Johnathon Coe always delivers a pertinent look at the changes in human but more particularly in English society.
He has never failed to entertain and enlighten this reader and he is an accomplished storyteller.

Amusing, Dry, Compassionate…
With a continuation of characters from preceding novels, this Brexit satire is sure to please. Within the lives, experiences and day to day of the cast lies a statement of the country in which they live. Amusing, often dry but also compassionate. Certainly ambitious.

As a huge fan of the rotters club and closed circle I was so excited to see these characters again and I was not let down. Coes writing is always an absolute joy to read. Adored it

The perfect Brexit novel. Revisiting characters from The Rotters Club, and introducing many new ones, Middle England explores the conflicting and conflicted feelings around nationhood, race and patriotism. If, like me, you are still feeling pain about Britain leaving the EU, and the racism and xenophobia it encouraged, this can be an upsetting read at times. However, it’s worth the ride and there’s enough comedy to keep the reader going. A satisfyingly intelligent read.

Middle England is a novel about the Brexit referendum with events starting in 2010, leading up to the decisive moment, and the immediate aftermath. There’s a Dickensian cast of characters whose lives we follow throughout the years.

Benjamin is in his fifties, divorced, and struggling to complete his first novel that’s become a sprawling mess; his niece Sophie has to navigate the ultra-liberal culture of modern universities while seeing the opposite attitudes in her husband Ian’s elderly mother Helena, whose racism towards her Lithuanian housekeeper is barely disguised; Doug is a political reporter in a failing marriage, looking into the people driving this anti-European agenda while his increasingly angry teenage daughter Coriander becomes a social justice warrior; those are the main ones but there’s plenty of other great characters here too.

I loved Doug’s meetings with the smug, cocky young Conservative deputy assistant director of communications (job titles these days!), Nigel, which were really fun and had some great dialogue that could’ve come straight out of The Thick of It. The pretentious literary author Lionel Hampshire was amusing, as was the subplot about the two warring children’s entertainers (a swipe at the two main political parties?).

There’s lots of surprising little gems of scenes sprinkled throughout. The romance that never was between Sophie and Adam in Marseilles was unexpectedly moving and the description of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony was brilliant. And I really enjoyed how Benjamin’s story played out, particularly when a journalist from one of the national papers interviews him and the subsequent article that’s written about him.

I didn’t love all of it - the stuff about Benjamin’s ailing dad Colin was dull and predictable. Coe is definitely a liberal and, though he’s not completely blinkered as to be unaware of opposing arguments, the ending was definitely idyllic to the point of fantasy and very sentimental. I’m not totally convinced that Sophie would’ve been quite so successful with such a niche academic background but then the world of academia is largely unknown to me so, who knows, maybe it’s accurate?

And, while Coe doesn’t provide any fresh insight into why Brexit happened, he does encapsulate a lot of the arguments for and against leaving the EU succinctly and, more importantly, presents them in an entertaining and well-written story. Even if you’re bored of hearing about Brexit (and who isn’t at this point?), Middle England is still a terrific read.

The task of repopulating the senior library has been an exciting and daunting task aS in a boarding school our aim is to encourage all members of the community to read. Because of this, I have been searching down a wide and diverse range of books to read that will entice a wide cross-section of the school to come in, browse and find books that they love.
Books like this will ensure that the senior students in the school see the library as a diverse, modern and exciting place with books that speak to them and they want to recommend to their friends, classmates, teachers and tutors.
It is an engrossing and exciting read with fully-formed characters and a plot that ensures that it's hard to look away. It is as far from formulaic as it is possible to be and kept me up far too late in order to finish it. I immediately wanted to read all of this writer's other books as I loved their voice and found that it really drew me into the story and made me think about it even when I'd stepped away from this tale.
This is a thought-provoking read which I'm sure will be a popular and well-read addition to our new library; I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to read it and I know that the students are going to absolutely love it too!

A state of the nation novel, with the nation in a state. Coe has a nack for getting past the spectacle and showing real development.

This is a great novel. Genuinely moving, full of well developed, believable characters and so very, very funny, without really having any jokes. As the story develops and progresses through years and indeed decades, there is a very clever interweaving of the characters’ lives with the prominent and poignant events in recent British history with more than the occasional conspiratorial wink from the author to his reader. This is such a well-constructed and nuanced story and I can only imagine that it has been this way since the first book in the trilogy.

