Product Description

Jonathan Coe's widely acclaimed novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics - the collapse of 'Old Labour' - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31287 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
One of those sweeping, ambitious yet hugely readable, moving, richly comic novels that you find all too rarely in English fiction ... a masterpiece (Daily Telegraph )

About the Author
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. His most recent novel is The Rain Before It Falls. He is also the author of The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Dwarves of Death, What a Carve Up!, which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The House of Sleep, which won the 1998 Prix Medicis Etranger, The Rotter's Club, winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Prize and The Closed Circle He has also published a biography of the novelist B.S. Johnson, which won the Orwell prize in 2005. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

a tale of growing up in the 1970's Midlands
The first part of this book read like the Golden Years, a description of childhood through rose-tinted spectacles that all of us could wear about growing up decades ago. But this part is brought to a close with cataclysmic events that bring to the story closer to current life. The book then develops depths that I hadn't expected initially, combining a dark humour with the tragedy that made this a more stimulating read. Some of the deep divisions in 1970's society and the collapsing hierarchy are seen through an adolescent's eyes, that tarnish the initial golden years.

This is a mixture of observation of family life combined with commentary on a particular period of British history. The book builds some surprises and tells the story well. The only serious flaw is the third part of the book, which is a stream-of-consciousness download of thoughts around the plot. This fails to add any relevant detail, and merely reflects on events form the fictional main character. This creates a painfully slow means to finish the book.

Serious, endearing and funny, but without the sentimentalist claptrap
A thoroughly captivating read that successfully marries 1970s real events - political and social - with a fictional coming of age story. It appals and delights with regular turns in plot, but crucially, always leaves you wishing you had more time to read the next chapter straight away.

As my first experience of Jonathan Coe I was enthralled by his wit and attention to detail. I am particularly pleased that none of the characters are overtly likeable, but the reader is left to enjoy the flow of watching events unfold. Often the reader is moved from third to first person narrative and at times it reads like a diary (indeed sometimes it is just that) or the thoughts in someone's head, whilst for the main part the story is told through narration.

A book of this nature is, inherently, a subjective story from the mind of the author so it is only a personal niggle that some loose ends are left untidy. I made my wife jump when I thumped the book down after the last page out of frustration; but I guess that just makes a great read. It's not often that I'm left with so many lasting impressions from a story set in the 1970s.

To say more would give away too much of the plot, but this has a worthy place on my recommendations list.

Rotters Club
Good storyline.

Brings back many memories of the late seventies, early eighties.

Nice weave of fiction with factual events.