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Jonathan Coe's new novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin on to events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics - the collapse of 'Old Labour' - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused show more teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb. show lessTags
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A charming and very funny look at a group of young people growing up in Birmingham in the 1970s, attending a provincial grammar school that takes itself a little bit too seriously, and discovering that instead of the gloriously psychedelic world of prog rock, idealistic socialism and dadaist poetry they've been led to expect, life is going to confront them with Enoch Powell, Grunwick, IRA bombs, the Sex Pistols and Margaret Thatcher.
Coe takes us through all the usual elements of the "coming-of-age" novel with his tongue firmly in his cheek, and has fun mocking his narrator's literary and musical aspirations. We get blow-by-blow descriptions of some truly awful experimental music (but no worse than the real thing) and some mock-literary show more experimentation, including a sentence several times longer than the final chapter of Ulysses (the only interesting thing the writers of the Wikipedia article seem to have noticed about this book!).
Since I happen to be about the same age as Coe's characters and went to a rather similar school, this pressed a lot of nostalgia-buttons for me, and it's undoubtedly a well-written, entertaining book that captures the peculiar feeling of those times very well. Not as striking and original as The Buddha of suburbia, perhaps, and possibly not of all that much interest if you aren't already familiar with the late seventies in the UK. show less
Coe takes us through all the usual elements of the "coming-of-age" novel with his tongue firmly in his cheek, and has fun mocking his narrator's literary and musical aspirations. We get blow-by-blow descriptions of some truly awful experimental music (but no worse than the real thing) and some mock-literary show more experimentation, including a sentence several times longer than the final chapter of Ulysses (the only interesting thing the writers of the Wikipedia article seem to have noticed about this book!).
Since I happen to be about the same age as Coe's characters and went to a rather similar school, this pressed a lot of nostalgia-buttons for me, and it's undoubtedly a well-written, entertaining book that captures the peculiar feeling of those times very well. Not as striking and original as The Buddha of suburbia, perhaps, and possibly not of all that much interest if you aren't already familiar with the late seventies in the UK. show less
I came across this book by accident but was intrigued because I was roughly the same age of the characters within it and so I was in some respects able to relate with them.
The book is set around some teenagers attending single sex grammar schools in Birmingham and captures many facets of 70's politics and culture ranging from Blue Nun wine, wood-chip wallpaper, Punk Rock music, the decline of the Grammar schools and Socialism, racism, the IRA bombings and the rise of Thatcherism. Many of these things I have personal memories of.
The first part of the book looks back over childhood with rather rose-tinted glasses setting out the main characters and their family backgrounds rather nicely but finishes with a cataclysmic event which brings show more things back to sort of reality. However, I was not overly keen on the depiction of the union leaders at the British Leyland plant as some sort of modern day heroes. To my way of thinking many of them were little more than bone idle bullies who by calling their members out on strike on the smallest of pretences, which meant that the workers losing money, actually caused more hardships to their members than did management plans and IMHO eventually cost more jobs than they saved.These strikes also led to the rise of Thatcherism and all that entailed. Mind you my own family were in a different industry so I don't have first hand experience of it.
As the children grow older they begin to take an interest in the opposite sex and all the trial and tribulations that entails. Overall I rather enjoyed the book and felt that the author combined humour and tragedy fairly well but I was not particularily impressed with the long single sentence monologue of the last secton which brought down my overall rating for the book. I was torn between giving it 3 or 4 stars and finally settled on the latter. An interesting introduction to this author IMHO. show less
The book is set around some teenagers attending single sex grammar schools in Birmingham and captures many facets of 70's politics and culture ranging from Blue Nun wine, wood-chip wallpaper, Punk Rock music, the decline of the Grammar schools and Socialism, racism, the IRA bombings and the rise of Thatcherism. Many of these things I have personal memories of.