This may well be the third book of a trilogy but it is so well crafted that although I was very aware of the characters previous experiences and relationships building and developing over the earlier novels, I felt included and was not left lost or even confused, wondering what may have occurred in experiences alluded to. Having said that, I am just sorry that I have not read the previous novels in the trilogy; there is a real sense of an ending to this book, of life stories reaching an apex or conclusion and a finely crafted story coming to an end. I imagine that had I read the previous two novels I would have given this a 'five-star' review.

'Middle England' may not be the ideal jumping off point for this trilogy, but it is both current and prescient, and a very good read.

Started this without realising that it carried on the lives of the characters from The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle. Slowly I realised that I did remember them and it was good to be reacquainted. Wryly funny, middle England at its worst and best.

The state of the nation novel is a strange thing: ambitious, serious and a bit artificial, and it certainly seems artificial to review one. Where do you start? Where shall I start, with Jonathan Coe’s Middle England? I finished it a couple of weeks ago and have been stewing about it.
Thing is, once you know that an author is going to set out for us The Condition Of England, you come to the book in a certain way. Explain it for us, Mr Coe, we say. We are looking for answers, for tips, for wisdom, but that seems demanding when the best novels don’t give us answers but instead ask us difficult questions.
This is Coe’s Brexit novel, and so we are on strange territory. We know how it ends. We know what we think about the two sides. And we want to know more about our opponents: what was it that they did? Can we be brought together again? And at the same time we want to be reassured that we were better than we really were.
Coe hedges his bets, a bit. We’ll muddle through, probably, because when it comes down to it our values systems are about more than politics. There’s a ‘rank odour of hatred’ but that could be down to waxing and waning power in the land; elsewhere Coe is careful to point out ‘a melding of different cultures that [Enoch] Powell’s ‘pinched, ungenerous mind’ could never understand - and that national claims to be moderate and tolerant are bogus. He gives most of his characters some good points to make, on both sides of the argument. At least, I think they are good points: a seasoned story-teller can manipulate their audience so lightly.
Talking of technique, I am reminded so much of David Lodge and Nice Work in particular. In Sophie, the youngish academic, we meet a contemporary Robyn Penrose; there’s a reactionary Mr Wilcox, folks dance to The Power of Love and there’s a kind of, similar-ish, resolution for the two characters. I do so hope Coe has done all this on purpose.
Middle England is clever. There is plenty of commentary and insight. Coe wants to tell us about the speechless anger into which England has descended: the sense of injustice, victimhood and superiority, the curious and contradictory mix of authoritarianism and libertarianism. He shares the blame out liberally: Cameron (possibly all centrists but that works only if you believe Cameron was a centrist) comes in for a particularly rough ride through his ridiculous aide Nigel. But young activists are portrayed as self-righteous bullies, and old racists as particularly vile, selfish and hate-filled. They are astutely observed but Coe indicates that he neither understands them nor wants to.
In contrast, I get the idea that Coe does understand late middle-age, very much so; although I am not at that age, I find his characters convincing, and affectionately drawn - which is not to say they are particularly likeable. Their powers (political, professional and physical) are in decline; they are adjusting to new and narrower boundaries but are braver within those boundaries: they will make life-changing decisions that throw off the ‘quiet satisfactions of underachievement’. When we hear Benjamin’s life described as one that ‘lacks any kind of achievement, any kind of self-knowledge and so, in the end, any kind of hope’, I’m not sure whether we think it rings as truly as it would have at the beginning of the novel. That’s the counterpoint to Coe’s unoriginal but accurate prediction that the vested interests behind Brexit will continue their culture war and to stoke the sense of betrayal among their key audience.
Did I enjoy this? I don’t know. There are some moments of high comedy, of bathos and farce. I loved the description of The Lark Ascending as a posher Birdie Song. The feud between the children’s entertainers though often sad was equally often hilarious. Set pieces delighted, as you’d expect from this author. There is lots to enjoy, and lots to think about. If only I had got beyond the artificiality which I had placed onto the entire enterprise. If you’re a better reader than I am, you’ll do well to read this.

I think I was still a teenager when I first read Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club, a novel about a group of teenage friends growing up in 1970s Birmingham. I was twenty when I read its incredibly depressing sequel The Closed Circle which seemed to be all about how their youthful dreams were driven into the dust. Despite being well written, for me it was a definite case of 'good book at a bad time'. Still, the former members of the Rotters Club feel like old friends so when I spotted that a third book had been released, I ambled over to catch up with how they were doing. In Middle England, Coe addresses the recent crisis in British national identity brought about by the Brexit referendum but given the book was published in late 2018, I was struck by quite how far it has already been overtaken by events. While the previous two books captured more a change in mood as you get older and grow up, Middle England is a state of the nation novel and it left me feeling very different thoughts.

