I couldn't get into this book. Having lived in the north of England in the late 1960's, early 70's he gets the militant socialism just right but he understates the industrial decline. The depressing anti-cultural drinking - football culture has somehow disappeared from the story but he is writing about a rather rare selective school that has not been forcibly converted into a "comprehensive" . The story seems rather flat and contrived and floats over the place I knew.

An intricate bittersweet tale of friendship, love and laughter. Jonathan Coe’s writing, like the humour he uses is pitch perfect. His books readable and accessible even if you’re unsure whether the storyline will appeal. I absolutely adored it. And what’s even better... I’m straight into the sequel. :) ( )

A very easy book to read, without being fluffy or without substance, The Rotters' Club is an ode to growing up in 70s Birmingham.
In it's early stages, one can become confused with the various different families - which characters are related to each other took me a little while to get to grips with. However, once that had been grasped it is an engrossing tale, which vividly creates the era, and we see the central characters as they grow up through secondary school with all its familiar trials and tribulations, against the backdrop of union strikes, political change, the Birmingham bombings as well as personal family traumas.
Jonathan Coe has a very natural style of prose, but manages to give each of his characters their own individual voice, so that one feels they are getting to know each of them separately from the novel as a whole.
At once amusing, touching, gritty and familiar, I would recommend The Rotters' Club as a quick but satisfying read. ( )

I found it a little hard to get started with this book. The rapid introduction of a bunch of characters left me a little confused as to how they all fit together. Just as I was starting to get into it, the section ends and we're off to a different point in time with a different member of the group. Not my favorite. ( )

The Rotters’ Club is Jonathan Coe’s 6th novel and winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize in 2001. The story follows the lives of teenager Benjamin Trotter – who composes pieces of music for a girl he has never spoken to – his friends and their families growing up in 1970s Birmingham. Set amidst a backdrop of economic turmoil, increasing struggles between Government and the workers, and more than casual racism, art too closely imitates life for a reader in late 2008…

The story is largely told from the point of view of Benjamin (or Bent Rotter as he is known to his school friends), but the narrative cleverly weaves in events from the perspective of other characters and often uses articles from the school magazine, letters and diary entries to fill in the gaps in the reader’s knowledge and round out the story. I’ve seen it labelled as a ‘coming of age’ novel, but really the issues that it deals with make it so much more than that.

All of the characters are engaging, and are always very clearly realised. From Philip Chase, Benjamin’s best friend, who has a minor obsession with all things Tolkien, to Bill Anderton, having an extra-marital fling with a typist from the Longbridge factory where he works. True to life the cast are not always pleasant, but are very often laugh-out-loud funny.

Jonathan Coe is an author fast becoming one of my favourites. I enjoyed the Rotters’ Club immensely and would heartily recommend it, particularly if you’re old enough to remember the birth of punk, the three-day week, and the rise of the Thatcher government. My only criticism was going to be that it ended too soon, but then I turned the final page to see that there is a sequel. My bookshelves runneth over.

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