The first part of the book looks back over childhood with rather rose-tinted glasses setting out the main characters and their family backgrounds rather nicely but finishes with a cataclysmic event which brings show more things back to sort of reality. However, I was not overly keen on the depiction of the union leaders at the British Leyland plant as some sort of modern day heroes. To my way of thinking many of them were little more than bone idle bullies who by calling their members out on strike on the smallest of pretences, which meant that the workers losing money, actually caused more hardships to their members than did management plans and IMHO eventually cost more jobs than they saved.These strikes also led to the rise of Thatcherism and all that entailed. Mind you my own family were in a different industry so I don't have first hand experience of it.
As the children grow older they begin to take an interest in the opposite sex and all the trial and tribulations that entails. Overall I rather enjoyed the book and felt that the author combined humour and tragedy fairly well but I was not particularily impressed with the long single sentence monologue of the last secton which brought down my overall rating for the book. I was torn between giving it 3 or 4 stars and finally settled on the latter. An interesting introduction to this author IMHO. show less
Ok it’s official, Jonathan Coe’s books are drugs. But let’s take a step back here. First of all, this was probably the work of Coe that touched me the most and in many different ways. I laughed, gasped, frowned and cried all throughout the story. It reminded me so much of high school, when we were all different, yet stayed the same in the sense that the future wasn’t written for any of us, so anything could happen and in the meantime you could freeze whatever moment you wanted to, just like Benjamin with his green coaster, because at that time every fleeting moment can be someway eternal.
I loved every book of Coe so far, thus I was a little biased before reading The Rotter’s Club synopsis, but while reading it I was atually show more taken a little aback because the story seemed a bit ordinary, just the story about a bunch of people and – god forgive me – maybe I wouldn’t have read it if I didn’t know the author from previous readings, because as I was saying from the synopsis the story seemed a little ordinary but I knew perfectly well that Coe doesn’t do ordinary, so in the end I was all the more intrigued. And my feeling was right because once I started reading the book I couldn’t put it down. The many different and fascinating stories are all skillfully and wonderfully tangled together, but the plot always stays consistent in its integrality nonetheless. That’s actually what I liked the most about the book, the fact that the writing was absolutely engaging, so that I wanted both to savor every page and get to the end of it when curiosity took the better of me.
I loved the going back and forth from one story to another, I loved the sense of humor – Coe style, the kind that you never see coming – and I loved that the last pages were like poetry at its finest, when words scream at you with all their clarity and intensity and remind you that they have the power to cut right into you like nothing else in the world, and seriously life is too short to miss books like this one, the ones that not only make you feel something but that make you live through them. Coe in general is an author you absolutely don't want to miss. Every time I finish one of his books, I fall a little more in love with his writing, with his style and stories to the point that I can’t look away from his words until there are no more (or until my eyes are burning that is). Now I can’t wait to read “The Closed Circle” because I want to stay with these people longer, I’m absolutely not ready to leave them so I’m really glad there’s a sequel.
Five shining stars, which in this case represent not only the rating, but – like Lois’ diary – also my mood while reading this precious book. show less
I loved every book of Coe so far, thus I was a little biased before reading The Rotter’s Club synopsis, but while reading it I was atually show more taken a little aback because the story seemed a bit ordinary, just the story about a bunch of people and – god forgive me – maybe I wouldn’t have read it if I didn’t know the author from previous readings, because as I was saying from the synopsis the story seemed a little ordinary but I knew perfectly well that Coe doesn’t do ordinary, so in the end I was all the more intrigued. And my feeling was right because once I started reading the book I couldn’t put it down. The many different and fascinating stories are all skillfully and wonderfully tangled together, but the plot always stays consistent in its integrality nonetheless. That’s actually what I liked the most about the book, the fact that the writing was absolutely engaging, so that I wanted both to savor every page and get to the end of it when curiosity took the better of me.
I loved the going back and forth from one story to another, I loved the sense of humor – Coe style, the kind that you never see coming – and I loved that the last pages were like poetry at its finest, when words scream at you with all their clarity and intensity and remind you that they have the power to cut right into you like nothing else in the world, and seriously life is too short to miss books like this one, the ones that not only make you feel something but that make you live through them. Coe in general is an author you absolutely don't want to miss. Every time I finish one of his books, I fall a little more in love with his writing, with his style and stories to the point that I can’t look away from his words until there are no more (or until my eyes are burning that is). Now I can’t wait to read “The Closed Circle” because I want to stay with these people longer, I’m absolutely not ready to leave them so I’m really glad there’s a sequel.
