From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.
The Rotters' Club (2002), Coe's witty novel of teenage schoolmates growing up in 1970s Birmingham, England, introduced an expansive cast of characters. With echoes of Anthony Trollope and Anthony Powell, this wonderful, compulsively readable sequel explores the adults those young people became—it opens in 1999 and closes in 2003—and paints a satirical but moving portrait of life at the turn of the century. Claire Newman still mourns her sister, who vanished without a trace in
The Rotters' Club. Benjamin Trotter still mourns his one true (teenage) love. His brother, Paul, is an ambitious member of Parliament in "Blair's Brave New Britain." Doug Anderton and Philip Chase became journalists, and the first book's other characters all reappear in some way or another (along with flashbacks to many of their teenage escapades). Coe cleverly works real events into the plot—London's Millennium Eve, the possible shutdown of a British auto manufacturer, the war in Iraq. The theme, as in
The Rotters' Club, concerns the conflicts and connections between individual decisions and societal events, but while Coe's political sensibility is readily apparent, this novel, with its incredibly well developed characters and its immensely engaging narrative, is no polemical tract. It's a compelling, dramatic and often funny depiction of the way we live now—both savage and heartfelt at the same time.
(May 31)
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In this extremely readable sequel to
The Rotters' Club (2001), which was set in the 1970s, the circle of British teenagers is now teetering on the brink of middle age and struggling with infidelity and failed ambition. Benjamin Trotter is an accountant who has been working for decades on a novel that runs to thousands of pages and is to be accompanied by his own music; he is a victim of self-doubt and a paralyzing obsession with his first love. He becomes infatuated with young Malvina, who falls hard for Benjamin's brother, Paul, a rising political star. Coe interweaves the personal with the political as key developments over the past four years run continually in the background--the threatened closure of the Rover car factory, England's role in the war on terrorism. Often-biting cultural commentary on, for example, cell phones and SUVs serves to lighten the mood. Coe's narrative voice is pleasingly intimate, as though he were inviting his readers into the "closed circle" referenced in the title, urging them to lean close and then closer.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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