The novel opens with the 2010 General Election campaign, with the day that Gordon Brown was caught on mic calling a voter a 'bigoted woman'. Alongside this, Benjamin Trotter is at his mother's funeral. Most of his old school friends are also in attendance although there are notable absences. Cicely Boyd is no longer around and indeed Benjamin does not mourn her departure. Early in the novel Benjamin reflects on the stark contrast between the life he thought he would have in 1979 - lasting union with Cicely, creative success and social success. Instead, he's living alone in a converted windmill as a borderline hermit ... but he's never been happier.

Coe noted in an interview that he had never intended to return to the Rotters Club characters. Indeed, he had always looked upon The Closed Circle as one of his lesser efforts. It was hearing another writer Alice Adams praise the story that he felt persuaded to return to the situation. Additionally, he had watched a stage production of The Rotters' Club that made him realise that it was the love between Benjamin and Lois which was the novel's heart and he felt moved to investigate this further. In that respect, the first two books go rather hand in hand and Middle England is more an unexpected coda.

Much of the storyline from the earlier books felt heavily sidelined. We are assured that when Cicely left Benjamin for the second time, he just drank a large glass of whiskey and then moved on. Fine. But was there really going to be no further resolution with Malvina? I also felt real sorrow that after all this time, Claire was never going to get any closure about what happened to Miriam. The Closed Circle implied that she was just going to have to learn to live with the uncertainty but that just seems so cruel. I felt the loss of Claire as a character too. Even her fleeting reappearance towards the end was very welcome. It's strange because Coe had seemed to suggest that Claire and Lois just overcame their bereavements but in Middle England, he acknowledges that this has not been the case for the latter but it puzzled me that he still brushed past the former.

Lois' characterisation was more in depth here than ever before. The horror of her fiancé's death in one of the Birmingham pub bombings was one of the defining moments of the earlier books. When Philip saw her in Berlin, he recognises her by her trauma before he sees her face. Yet we had earlier heard that she had recovered and just decided to 'go for it', marrying and having her daughter Sophie. As a twenty year-old, I wanted to believe that even experiences as terrifying as hers could be conquered. I never thought that Lois 'got over it' or 'moved on'. Those expressions are reductive and insulting to anyone who has experienced grief. But I had believed that she had learned to carry her pain and I had hoped that she had found love again. That time could heal all wounds. As a woman in my thirties, I can see now that things are not that simple. This realisation tugs at me and I tried to reflect on why that was. I suppose that I have known Lois Trotter in a way for over fifteen years and I wish her peace and also to all those who suffer invisible pain.

It is Lois' daughter Sophie who is the soul of Middle England. Briefly glimpsed in Closed Circle as a teenager falling in love with Philip's son Patrick, here she takes the lead. If Coe was setting out to write his Brexit novel - and so many authors have done so over the past few years, intentionally or no - I have a feeling that it would have been much the same with Sophie as its lead and without any connection to the Rotters et al. Benjamin has his shining moments, particularly when his novel about his doomed love affair with Cicely is unexpectedly long-listed for the Booker prize. Then there's Lois, struggling to contain her anguish as the political din reaches a crescendo. Even Doug plays a significant role in the novel, a leading light on Fleet Street with connections high up into the Cabinet. And again, here I felt real confusion about his newfound disdain for the ruling classes; Doug literally fell in love with privilege at an early age so the about-face really surprised me. But still, Middle England as a novel belonged less to the old guard and more to the new generation.

It's funny how we look back over the current political mess, we wonder where it all began. I remember rolling my eyes at UKIP around about the 2005 General Election since they were clearly never going to get anywhere. Their campaign literature was ridiculous. Were the seeds sown back then? Was it the financial crash of 2008? We had to blame someone and the ruling classes wouldn't take the blame so they had to pin it on the immigrants? Middle England traces the London riots, 2012 Olympics, Nigel Farage's ghastly 'Breaking Point' advert, the awful murder of Jo Cox (very triggering for Lois) and of course the startling Referendum result. It's a funny thing reading about such recent history. In one moment it's not so very long ago and in others ... it's a lifetime. Thinking back to the Olympics opening ceremony and how it celebrated all that was 'best' about Britain ... at the time it seemed to mean something. Now it's just another moment of hopeless optimism, only remarkable because so many of us believed it at the time. One of the most striking scenes of the novel came when Sophie attended a panel discussion with two authors, one French and one English, who both express admiration for the English 'immoderate love of moderation' which keeps them safe from right-wing politics. Britain, they agree, is a fundamentally tolerant nation. It's remarkable because it is indeed what I was taught growing up. Extremist politics would never get a toe-hold here because we just weren't that sort. Alas.