Five shining stars, which in this case represent not only the rating, but – like Lois’ diary – also my mood while reading this precious book. show less
Part of my delight in this novel flows from being an exact contemporary of its main protagonist at a school much the same as the one he attended. Even without this frisson of familiarity, I would love the book for its diverse voices and mixed media. Although it is difficult to distinguish between the several families initially, the social structure becomes clearer and the idiosyncrasies of the characters avoid caricature. It is moving and funny without sentimentality or crassness. And behind all the complex interactions lies a paean to the city of Birmingham; an affectionate attention to the geographical details that inform a sense of place as clear as the inherent sense of time.
This was the next book on my shelf and it was only when I reached the end that I realised there was a second part to the story. I won't be rushing out to buy "[The Closed Circle]"; the second part, but I would be happy to pick it up if I saw it in a library. The story starts well and enigmatically with a man and a woman meeting in Berlin in 2003. They realise that they know people from each others families and are eager to work out the connection. Sophie offers to take Patrick on a ride down memory lane starting in the early 1970's when people that they had known were in secondary school. The story is fragmented and some gaps need to be filled by articles in the press, but a cohesive story is none the less told. The school is a private show more school in Birmingham which also admits children by scholarship. This area of the city is dominated by British Leyland the car manufacturers and the interlinked families are represented by a man in middle management and a shop steward at the works. It is at a time when tentative steps were being taken for some rapprochement between managers and union representatives, but Thatcher was just around the corner, which would put a stop to all that. The story follows the children of the two men as they make their way through school into early adulthood.
Many people are shaped by their environment and when there are clashes in cultures, people have to ride these out in accordance with their characters, perhaps none more so than at work and at school. Coe does a good job in relating his characters to the context of the times that they lived through. This was especially fascinating for me as I grew up in London only a few years older than the people in the book and so I could easily relate to the politics and culture of the time. Coe is particularly strong on music (pop culture) which grabbed many people of that era, but his two major themes are racism and the battle between capital and labour, both of which have left England in the sorry state that it finds itself today (in my opinion). Coe never loses sight of the culture, but I think he does lose sight of his characters. The further I read through the novel the less I cared about what happened to the Trotters and the Chases. Other aspects of his writing did not particularly appeal, for example the record reviews or snapshots from the school magazines, and although they at times made me laugh out loud; I thought they got in the way of the story, slowed the narrative flow for no particular reason: my attention wandered.
I was entertained for the most part and I appreciated the placing of the story in Birmingham; a city that seems to have been overlooked by many authors: 3.5 stars from me. show less
Many people are shaped by their environment and when there are clashes in cultures, people have to ride these out in accordance with their characters, perhaps none more so than at work and at school. Coe does a good job in relating his characters to the context of the times that they lived through. This was especially fascinating for me as I grew up in London only a few years older than the people in the book and so I could easily relate to the politics and culture of the time. Coe is particularly strong on music (pop culture) which grabbed many people of that era, but his two major themes are racism and the battle between capital and labour, both of which have left England in the sorry state that it finds itself today (in my opinion). Coe never loses sight of the culture, but I think he does lose sight of his characters. The further I read through the novel the less I cared about what happened to the Trotters and the Chases. Other aspects of his writing did not particularly appeal, for example the record reviews or snapshots from the school magazines, and although they at times made me laugh out loud; I thought they got in the way of the story, slowed the narrative flow for no particular reason: my attention wandered.
I was entertained for the most part and I appreciated the placing of the story in Birmingham; a city that seems to have been overlooked by many authors: 3.5 stars from me. show less
This gave me almost everything I want. What do I want from a novel? I want it funny but sincere; hard-nosed but sentimental; readable but formally interesting; restrained but also balls to the wall. Ideally it'll be concerned with social events while grounding them in personal lives.
