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The Rotters' Club
  
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The Rotters' Club (Paperback)

by Jonathan Coe (Author) "Imagine! November the 15th, 1973 ..." (more)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (18 Mar 2002)
  • ISBN-10: 0141008725
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141008721
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 998,699 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #38 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Coe, Jonathan

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan What a Carve Up Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of quite how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains of four Brummie schoolboys--Philip, Sean, Doug and Benjamin--who must not only come to terms with the normal pangs of adolescence but with terrible knitwear, ludicrous pop-music, nightmarish food and insidious racism, all set against the awful, surreal and tragicomic reality of a post-imperial nation.

The book suffers in its programmatic attempts to make the four boys and their families symbolise, or represent, Something Important To Do With British Life. Doug, for instance, symbolises Industrial Decline, via his dad, a shop steward at the doomed British Leyland Longbridge plant. For Sean its Sexual Liberation--at least he's the one that looks most likely to get his rocks off. And young Ben Trotter would appear to represent A Young Jonathan Coe. But if this aspect of the novel seems contrived, then the author's capricious, deft, wryly comedic and touchingly empathetic style keeps things chugging along, as he knits together the troubles and tragedies of some fairly ordinary people living through fairly extraordinary years. --Sean Thomas --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Beginning in Birmingham in the early 1970s, these two linked novels chart the progress of a group of young people as they make their way through the social and political landscape that changes immeasurably over the decades.
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Imagine! November the 15th, 1973. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (50 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, 18 Jun 2001
This review is from: The Rotters' Club (Hardcover)
I enjoyed this book enormously. I suppose the world it describes - Britain in the mid 1970s - will be about as remote as that of Jane Austen to anyone under the age of thirty - but it captures my memories of the era perfectly.

Some reviewers have queried the handling of the political content, but personally I thought it was integrated well with the rest of the book.

Overall - an excellent attempt to capture the feeling of what it was like to be adolescent.

Most reviewers have either ignored the references to music of the period or just followed the usual cliches - "70s, era of flares, lava lamps and ludicrous music," etc. etc. I thought that Jonathan Coe dealt much more carefully with the music of the time - poking fun at Yes, enjoying The Clash, but quite happy to accept that, like most musical forms, Progressive Rock had plenty of good as well as bad.

Above all, it is clear that he has a great and lasting affection for the music of Hatfield & The North, whose second album gave the book its title. it would be nice if one result of this book's success was to make a few more people discover the Hatfield's music, whose merit was neglected even in the 1970s! Anyone who likes the music will certainly enjoy the book. I can't guarantee that anyone who liked the book will enjoy the music, but why not give it a try.