It would be tempting to see Middle England as a political novel but that isn't Coe's area of interest. As Benjamin tries to redraft his novel so that it can finally be published, a friend advises that he 'get rid of some of the political, historical stuff (all of it)'. Another example is how Coe deals with the issue of Trump.

Finally, Benjamin said: “I don’t like Trump, do you?”
“Nope,” Charlie said. “Can’t stand the bloke.”
Benjamin nodded. With the political discussion out of the way …

Rather than the specifics, Coe is searching for our lost identity. If we are not the moderate followers of consensus politics that we supposed, what exactly are we? The symbol of this is Sophie's odd-couple union with driving instructor Ian who she met at a speed awareness course. The morning their first night together, he goes out to buy breakfast and offers to get a copy of The Sunday Times. She explains that she prefers The Observer. She is an art history lecturer, he has precisely fourteen books in his flat. Their differences rub up against each other but come to a crescendo with the European referendum. In marriage counselling, Sophie observes that by Ian voting Leave, he has shown himself 'as a person, he’s not as open as I thought he was. That his basic model for relationships comes down to antagonism and competition, not cooperation'. By contrast, Ian feels that Sophie's Remain vote was a sign that she is 'very naive', 'living in a bubble' and had an attitude of moral superiority. However, their counsellor observes,'What’s interesting about both of these answers is that neither of you mentioned politics. As if the referendum wasn’t about Europe at all. Maybe something much more fundamental and personal was going on. Which is why this might be a difficult problem to resolve.' And wasn't that the whole issue in a nutshell?

The utter vacuity of the Referendum is summed up by Doug's 'off-the-record' encounters with Nigel Ives, a weaselly deputy assistant director of communications in the Prime Minister's office. In 2011, Nigel is crowing about the cabinet table 'bantz' between 'Dave and Nick'. In 2015, he is rolling his eyes at Doug's concern about the promised in-out referendum since it will never happen since there's no way that 'Dave' will win an overall majority. In 2016, Nigel is telling Dave that leaving would technically be 'Brixit' but since it's not going to happen (Dave is going to make sure of it), then there doesn't need to be a word for it. And by 2017, he is a snivelling, unshaven mess who shrieks 'Cameron broke the country, Doug. He broke the country and he ran away'. It's delicious.

Like so many of us, Coe has clear contempt for Cameron. However, Middle England is not an uncritically pro-Remain novel. Doug's daughter Coriander is an obnoxious example of the alt-left. As a teenager, she heads out from her millionaire mother's flat to join in the riots and later joins 'Students for Corbyn'. Her mother may express approval that Coriander 'cares about other people', but Doug is less sure, remarking 'Does she, though? Sometimes I think she’s just addicted to getting outraged on other people’s behalf.' And if Sophie is pro-Remain, she is also a heavily flawed character. Her habitual over-analysing of everything is infuriating and clearly difficult to live with. Specifically, her long-term reflection on a semi-adulterous encounter with a former colleague six years after the event  ... well, it was nails-digging-into-your-thighs level of cringworthiness. Sophie reminded me rather vividly of some dear but frustrating friends who struggle to function without a romantic partner but because the relationship stems from that insecurity, their eyes do tend to wander. Rather than a true companion, they have settled and if you still believe that a better offer may be out there, you cannot build a commitment in which you can truly abide.

Middle England journeys up and down through all walks of life. There's Ian's odious mother who believes that Enoch Powell was right all along and is highly suspicious of her mild-mannered Lithuanian cleaner. We see an old 'friend' from the first book, Ronald Culpepper, now chairman of the Imperium Society and who seems to have been one of the people steering the country towards a Leave vote. Charlie, a children's entertainer and former schoolmate of Benjamin, is a food-bank user who is borderline homeless. He is also locked in a petty dispute with professional rival Doctor Daredevil and this gradually escalates over the course of the book. A disagreement once small and unimportant slowly grows into a much more bitter antagonism with far wider scope. Reminding anyone of anything? As if we as a nation are perhaps prone to building feuds and losing our sense of proportion? I had such fondness for Charlie. His uncritical love for his stepdaughter gave the novel some of its most truly tender moments. But it was a common theme of the novel, while the characters have their frustrations about the world that they live in, they are also prepared to grant each other grace.

