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The Rotters' Club

By Jonathan Coe

(197)

| Paperback | 9780140294668

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Book Description

At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan What a Carve Up Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of quite how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains oContinue

At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan What a Carve Up Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of quite how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains of four Brummie schoolboys--Philip, Sean, Doug and Benjamin--who must not only come to terms with the normal pangs of adolescence but with terrible knitwear, ludicrous pop-music, nightmarish food and insidious racism, all set against the awful, surreal and tragicomic reality of a post-imperial nation.

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

Critics

  • School's out

    The Rotters' Club Jonathan Coe Viking £14.99, pp416 Buy it at a discount at BOL Jonathan Coe a considerable novelist and The Rotters' Club is an aberration, an aberration with a sequel promised (to be called The Closed Circle), which will take up the ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Boys will be boys

    The Rotters' Club Jonathan Coe 406pp, Viking, £14.99 Buy it at a discount at BOL deadkidsongs Toby Litt 452pp, Hamish Hamilton, £9.99 Buy it at a discount at BOL Read an extract from deadkidsongs on tobylitt.com These two novels are excursions not ju ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

13 Reviews

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  • 1 person find this helpful

    Great discovery!
    It's been my first (for I guess more will follow) J.Coe's novel and I enjoyed all about it. The enchanting prose (so many unusual words, so little everyday language, there's so much to learn by reading it), the characters (it's a choral book, there are many characters and all well-d ... (continue)

    Great discovery!
    It's been my first (for I guess more will follow) J.Coe's novel and I enjoyed all about it. The enchanting prose (so many unusual words, so little everyday language, there's so much to learn by reading it), the characters (it's a choral book, there are many characters and all well-described) and the gripping plot.
    Everthing is perfect.
    But what I liked more was the historical background: different events were mentioned (from Union's strikes to the IRA bombing, from the escape of the Jews from Denmark to the advent of punk music), not deep in details, but long enogh to arise more curiosity.
    And in some part is pure fun: I laughed out loud at the forged letters to the Billboard!

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    Ciski72 said on Apr 26, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    I wish I were able to write the review this book deserves, but I'm afraid I am not!
    Really an exhilarating one, in some chapters, but also moving and tender with many moments of real fury and anger. A depiction of British 1970s totally new to me, and maybe not too easily understood and fully ap ... (continue)

    I wish I were able to write the review this book deserves, but I'm afraid I am not!
    Really an exhilarating one, in some chapters, but also moving and tender with many moments of real fury and anger. A depiction of British 1970s totally new to me, and maybe not too easily understood and fully appreciated (another time, another country...) but similar to the adolescence we all had.
    Packed with all those tiny details that make me love the reading!
    ...e il commento in italiano lo scrivo un'altra volta!

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    fughetta said on Aug 1, 2008 | Add your feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    Damn Rotten Heck of a Novel!

    By far the best novel Jonathan Coe wrote. Characters are terrific, the mystery around the murder is intriguing and well connected with social issues. Britain of the 70s is wonderfully depicted and even distance between London and rest of Britain is artfully focused and emphasized. An absolute must r ... (continue)

    By far the best novel Jonathan Coe wrote. Characters are terrific, the mystery around the murder is intriguing and well connected with social issues. Britain of the 70s is wonderfully depicted and even distance between London and rest of Britain is artfully focused and emphasized. An absolute must read. Hard not to fall in love fo rClaire, but anybody can find a different, very vivid ideal soul mate!

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    Anatole Pierre Fuksas said on Aug 31, 2007 | Add your feedback

  • A friend told me to read this book, for it was her favourite one, and then she gave it to me as a gift on my birthday.
    I started reading it for her, but trying to keep my head clear from prejudice and expectations; by the time I reached page 50, I was reading it only for myself, and I couldn't put i ... (continue)

    A friend told me to read this book, for it was her favourite one, and then she gave it to me as a gift on my birthday.
    I started reading it for her, but trying to keep my head clear from prejudice and expectations; by the time I reached page 50, I was reading it only for myself, and I couldn't put it down.
    It's a good glimpse of Britain in the late 70s, and every character is amazingly complex and usually likeable; it's easy to read in a good way, and I'd like to read it again, possibly with some adequate music to listen to while I read, and after visiting Birmingham!

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    Mag said on Dec 2, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • *** This comment contains spoilers! ***

    A very well written, witty novel. Set in Birmingham in the 70's in the midst of industrial action, IRA bombings, a political time and later on the punk rock era. The story is set in a boy's grammar school very much like the one my husband attended on the other side of Birmingham. Viewed by labour ... (continue)

    A very well written, witty novel. Set in Birmingham in the 70's in the midst of industrial action, IRA bombings, a political time and later on the punk rock era. The story is set in a boy's grammar school very much like the one my husband attended on the other side of Birmingham. Viewed by labour voters, socialists and communists as elite, only attainable by an entrance exam. You feel the competitiveness to achieve in academic studies and sports. It is very easy to imagine school bullies looking for easy targets, soft touches and the only black pupil in the school (particularly if good at everything). A look at both the shy and brazen interaction between these young boys and the girls from the school next door. It takes you back to that time when there were black outs due to the strikes, the political unrest and the IRA pub bombings. I liked the reference to famous journalist/authors at NME in London, namely Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill. Prog rock was in, very much in the shape of Yes, Soft Machine et al and at the later end of the 70's we hear about punk bands like The Clash. The book starts with the story being told by Sophie and Patrick who had never met before, their parents had known each other back at that time in the 70's and this setting in Berlin is picked up again at the end of the book. A recommended read.

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    Booketta said on Feb 28, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • The very maws of Doom

    I think about this story, sometimes. It's one of those things I try to make sense of. I thought of it as we drove away prom Skagen to return our hire car to the airport at Alborg next morning. I thought of it today as I walked home from the bus stop to my parents' house. But slowly, irresistibly, I ... (continue)

    I think about this story, sometimes. It's one of those things I try to make sense of. I thought of it as we drove away prom Skagen to return our hire car to the airport at Alborg next morning. I thought of it today as I walked home from the bus stop to my parents' house. But slowly, irresistibly, I can feel it beginning to dissolve into the hazy falsehood of memory. That is why I have written it down, although in doing so I know that all I have achieved is to falsify it differently, more artfully.
    Does narrative serve any purpose? I wonder about that. I wonder if all experience can really be distilled to a few extraordinary moments, perhaps six or seven of them vouchsafed to us in a lifetime, and any attempt to trace a connection between them is futile. And I wonder if there are some moments in life not only "worth purchasing with worlds", but so replete with emotion that they become stretched, timeless, like the moment when Inger and Emil sat on that bench in the rose garden and smiled at the camera, or when Inger's mother raised the venetian blind to the very top of her high sitting room window, or when malcom opened up his jeweller's bo and ask my sister to marry him. If he ever did.

    -my clearest memory is of the light we saw there, that painters' sky, greyblue like Marie's eyes and like her grandson's eyes, the colour of a pain that won't go away-

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    ps. said on Apr 23, 2010 | Add your feedback

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