Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I was moved, amused and enraged, 28 Jul 2004
A real broad canvas of a novel that examines life under the Thatcher government in 1980s Britain, but it's not just a piece of political tub-thumping. The story plants its roots in the 1940s and uses the shenanigans of a particular influential family to illustrate the gradual dismantling and restructuring of British society and, above all, how the whims of this one group of people have far-reaching and devastating consequences for the average person on the street.But I don't want to make it sound like a grim sociopolitical tract. At times, it's incredibly funny, and occasionally very touching. It's bookended by World War II and the Gulf War, but its examination of society probes like a laser beam into the minutiae of everyday things that affect us all, like public transport, healthcare, what we eat, how we think. Ultimately, it's a very human novel, superbly constructed and deserving of high praise. And while I kind of see what previous reviewers mean about it not appealing to Tories or illustrating a class war, I should try to look beyond those issues because this isn't just a book about politics, it's about people - it's about us, and what we have allowed to happen to our society.
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36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Truly Political Novel, 4 Aug 2002
By A Customer
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.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great British writer, 16 Mar 2001
Jonathon Coe lives and works outside the London media scene - as such he is free to write his own stories, to his own agenda, without having to concern himself with the petty struggles that often upset the London publishing circles. With 'What a Carve Up!' he has managed to avoid the contemporary pitfalls that so engage Martin Amis and Julian Barnes and has instead created one of the most fascinatingly constructed books I have ever read. Coe has not agonised in print over his love of great writers, or publicised his literary angst over the direction literature should be taking. Instead he has got on with the craftsmanship of writing a truly great novel. With a Dickensian approach to morality and integrity Coe sends up the perverse class system and corrupt establishment that he sees controlling Britain. He is never po-faced, and instead manages to suit the weapon to the danger, and unlike other passionate writers he never over-reacts, which means that the reader will appreciate his points without ever questioning their motives. With elements of Magical Realism as well as clear British canonical influences Coe has quite possibly written the best novel of the last ten years. I look forward to his next.
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