The Closed Circle

Jenny Turner

Patrick and Sophie want ''nothing more from life . . . than the chance to repeat the mistakes their parents had made''; but the world, Coe writes, is still deciding whether to allow them even that. It's always going to be risky, trying to make lasting fiction from very recent history. But this image gets the balance beautifully, as tank traps are laid around the British Embassy and the young lovers, oblivious, walk on.
— The New York Times

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."
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

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) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Welcome back to the characters we first encountered in Coe's The Rotter's Club, set at the dawn of the Thatcher years, who now find themselves in discontented middle age. Much like Benjamin Trotter, who has spent his adult years toiling away at a novel based on his own life against the backdrop of the political events of the day, so Coe's story places these characters in the context of the high hopes for the new Labour government, the climate of fear that followed the events of 9/11, and the gradual disillusionment with British Prime Minister Tony Blair after the invasion of Iraq. Benjamin's angst over a childless marriage and unsatisfactory career reaches the crisis point after he finds himself drawn to a young grad student. Events conspire against him as she becomes involved with his brother, a rising star in the Blair government. Their budding relationship attracts the notice of an old schoolmate, now a journalist looking for a scoop that will save his foundering career. This politically incisive sequel may be read and enjoyed independently, but fans of the earlier novel will be rewarded by the welcome return of an engaging cast of characters and the resolution of outstanding mysteries. Highly recommended.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Kingston, Ont. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Benjamin Trotter, his friends and family return, even more at sea in a transformed Britain than they were 20 years ago at the close of The Rotters' Club (2002). The sharp eye for the socioeconomic landscape that distinguished Coe's previous outing is also quickly evident here, as Claire Newman describes London in December 1999: "There are vast numbers of people who don't work in this city anymore, in the sense of making things or selling things. All that seems to be considered rather old-fashioned." Claire has returned after years living in Italy, but her school chum Benjamin is just as bemused back in their hometown, Birmingham, where he's senior partner in an accounting firm, still working on the novel that was supposed to make his name decades ago and still mooning over Cicely Boyd, though he's been married to long-suffering Emily for years. Benjamin may have retained the socialist values of their parents, but he's just as self-absorbed as younger brother Paul, an eager-beaver junior member of Tony Blair's business-friendly New Labor government. Both men are fascinated by a young woman named Malvina, who becomes Paul's "media advisor" and later his lover before a heavily foreshadowed revelation about her parentage provides the story's climax. There are several other flamboyant plot twists involving members of the once-close, now slightly ill-at-ease circle of friends that also includes journalists Doug Anderton (by this time married to an aristocrat) and Philip Chase (Claire's ex). But the real point here is Coe's acid, bitingly funny portrait of early-21st century Britain, where the cradle-to-grave welfare state has been abandoned as "a now comically outdated democratic ideal" and cabdrivers knowledgably discuss varieties of wine ("Australian Shiraz, you know, something fruity and mellow"). His characters never come quite as vividly to life, though they're generally decent, intelligent, well-meaning people with believable personalities and problems. A pleasing modern-day addition to the venerable lineage of the English social novel, easily the equal of Trollope or Galsworthy, though without the imaginative fire of Dickens.