The Winshaw Legacy: Or What a Carve Up!

The shifting fortunes of England between WWII and the early 1990s is the subject of this broad, complex, genre-blending, scathing, and hilarious satire from one of Britain's best contemporary writers. The framework for this is a fictitious Yorkshire family, whose tentacles extend deeply into politics, media, and the corporate world. The Winshaws include: Arms dealer Mark, MP Henry, widely-read columnist Hilary, investment banker Thomas, art dealer Roddy, industrial poultry executive Dorothy, and institutionalized Tabitha. Struggling novelist Michael Owen is commissioned by Tabitha to write the family history, and in the course of his research, Owen comes to realize that the Winshaws are "wretched, lying, thieving, self-advancing" elites whose actions embody the decline of the country. In a dizzying feat of narrative, we learn of the Winshaws' private and public lives, how they all intersect, and especially how intellectually and morally shallow they each are. For example, via Hilary, we see the rise of Murdoch-style tabloid journalism, via Thomas the insider trading scandals, and via Henry, the trainwreck of Tory/Thatcherite economic policies. But as if this wasn't enough to keep the reader's attention, the story also works in a mystery involving two mysterious deaths, and a strange running congruence to the 1961 comedy film What A Carve Up! The result is a whirlwind of genres, including old-fashioned Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, P.G. Wodehouse-style comic novel, Evelyn Waugh-style social satire, and Christopher Hitchens-style political polemic, all of which combine for a thoroughly entertaining read. Some may find fault in Coe's ripe and vivid portrayal of this family of scoundrels, but it's entirely in keeping with the satiric and farcical tone of the work. More importantly, it's entirely in keeping with the political nature of the story, for this is that rarest of beasts, a thoroughly entertaining political novel. Coe unabashedly lays the blame for social woes at the feet of the businessmen (and women), politicians, and pundits who profited throughout the "greed is good" '80 and '90s as the poor grew poorer. And if anything, the twelve plus years since its publication only vindicate his selection of targets as -- at least in America -- we have experienced war based on politically-based lies, ever-increasing consolidation and dumbing down of the media, corporate fraud on a massive scale, bioengineering of food -- all of which are directly attacked in the novel. A wonderful novel, one well worth rereading every few years. Note: Originally titled "What a Carve Up!" in the UK, the book was retitled as "The Winshaw Legacy" for the US.

This book was part of my curriculum at university and one of the few books from the Postmodernism course I liked (only topped by DeLillo's White Noise). Some chapters are rather tedious but overall definitely worth reading.

All books, of course, have a beginning and an end, but in this case that journey is a circle, taking you down a myriad of plots and stories, some of which are laugh out loud comedy, while others horrify and many are etched with pathos and nostalgia. Though you don't always realise it as you read, from the very first line the stories interweave with mathematical precision, leading to a madly predestined conclusion, hinted at throughout and sometimes with the smallest details holding the most devastating significance. Well researched, blurring fact, fiction, pain and dreams, how do you plan a novel containing so many interlinking stories, where the loose ends from each add up so perfectly? Worth reading... twice.

This is the first Coe book I've read and I loved it. It's funny and clever, develops the plot in a fragmented, looping chronology with multiple perspectives, sources, and interlocking stories - all presided over by a very unhappy and frustrated lead narrator. You know, the sort of things you find in Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Will Self novels (and seemingly all serious films since at least `Pulp Fiction'). But it is more straightforward, with less literary ambition, or pretension, than what I've read from those authors. The story is much easier to follow, and one can say exactly what happens at the end, rather than speculating on the desultory and stridently ambiguous finishes those other authors frequently give us.The unfashionable clarity is a result of the book's overt politics. I find that Amis and Self bury their political commentary in stories that focus on how tormented their characters feel by the unexplained vagaries of life and how irreversibly complex it's all become. Coe, on the other hand, is willing to identify and blame the forces that have made society such a mess and living so hard to figure out. It's not some Fat Controller with supernatural powers, nor a mysterious seeming-friend doing improbable things with the money system to play out a personal grudge. It's right-wing politicians and businesses who, among other things: control our news sources and fill them with meaningless gossip or misleading agitprop, stoke up wars and profit on arms sales, industrialise food production at the expense of the ecology and consumer health, and intentionally ruin our public services to serve their theological devotion to laissez faire economics. In this way, Coe actually has more intellectual heft than the authors who imply that the world is just cosmically, unfathomably unfair and unpleasant. He's telling us that the malignant forces are entirely within our control, were we willing to stand up to the bent plutocratic filth that are allowed to run our governments and economy.

Re-reading the final chapters of the book last night I realised they read much as a short story would. It is more than a little praise to say that not only Jonathan Coe's book contains enough material for several books but that the one he has authored is superior to the mere summ of its parts. It is rare for a novel to be both so cleverly gripping and so poignant, so well researched (I was flabbergasted by the precision of the part about industrial chicken production) and so funny. But there's also a political dimension in the book that is quite clear and a little disingenuous: all evil, it seems to say, comes from greed, all the greed is concentrated in the upper-classes: two more than dubious propositions. Happily I must say, otherwise one would be tempted to resort to the kind of solution suggested in the book by Morty Windshaw.