A lot of the concerns of Middle England can be seen as those typical to people in late middle age - Coe's own stage of life. The Rotters have grown up. They have to take care of their ageing parents. They struggle to relate to their baffling children. Their marriages are wearing thin and they have to be brave to make the leap. While Coe's politics do seem to lean more towards Remain, this is a fairly centrist novel. The people here can laugh at themselves and there is much humour to be had. Benjamin's publishing adventures are hilarious but it is also truly lovely to see him finally achieving success. His romantic entanglements are also sweetly funny. While there are moments of helter-skelter horror such as the awful death of Jo Cox, Middle England is a very reassuring novel. Its very ending leaves the reader filled with optimism. But that in itself is a problem.

As I finished it, I thought of the months and months of protracted negotiations that followed that point, the national humiliations, political in-fighting, the General Election and then even after that, Brexit has now been completely overshadowed. The sanctuary that Lois and Benjamin have found at the novel's end seems destined to be very short-lived. The new hope from the book's closing pages has a tough road ahead. The Rotters' Club closed in 1979 with Benjamin being told that he and Cicely Boyd will be together and that Britain will never have a female Prime Minister. Middle England unintentionally finishes on a similar note. This novel was clever, had strong characterisation and was full of warm humour but like all of us, Coe has been taken by surprise by a virus which has pushed his state of the nation tale into premature obsolescence. I wish each and ever Rotter the very, very best of luck. We all need it.

Have been meaning to read this for a long time, loved it! It was funny, of it's time and a good depiction of life in brexit Britain in turbulent times. I'll now be seeking The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle,

Either I didn't read the blurb/summary for this book or I got it confused with another with a similar title. I was expecting a historical novel set in the Middle Ages in England and instead got a novel set in modern times in the middle of England! When I first started reading and realised it wasn't what I was expecting I nearly abandoned it but I didn't; and I am glad I didn't. This is a beautifully written book that I really enjoyed. It was easy to read but at the same time wove a wonderful picture of the character's lives that was really believable. This is the first book I have read by Jonathan Coe and I would certainly read more.

This novel explores the lives of a group of family and friends who live in Birmingham & around (Middle England) and how the result of the Brexit referendum has impacted them. It was good to see some of these issues dealt with in a fictional form as they are so complex, though it was also painful - this disparate group of people are bitterly divided in their views, something which is reflected across the country, certainly in my own family and circle of friends.
The blurb on the cover of the book calls this 'a comedy for our times'. There is humour in the book, and also compassion, tenderness ... but also much anger. It is a novel about a country that has lost its way and has an identity crisis. It is a call for a return to moderation and decency.
Although I enjoyed the book, and the writing and characterisation are sublime, it was also a difficult read for me, as it reflected my own personal despair about the current state of our country.

Super book, recommend to anyone with a sceptical view of politics! Based around the Brexit vote, this story wraps itself around the conflicting views of the public over Brexit and how it affects families based in 'middle England'. A beautifully balanced story intertwined with ordinary family life and those involved in politics.

This is the first book I read by Jonathan Coe, but it certainly won't be the last. I am particularly interested in reading the previous 2 Rotters' Club instalments.

I enjoyed the author's narrative style and the way the multiple characters are interwoven in this story spanning over 8 years or so. Coe depicts details in the characters' personal lives within the more general political context and manages to paint a realistic view of Brexit Britain.

Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest and impartial review.

Jonathan Coe weaves a bittersweet novel about lives bound up in the chaos leading up to and after the UK’s vote to leave the EU. Some of the nonsense surrounding the Brexit referendum is brilliantly sent up. The serious impact on the lives of the characters is just as well observed with pathos and laugh out load humour. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

This book is very well written, albeit a slow burner. The book explores the views of it's characters in the build up to the Referendum regarding Brexit. One criticism I had was that the book seemed to only have a few token opposing views, and I believe an additional few viewpoints would have been helpful.

Overall, the issues are well explored and the book itself is well executed

I found this a difficult book to get into at first. Not the page turner I had expected. However, perseverence paid off again and this book delivered. A wry, comedic look at Middle England and all that it contains.

Middle England started well but ground to a halt for me at around 30% read. I haven’t read anything else by the author. I lost interest, so it wasn't for me sadly.