Synopsis
The characters of The Rotters’ Club–Jonathan Coe’s beloved novel of adolescent life in the 1970s–have bartered their innocence for the vengeance of middle age in this incisive portrait of Cool Britannia at the millennium.
The Washington Post - Ron Charles
Media-hungry Paul is surely Coe's most brilliant satirical creation; he's the epitome of the modern conservative disguised as a liberal, publicly noncommittal and vacuous but privately devoted to dismantling government for the profit of a brave, new oligarchy. (He forms a secret think tank called "The Closed Circle" to formulate "the most radical and far-reaching ideas.") When he's not busy selling off inefficient government property or cutting bloated social services, Paul is wooing a troubled young graduate student who's also the object of his brother's futile fantasies. In addition to being gorgeous, she introduces Paul to a wildly useful principle of deconstruction: "Irony is very modern," she tells him, "Very now . You see -- you don't have to make it clear exactly what you mean any more. In fact, you don't even have to mean what you say, really. That's the beauty of it."