The Rotters' Club (Hardcover)

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

Review
This novel focuses on a quartet of clever, mischievous Birmingham teenagers who get their hands on their school magazine and wreak havoc. While their parents struggle with collapsing marriages and union troubles at the Longbridge plant, they write parodies, reviews and fraudulent letters that provide a hilarious counterpoint to the adult world. Anyone old enough to remember Blair Peach and the dawn of punk rock may not feel like revisiting the 1970s, but Coe's novel makes it funny as well as farcical. 'That woman will never be Prime Minister of this country,' Benjamin Trotter's father predicts of Mrs Thatcher, in one of many ironies granted by hindsight. Underneath the story of the four boys' sexual and romantic adventures runs the stony vein of political satire and experiments in style that made Coe's What a Carve-Up so enjoyable in the 1980s. Here, the jokes are more frequent, the characters more rounded (though girls and women remain paper-thin) and the character of Benjamin especially appealing. Benjamin sees his sister traumatized by an IRA bomb, secretly becomes a Christian and finds true love with the beautiful Cicely. The kind of boys' book that will also appeal to girls, The Rotters' Club is a feast of comedy, satire and unexpected tenderness. Review by AMANDA CRAIG (Kirkus UK)

The first of a two-volume portrait of 1970s England, focused here by the prizewinning Coe (The House of Sleep, 1998, etc.) on a circle of four Birmingham schoolmates. Perhaps it is a delusion to suppose that we write our own histories. The author seems to suggest so by unfolding his narrative from the perspective of the children of two of the protagonists, who meet in Berlin, in 2003, and reminisce about their parents, who were young so long ago, in "a world without mobiles or videos or Playstations or even faxes." The friends-Phillip, Benjamin, Harding, and Douglas-met at King William's, a "fucking toff's academy" in Birmingham, during the dreary decade that brought bad clothes, racial guilt, and good stereo systems to the farthest corners of the Queen's realm. The early 1970s were dominated by labor strife, the unions taking a final bow and bringing down governments and paralyzing life for everyone with their strikes. Not all of the boys at King William's are preppie brats, however-Douglas's father Bill Anderton works at the troubled British Leyland factory-and even their fustiest schoolmasters support the Labour Party. The most reactionary elements in Birmingham, in fact, are to be found farther down the social scale, in those like shop steward Roy Slater (Bill Anderton's nemesis) and his racist friends from the National Front. Much of the historical background-the wedding of Princess Anne, for example, or the political fall of Enoch Powell-may be unfamiliar to Americans, but the story's basic outlines (young people discovering the world and following the course of their lives) are amiable and clear. Eventually, the focus becomes the shy Benjamin and his hopeless love for Cicely. There's a happy ending of sorts, but plenty of questions wait for Part II. Tasty but filling: a rich (too rich, perhaps) portrait of a time and a place that have received less than their fair share of literary attention. (Kirkus Reviews)

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