RC isn't laugh out loud funny, but it's pretty funny. I felt a bit bad laughing at people who get excited at the culinary possibilities of sour cream and sometimes Coe takes too many cheap shots of the 'boy the seventies sure produced some ugly haberdashery' type; I wish he'd spent more time on the ugliness of the decade's politics than of its drapes. It's sincere, too; anytime an author can make me feel sorry for the coming of punk because it meant the end show more of grandiose prog-crap is obviously doing something pretty impressive with his characters.
Given all of this, the flaws are pretty minor: the last chapter, which wikipedia tells me included for some short time the longest single sentence in English literature, is a bit jarring. It's impressive, and it works, but after the clarity and simplicity of the prose up to that point it's hard to see why that sentence was necessary. A bit too tour-de-forceish, to be honest. I also feel like the book was both a bit slippery and a bit too black and white. Labor unions are good, and government help for the poor is good. Agreed. But the unions in the seventies weren't exactly model unions, and the UK Labour party of the seventies wasn't ideal either; Coe's also a bit too quick to assimilate punk with Thatcherism. Finally, the framing narrative is either unnecessary (if it doesn't return in the sequel, which I haven't read) or poorly executed. Also [PLOT SPOILER!], Benjamin's de-conversion, if you can call it that, is ham-fisted and stupid.
All of that said, it's such a relief to read a book by an author who is able to reflect critically on the art of fiction and to reach the conclusion that fiction and narrative are not only not lies, but the most important things in the world. I should add that if Coe ever wanted to write an entire library of books in the voice of Harding, he should go right ahead, and I'll dedicate the rest of my life to reading them. I just wish he'd featured more in this novel. show less
RC isn't laugh out loud funny, but it's pretty funny. I felt a bit bad laughing at people who get excited at the culinary possibilities of sour cream and sometimes Coe takes too many cheap shots of the 'boy the seventies sure produced some ugly haberdashery' type; I wish he'd spent more time on the ugliness of the decade's politics than of its drapes. It's sincere, too; anytime an author can make me feel sorry for the coming of punk because it meant the end show more of grandiose prog-crap is obviously doing something pretty impressive with his characters.
Given all of this, the flaws are pretty minor: the last chapter, which wikipedia tells me included for some short time the longest single sentence in English literature, is a bit jarring. It's impressive, and it works, but after the clarity and simplicity of the prose up to that point it's hard to see why that sentence was necessary. A bit too tour-de-forceish, to be honest. I also feel like the book was both a bit slippery and a bit too black and white. Labor unions are good, and government help for the poor is good. Agreed. But the unions in the seventies weren't exactly model unions, and the UK Labour party of the seventies wasn't ideal either; Coe's also a bit too quick to assimilate punk with Thatcherism. Finally, the framing narrative is either unnecessary (if it doesn't return in the sequel, which I haven't read) or poorly executed. Also [PLOT SPOILER!], Benjamin's de-conversion, if you can call it that, is ham-fisted and stupid.
All of that said, it's such a relief to read a book by an author who is able to reflect critically on the art of fiction and to reach the conclusion that fiction and narrative are not only not lies, but the most important things in the world. I should add that if Coe ever wanted to write an entire library of books in the voice of Harding, he should go right ahead, and I'll dedicate the rest of my life to reading them. I just wish he'd featured more in this novel. show less
Didn't really know what to expect with this novel, referenced in Travis Eldborough's The Long Player Goodbye, a history of the vinyl album. I was thinking maybe a sort of literary The Inbetweeners about a gang of school boys in 1970s Birmingham, but the characters and storyline actually developed into a sort of David Mitchell-esque commentary on the era, which I enjoyed equally. A few literal laugh out loud moments, but also some poignant scenes from history, including union strikes and the 1975 IRA pub bombings.
