Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
From the acclaimed author of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle comes the novel for our strange contemporary times. Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by chain retail, and London, where both frenzied riots and Olympic fever plague the streets, Middle England tracks a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through the transformation of their society.
There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about England's future and, possibly, their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse while his radical teenage daughter undertakes a relentless quest for universal justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote LEAVE in the Brexit referendum. Through all these lives we see this very tentatively united kingdom itself: a place of nostalgia and delusion, bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage.
As acutely alert to the absurdity of the political classes as it is compassionate about those left behind by elites of all sorts, this is a novel only Jonathan Coe could have written.
Synopsis
A comedy for our times" (
The Guardian),
Middle England is a piercing and provocative novel about a country in crisis. From the frenzy of the 2012 Olympics to the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, here Jonathan Coe chronicles the story of modern Britain by way of a cast of characters whose world is being upended.
There are newlyweds who disagree about the country's future and, possibly, their relationship; a political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his lavish town house while his radical teenage daughter undertakes a relentless quest for universal justice; and Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father, whose last wish is to vote to leave the European Union. A sequel to The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle that stands entirely alone, Middle England is a darkly comic look at our strange new world.