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Overview
Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, corrosive class warfare, adolescent angst, IRA bombings. Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by guitar rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school. As the world appears to self-destruct around them, they hold together to navigate the choppy waters of a decidedly ambiguous decade.
Synopsis
Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, corrosive class warfare, adolescent angst, IRA bombings. Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by guitar rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school. As the world appears to self-destruct around them, they hold together to navigate the choppy waters of a decidedly ambiguous decade.
Publishers Weekly
This witty, sprawling and ambitious novel relates the coming-of-age stories of a group of adolescents in Birmingham, England, in the 1970s, with the era itself becoming a kind of character, encompassing trivialities like music as well as more serious issues: labor struggles, racism, terrorism. Of course, the teenagers Benjamin Trotter (a play on his name accounts for the novel's title) and three of his male classmates, along with two female peers, are struggling with their own timeless issues: Why are my parents so weird? Will I ever have sex? Is Eric Clapton God? Coe amusingly and sympathetically articulates the desperate nature of teenage life, demonstrating a sure command of his protagonists' vernacular. He juxtaposes "crises" of adolescence with much more compelling events: a pub bombing by Irish nationalists and drawn-out strikes, for example, and the very real toll they take on people, including some of his characters. But this interweaving also reveals the novel's biggest problem: the combination of these two narrative strands isn't as seamless as it ought to be, nor as illuminating as Coe intends. The book is Dickensian in scope, with multiple plot lines and perspectives as well as miniature portraits of virtually everyone connected with the teens. Unfortunately, the narrative is sometimes hard to follow, and individual characters often remain opaque. The difficulty is compounded by rapidly shifting perspectives and an awkward framing narrative set in the early 2000s. As he demonstrated in his well-received novel about the Thatcher years, The Winshaw Legacy, Coe is immensely clever, but that cleverness is almost misplaced here: universal as it may be, adolescent angst doesn't really compare to the problems of massive social change. (Feb. 26) FYI: This novel is intended as the first of a two-book series, the second of which will revisit the characters' lives in the 1990s. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewIf you take a nonlinear approach to the history of the 20th century, the 1970s can be seen as an era of confused adolescence. Self-conscious, hormonal, pimply faced, it was a decade as ill at ease with itself as a pubescent boy in a powder-blue suit at a school dance. Jonathan Coe, author of the sly, complex, and farcical The Winshaw Legacy, sets his witty and nostalgic The Rotters' Club during that graceless period in Great Britain's history -- a time beset by labor disputes, racism, terrorism, and some really lame Eric Clapton songs.
The first installment in a two-book narrative (the second of which, The Closed Circle, will follow the same characters into the 1990s), The Rotters' Club opens in 1973 and centers on three Birmingham school chums -- Benjamin Trotter, Doug Anderton, and Phillip Chase -- whose lives focus primarily on homework, music, and girls. But their innocence -- and that of their families -- is shattered when the boyfriend of Ben's older sister is decapitated in an IRA bombing at a local pub. In a matter of seconds, a family and a nation is shaken from complacent slumber by the realization that terrorism -- something that once seemed so distant and foreign -- has slithered its malefic body right onto their doorstep. However, like John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire, Coe's novel focuses on an act of terrorism but encompasses a great deal more. Though pivotal to the story, the bombing serves only as a catalyst for the characters' heightened awareness of how the political and social, and the racial and moral, mesh together in intricate patterns. In Coe's world there are no coincidences -- a passing glance will lead years later to a proposal of marriage, an answered personal add will result in death and insanity, a borrowed album will lead to a musical revolution. Every thing is connected.
Episodic, engaging, and very funny, The Rotters' Club is a sharp, postmodern epic -- a novel about friends and family, life and death, love and infidelity, symphonic rock and punk. In crafting both a satire and a love letter to a misunderstood era, Coe has created a sympathetic portrait of a group of young people who are coming of age along with their world. (Stephen Bloom)
Publishers Weekly
This witty, sprawling and ambitious novel relates the coming-of-age stories of a group of adolescents in Birmingham, England, in the 1970s, with the era itself becoming a kind of character, encompassing trivialities like music as well as more serious issues: labor struggles, racism, terrorism. Of course, the teenagers Benjamin Trotter (a play on his name accounts for the novel's title) and three of his male classmates, along with two female peers, are struggling with their own timeless issues: Why are my parents so weird? Will I ever have sex? Is Eric Clapton God? Coe amusingly and sympathetically articulates the desperate nature of teenage life, demonstrating a sure command of his protagonists' vernacular. He juxtaposes "crises" of adolescence with much more compelling events: a pub bombing by Irish nationalists and drawn-out strikes, for example, and the very real toll they take on people, including some of his characters. But this interweaving also reveals the novel's biggest problem: the combination of these two narrative strands isn't as seamless as it ought to be, nor as illuminating as Coe intends. The book is Dickensian in scope, with multiple plot lines and perspectives as well as miniature portraits of virtually everyone connected with the teens. Unfortunately, the narrative is sometimes hard to follow, and individual characters often remain opaque. The difficulty is compounded by rapidly shifting perspectives and an awkward framing narrative set in the early 2000s. As he demonstrated in his well-received novel about the Thatcher years, The Winshaw Legacy, Coe is immensely clever, but that cleverness is almost misplaced here: universal as it may be, adolescent angst doesn't really compare to the problems of massive social change. (Feb. 26) FYI: This novel is intended as the first of a two-book series, the second of which will revisit the characters' lives in the 1990s. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.KLIATT
This should be rated R for realistic. It captures with visceral detail Birmingham, England, in 1973 by following the lives of two families: the Trotters (Sheila, Colin and their three children, Lois, Benjamin, and Paul) and the Andertons (Bill, Irene, and their son Doug). The wives have affairs, the husbands have affairs, Ben and Doug (who attend the same public school) dream of naked girls and try to form a rock band, workers go out on strike, the IRA blows up a pub. Rollicking sex, teenage angst, midlife crises, radical politics, and homophobia all come in for a satiric jab by Coe, whose novel has been compared to Look Homeward, Angel. Obscenities, racial slurs, and one of the hottest sex scenes ever make this prize-winning novel appropriate for the mature teen only. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students and adults. 2001, Random House, Vintage, 411p.,— Janet Julian