intent because his narrative is a series of elements held together by traditional prose sections; diary abstracts, a stream of consciousness sentence close to 15,000 words, school play reviews, a "What I did on my summer vacation" essay and so on. I would liken the effect to rummaging through a box of old news papers found in an attic. It paints a full and satisfying portrait of Britain in the period leading up to the so called "Thatcher revolution." I took the book with me on a flight but had trouble reading some of the passages in public since they were so laugh out loud funny. Coe is an author in complete control of his medium and thus also managed, in turn, to bring tears of feeling for his protagonists to my eyes. This book is a keeper - a snap shot of a city in a time that has passed but that is full of shared memories of youth. Bring on part two right away, Coe, or I'll give you a 2 side imposition on "Why the locker room is no place fop or idler."