I never really established individual personalities for most of the central characters, I must confess. The title - an album by Hatfield and North - refers to the nickname of the Trotter siblings, Benjamin, Paul and poor Lois, show more but Benjamin's friends sort of merged into one for me.And the final chapter, written either stream of consciousness or just plain without paragraphs, was also a bit of a let down, and by then I had given up caring about the Trotters too. But the 1970s stood out in true brown, mushroom and avocado glory - although I was born in 1980, so I don't actually have any personal reference! Coe doesn't sugarcoat the era in a comic platforms and David Bowie parody - 'People forget about the 1970s. They think it was all about wide collars and glam rock, and they get nostalgic about Fawlty Towers and kids' TV programmes, and they forget the ungodly strangeness of it, the weird things that were happening all the time'. All the isms are present and correct, and the characters are generally miserable, with three day weeks at home and strikes at work. Good music though, until punk rears its boring head: 'Any old rubbish could get an audience these days, Philip thought, as long as it was riding on the punk bandwagon'.
I suppose if you actual were there, the constant political references might seem a tad heavy-handed, but I enjoyed learning about the era through instructional asides, and never felt like I was reading the script of a sitcom set in the 70s - just wish I could have cared more about the characters, or even told them apart. show less
I never really established individual personalities for most of the central characters, I must confess. The title - an album by Hatfield and North - refers to the nickname of the Trotter siblings, Benjamin, Paul and poor Lois, show more but Benjamin's friends sort of merged into one for me.And the final chapter, written either stream of consciousness or just plain without paragraphs, was also a bit of a let down, and by then I had given up caring about the Trotters too. But the 1970s stood out in true brown, mushroom and avocado glory - although I was born in 1980, so I don't actually have any personal reference! Coe doesn't sugarcoat the era in a comic platforms and David Bowie parody - 'People forget about the 1970s. They think it was all about wide collars and glam rock, and they get nostalgic about Fawlty Towers and kids' TV programmes, and they forget the ungodly strangeness of it, the weird things that were happening all the time'. All the isms are present and correct, and the characters are generally miserable, with three day weeks at home and strikes at work. Good music though, until punk rears its boring head: 'Any old rubbish could get an audience these days, Philip thought, as long as it was riding on the punk bandwagon'.
I suppose if you actual were there, the constant political references might seem a tad heavy-handed, but I enjoyed learning about the era through instructional asides, and never felt like I was reading the script of a sitcom set in the 70s - just wish I could have cared more about the characters, or even told them apart. show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Rotters' Club
- Original title
- The Rotters' Club
- Original publication date
- 2001
- People/Characters
- Benjamin Trotter 'Bent Rotter'; Lois Trotter; Paul Trotter; Malcolm 'Hairy Guy'; Sean Harding; Philip Chase (show all 11); Doug Anderton; Bill Anderton; Miriam Newman; Claire Newman; Cicely Boyd
- Important places
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Related movies
- The Rotters' Club (2005 | IMDb)
- Dedication*
- For Janine, Matilda and Madeline
- First words
- On a clear, blueblack, starry night, in the city of Berlin, in the year of 2003, two young people sat down to dinner.
- Quotations*
- I [=Benjamin] think about this story, sometimes. It's one of the things I try to make sense of. I thought of it as we drove away from Skagen to return our hire car to the airport at Alborg the next morning. I thought of it t... (show all)oday as I walked home from the bus stop to my parents' house. But slowly, irresistibly, I can feel it beginning to dissolve into the hazy falsehood of memory. That is why I have written it down, although in doing so I know that all I have achieved is to falsify it differently, more artfully. (Penguin Books 2002 p. 128)
- Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)- All right, then: now it's your turn.
- Blurbers*
- Unforgettably funny and painfully honest, Jonathan Coe's tale of Benjamin Trotter and his friends' coming of age during the 1970s is a heartfelt celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up. Set against the backdrop of the decade's class struggles, tragic and riotous by turns, packed with thwarted romance and furtive sex, The Rotters' Club is for anyone who ever experienced adolescence the hard way. (Penguin 2002) (Penguin 2002)
- Original language*
- Engels
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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