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Product Description
Review
Witty and intelligent (Guardian )
A very funny novel (The Times Literary Supplement )
Unusual and intriguing (Sunday Times )
A very funny novel (The Times Literary Supplement )
Unusual and intriguing (Sunday Times )
Product Description
Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. He and his academic colleagues, united by pallor, social ineptitude and sexual inexperience, once spent hours discussing their theories, but they somehow never made it into print.
Now his unfinished thesis languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him and romance eludes him. His only outlet is his short stories, scribbled in notebooks and expressing his secret obsessions and frustrations.
Then, when an unfortunate and embarassing incident in a public park lands him in serious trouble, Robin's life finally spirals out of control ...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Robin, the book's [anti-] hero, is an eternal student, making no progress on his thesis, but making a mess of his life in the meantime.
Almost as if it was written as the events occurred, one chapter at a time, with no sense of what would follow, the book flips back and forth from the narrative to Robin's short stories. Although well-written, it is almost self-consciously so, so that it doesn't let you flow with it, and although witty (in an ironic / sarcastic way) and funny in parts, it doesn't really allow you to laugh with it, as the overall feeling is rather sad.
This is not a book you'll regret reading, but it was a bit too melancholy for my liking, and definitely not up to the expectations I'd built up based on his previous boks.
31 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having read What a Carve Up, House of Sleep and, most recently, Rotter's Club I was quite looking forward to reading this. You can see that this is a Coe book, the borad themes of young adolescents, rights of passage, some form of academic institution and a writer / budding writer as a key character. However, unlike the other books, it was enormously difficult to have any sympathy whatsoever with any of the characters. More or less all of them needed to have their lapels shaken. To be honest, this made the book a real struggle. It wasn't as if there was much else there to enjoy. At least Carve Up and Rotters club were evocative for those of us old enough to remember the 70s. My advice: unless you (like me) obsess about reading all of an author's output (like some sad stamp collector) give this a wide berth.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A genuinely strange novel, both in terms of its structure (which goes off at unexpected tangents and includes four short stories written by one of the characters) and its mood (fairly bleak). If you are new to Coe, I would suggest you start with the amazing House of Sleep or What a Carve Up!.
This book will be of interest mainly to existing fans of the author. As someone else has noted, the characters (except, perhaps, for Emma and Hugh) are hard to care about, and Robin (the central figure) remains an enigma, although I'm sure this is the author's intention.
Coe seems to be tackling several Big Ideas:
- none of us can ever really know each other at all
- human relationships are flawed and often inexplicable
- life can seem random and cruel
He does a good job with these themes, but somehow it's just not as satisfying as his other novels.
One other thing: the cover picture is misleading. There is no young-woman-in-shades character. I suspect it has been designed after the success of Coe's The Rotters' Club and wrongly gives the impression that this book is a cheery comic romp.
This book will be of interest mainly to existing fans of the author. As someone else has noted, the characters (except, perhaps, for Emma and Hugh) are hard to care about, and Robin (the central figure) remains an enigma, although I'm sure this is the author's intention.
Coe seems to be tackling several Big Ideas:
- none of us can ever really know each other at all
- human relationships are flawed and often inexplicable
- life can seem random and cruel
He does a good job with these themes, but somehow it's just not as satisfying as his other novels.
One other thing: the cover picture is misleading. There is no young-woman-in-shades character. I suspect it has been designed after the success of Coe's The Rotters' Club and wrongly gives the impression that this book is a cheery comic romp.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Tolerable but cliearly an early book
Coe's strength is his ability to depict the provincial lower middle class, especially their discomfort in their own skin. Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2010 by Jezza
pah
Not at all engaging, didn't care for the characters, gave up 14/15ths of the way through. Just couldn't be arsed any more. I quite liked Rotter's Club, but this was dull.
Published on 24 Sep 2009 by jaquesaulait
Short and sad
I've enjoyed the other novels from Jonathan Coe that I've come across (my favourite so far, with its exact evocation of 70's Britain and sympathetically drawn characters is The... Read more
Published on 10 Nov 2008 by Jeremy Walton
Deceptively simple.
'A Touch of Love' is a deceptively simple book, quick to read yet with a lasting impact. I loved the multiple takes on the drop-out hero, seen through the eyes of friends and... Read more
Published on 6 April 2001
Sent to Coventry
Coe's shortish novel has a period feel about (set in Coventry in the mid-1980s with a late Cold War backdrop). It feels like another place. Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2000 by K. P. Quinn
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