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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars It all starts so well., 1 Feb 2003
By "lexi_wades" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: The Rotters' Club (Paperback)
TRC is like the rhyme of the little girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead- when it is good it is very, very good but when it is bad it is horrid! TRC suffers from Coe not only trying to tackle head-on most of the dominant issues of the seventies through a quite ordinary group of characters but dabbles in short story territory (the tale of the Danish Jews) and annoying literary styles (Ben's inner turmoil near the end). Added to this is the sickeningly sweet and unfinished end that pretty well tricks the reader.
At the same time, however, it is perhaps premature to criticise TRC unduly until the sequel has been read with it- perhaps it will create a better sense of closure on the plot lines that are left open. To TRC's rescue Coe's humour in this book is spot on and he makes the most of the bizarre nature of teenage years whilst not skimping on the lows as well as the highs.
Nevertheless, the three or four main characters of the book- that of the boys- seem very similar to each other for the first ten or so chapters and it is easy to get them mixed up in your mind. If Coe had concentrated more on developing them earlier on it would have been far more entertaining to catch their antics earlier on than constantly having to flick back to see who's who. It is also badly managed to make Ben the main character near the end of the book- it lends the question- what about the others?
TRC suffers from an annoying future pro and epilogue that adds little to the ambience and story line and takes away the sense of placement that the focus on the seventies throughout the rest of the novel tries to create.
The worst aspect of the book though has got to be the character of Cicely and the whole relationship between her and Ben. We know she is an unpleasant person and is merely good looking from passages of the book so Ben's idolization of her and her sudden emergence as a "good" character is unrealistic and for her to share the "happy ending" just felt wrong. Coe is never very sensitive in his portrayal of female characters (except, perhaps, in The Accidental Woman) but to create such an empty space, as Cicely is very bad form. It feels very much as though Coe is trying to produce his fantasy woman and make her fall in love with the character that represents him.
TRC is a very misjudged novel- instead of the dark realism and surrealism of What A Carve Up! or the human insight of The Accidental Woman we are left with a very good look at the seventies with superfluous plot devices and characters thrown in. A shorter, purely nostalgic and political book with no sequel would have worked much better than attempting an epic like exercise on somewhat flimsy material. I would recommend, to someone who has not read any Coe books before, to start with his early work and work forwards.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable in parts unsatisfactory as a whole., 8 Mar 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Rotters' Club (Hardcover)
I loved Coe's 2 previous novels and came to this one with high expectations, unfortunately they were not met. There is much to admire about this book Coe really manages to get under the skin of the 1970's and debunk some of the recent myth-making concerning this troubled decade, it wasn't all flares, lava lamps, long hair and Glam Rock, there really were people who thought about forming private armies to destabilise the Labour Governments, the threat from the IRA was real and often deadly and yes there was an awful lot of brown furniture.

Ultimately however I didn't care very much about many of the main characters whom Coe often uses as filters to explore themes and issues. I am not saying that this is always crucial but in a book which links the political with the personal this does matter.

This a long book and tries to fit much into it but that is how it feels, that things are being fitted in rather than developing naturally.

I must conclude by saying that it is still well worth reading it is only because I loved 'What a carve up' & 'House of sleep' so much that I expected more from Coe and I know that I will rush out and buy the sequel.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Just Falls Short
I really thought I was going to like this book after the first page which made me chuckle. It's 2003 in Berlin. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Mr. Peter Steward

4.0 out of 5 stars The Very Maws of Doom
"The Rotters' Club" was first published in 2001, and went on to win Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Read more
Published on 24 Sep 2007 by Craobh Rua

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and Charming
This was a good nostalgic read, with great characterisation. Funny, moving, very well written - Lois's story was particularly poignant. I would highly recommend this book. Read more
Published on 19 Aug 2007 by gerty guinea

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect holiday novel
The Rotters' Club is a charming and ambitious novel which chronicles four adolescent schoolboys growing up in 1970s Birmingham and trying to make sense of their lives... Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2006 by Mr. A. P. Rose

3.0 out of 5 stars I fail to see what all the fuss is about
This is a fairly undemanding read about which there seems to have been a great deal of fuss. It's a moderately engaging stroll through one boy's adolescence with a background of... Read more
Published on 17 July 2004 by Barton Keyes

4.0 out of 5 stars A work in progress
Like many reviewers here, I also grew up in Birmingham - Coe and I are also the same age (within a few months). Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2004 by Keith D. Gumery

2.0 out of 5 stars Where Did Brum Go?
Having only recently escaped to Cornwall to live, I began to read The Rotters club with the optimism of evoking memories of a Birmingham that I had all but forgotten. Read more
Published on 26 May 2004 by Les Moulson

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs Re-editing
I too,like Coe, went to school in Birmingham and subsequently away to university (albeit in the 50-60s). My father also worked for BMC. Read more
Published on 21 April 2004 by RJ Lane

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly wonderful story of relationships, tragedy etc.
It appears that many people have read this book as a kind of nostalgic retrospective account of 70s adolescent life. Read more
Published on 12 Feb 2004 by johnny_is_good

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT STUFF
I am about three-quarters of the way through this book and am enjoying immensely. Being a year older than the main characters (Benjamin, Doug, etc. Read more
Published on 10 Feb 2004

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