Bournville: From the bestselling author of Middle England

Product Information

In passato ho seguito con piacere i libri di Jonathan Coe, ma da qualche anno (direi da “Disaccordi imperfetti” in poi, con la parziale eccezione di “Middle England”) mi sembra che l’autore accusi un deficit di ispirazione che lo porta ad eseguire il compito con il consueto mestiere ma senza i guizzi di estro ed inventiva che caratterizzavano soprattutto “La casa del sonno” o “La famiglia Winshaw”, ma anche le opere minori. There are a few good chapters, especially those talking about Cadbury's, but I was dismayed to read in the author notes that the death of Mary Lamb in the novel was an accurate account of the passing of Coe's own mother during the Covid pandemic.

Jonathan Coe never gives his characters short shrift. Despite the 75-year time span and the large cast of characters, the book is eminently readable and defines characters through the events they lived through. Particularly insightful is when one of the younger characters, with pretensions of becoming a world-famous author, slams into reality when his glossy portrayal of Wales collides with the truth of Britain’s treatment of it.

Chocolate is another motif that reappears throughout the novel. At a meeting between the German and English branches of the family, an argument develops about whether British or German chocolate is better. As Mary and Geoffrey’s children grow – we revisit the family for the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969, then for Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 – the story of Britain’s “chocolate war” with the EU plays out. Martin rises within the corporate structure of Cadbury’s, finally going to Brussels to represent the interests of British chocolate. During this period he crosses paths with Paul Trotter (from The Closed Circle) and also with a bumbling, mendacious journalist called Boris.

T)he loving, funny, clear-sighted and ruminative examination of recent British history (.....) As ever, prizing clarity over verbal fireworks, Coe’s writing draws the reader into the family dramas as they unfold over the decades. He has the great gift of combining plausible and engaging human stories with a deeper structural pattern that gives the book its heft. (...) Bittersweet as the eponymous bar of plain chocolate, the book ranges over a huge span of time, includes a large cast of characters, yet never flags nor confuses. (...) The book also builds a deeper integrity out of echoes and motifs, like a piece of music." - Marcel Theroux, The Guardian Perhaps the weakest point of the novel is that at times it can feel a little predictable – as in fact can be seen in the choice of epochal events which rather inevitably leads to fairly predictable discussions around UK/EU and German relations (which anyway are even more strongly emphasised by having a German branch to the family), and about the changing attitudes to the monarchy. The book is written very deliberately from a left-of-centre (but still close to centre viewpoint) – the novel riffs frequently on James Bond movies (movies seemingly a pre-occupation of the author given his previous borrowing of spoof-horror film plots) and there is a clear villain in the family who supports the monarchy, conservatism (in its literal and political form) and rather inevitably Brexit. Another character – when challenged as to whether he has ever done anything daring – proudly proclaims that he has joined the nascent SDP and criticism of the lurch to the left of Labour under Foot and then Corbyn is also explicitly expressed by the characters (and implicitly endorsed by the authorial voice). This novel is perhaps even more explicitly a social examination of the state of the nation but is more straightforward read and without the farcical or spoof elements which made those novels more striking.

A few weeks ago I read and reviewed Ian McEwan‘s most recent novel Lessons. One of the key themes of the novel was how certain major world events affected the main character, a man who was the same age as McEwan, though whose life was very different from McEwan’s. Someone in a previous GR review of this book (Kay Dunham) described the style as similar to that of the Famous Five, this is exactly it. It does try your patience, though, to be treated like that as a reader: everything being spelled out for you, it makes you feel stupid at times. Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state of the nation novel: Jonathan Coe is one of them New Statesman

What a Carve Up! (1994); The House of Sleep (1997); The Rotters' Club (2001); Middle England (2019)Honorary degrees: DLitt, University of Birmingham (2006); [17] DLitt, University of Wolverhampton (2006); [18] DUniv, Birmingham City University. [19] The author has said in an interview that he his “heart sank” when he initially heard of Ian McEwen’s “Lessons” published just ahead of his own and covering a similar timespan and the interaction between national and personal events – before reading it and realising how different the two books are in style and approach.