I’ve long been an admirer of Jonathan Coe’s writing, so I was delighted to receive a pre-publication e-book of his latest work, Middle England, from the publishers via NetGalley. It was out yesterday. We are back with the Trotter family, whose lives and those of their friends were the subject of The Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle. Benjamin, the main character, is now fifty. Having sold a London flat at a vast profit, he’s bought a house in the country and is virtually retired. He’s at last over his Cicely obsession and considers himself happy. His sister Lois will never be happy as she hasn’t recovered from the trauma of the IRA Birmingham bombings back in the seventies. Her daughter Sophie is an art historian and academic and is the other main character, together with Benjamin’s old friend Doug, a successful and prosperous journalist.

The book opens in 2010 and is full of achingly topical references to events which now seem like ancient history. As we read of the racial tensions, ‘the fault line’ running through the country, the anger of those suffering from years of austerity, it’s pretty clear where all this is heading: yup, Brexit. So, this is a state-of-the-nation novel which is nevertheless mostly the state of the white, educated middle classes. There are unpleasant events: the nice Lithuanian couple told to ‘go home’; poor Sophie quite wrongly accused of making a transphobic remark and suspended from her job due to the machinations of Doug’s ghastly daughter. Benjamin feels the country has changed but then, he’s almost morbidly sentimental about his childhood and adolescence. One of the more remarkable things about the Trotters is the way they have kept in touch with people they’ve known for over thirty years.

I read this book quickly, which is easily done because it’s so well written. Yet there’s something about it which doesn’t quite gell. In places, we don’t so much get the zeitgeist expressed through the characters but shoved down our throats with what amounts to verbatim reportage. Then there’s clever Benjamin, whom really you could smack for his indecision and obtuseness. He really hasn’t changed since we first met him and at the end of the book, he either starts a brave new life or cops out, depending on your point of view. I’ve taken a star off my review because I found the book ultimately depressing. I was also irritated by the ageism; just about every character over seventy is decrepit, bigoted and unpleasant. Coe is regarded as a humorous writer and there are many amusing moments in this book but for me, as a Remainer, it didn’t work as satire because it’s too true and sad to be funny.

As a longtime Coe fan I had high hopes of this, especially when I found it out he would be revisiting the lives of Benjamin Trotter & co, and I am happy to say that it did not disappoint. Although not as humorous as some of his others, there were nevertheless several laugh out loud moments and I really enjoyed seeing the momentous events of the past eight years through the prism of the various characters' experiences/viewpoints. It left me with so much to ponder and think about and it will be interesting to re-read it in 10 years time when hopefully the Brexit dust will have settled!

Middle England follows a cast of characters from the 2010 elections and coalition government to the current chaos surrounding Brexit. As with Coe's previous works, particularly The Rotter's Club, satire abounds in many of the characterisations, especially the indignant Social Justice Warrior, Coriander. Coe has lost none of his remarkable ability to document the state of the nation in this genius novel.

I really enjoyed this book, though if you're not interested in politics you could find some passages a bit tedious. As I'm a political activist, I found it fascinating; the author describes situations I have found myself in. Such as the dinner party where someone makes a racist comment and you don't react because you don't want to make a fuss, then feel guilty about it later. Every nuance is here. From 2010 onwards, British life and politics are brilliantly, and at times, hilariously, described. The characters are very likeable and realistic. Past political moments are used, and not in a biased way. I highly recommend this book. It is a brilliant novel about modern Britain and its politics.

I am really quite sad that I did not like this since I loved the previous books in this loose series. It felt as if it was written for an audience that knows nothing about politics in the UK and then I guess this would be fine. I, however, wanted to know how the characters feel during all of this, rather than a rehash of the politics.

The author is one of my favourites. All his books are brilliant and this one is no exception. The book commences in 2010 Gordon Brown about to lose the election and the coalition headed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Using the political background right up to the present day and Brexit negotiations! we are re-introduced to Benjamin Trotter, his sister Lois, her daughter Sophie and their friends. We first met most of them in "The Rotters Club" and again in "The Closed Circle" .Benjamin is middle aged now and single, the love of his life Cicely has left him and is living happily in Australia. He lives near Shrewsbury in a converted Millhouse next to the river Severn, and is very happy. They have just cremated their Mother and his Father is finding life difficult. Lois lives in York and only visits her long suffering husband occasionally in their Birmingham home
The main story threads involve Benjamin, Sophie and Doug Anderton - one of Benjamin's oldest friends and a left wing journalist and commentator. Very funny and the author is an excellent storyteller. I didn't want it to finish.
Very much recommended. Read it and enjoy. Looking forward to the next book. .

I usually love these kind of books, but sadly I just couldn’t warm to this.

Set mainly in London and the Midlands, this book follows some colourful
Characters, and dramatic (mainly political) changes that have happened over the last 8 yrs.

Some parts were amusing, but overall I struggled with this, I’m sure this will be a very popular book for the right audience, but it was wasn’t for me.

Middle England is a return to characters Coe introduced in The Rotters' Club (which followed their lives as teenagers in 70s Birmingham) and returned to in The Closed Circle (focussing on the years of Blairite pomp at the beginning of the century). Opening in 2010 with the run-up to the General Election and continuing to Autumn 2018 (i.e. now!) this is very much Coe's Brexit novel, suitably titled as an enquiry into England's (not Britain's) character and ghosts - literally, a "condition of England novel".

That makes the book very contemporary (except where, I imagine due to publishing deadlines, it's not able to take in the latest developments in the unfolding story - such as the criminal investigation into the Leave campaign which would have fitted very well with the final third of the book). Thankfully, it's not a moment-by-monent account and the accent is very much on the response and behaviour of Coe's usual wide cast of characters, muddling along with their lives as they always have.

Central here is Benjamin Trotter, with his love of music, and his sister Lois, still - forty years on - haunted by her experience of one of the Birmingham pub bombings. We also meet Lois's daughter Sophie, and Doug, the radical journalist who married a wealthy heiress and has a daughter, Coriander, who despises him. And many more. Coe has a very good technique for handling his characters - we dip in and out of lives, sometimes skipping months or a year, sometimes following a particular incident or series of events (Sophie's cruise to the Baltic, delivering lectures on the history of art to a boatload of pensioners; Doug's meetings with Nigel, the baffling Assistant Deputy Director of Government Communications under the Cameron government). It's a bit like throwing a handful of leaves into the stream to help picture the flow - in their encounters with students, friends, enemies, family and workmates we get a cross section of, well, Middle England.

There's Colin, Benjamin and Lois's father. At the start of the book, their mum Sheila has just dies and it's clear that Colin will never recover from that. But as the years pass, he does;t just mourn, he broods, over how the country has changed - whether it's immigration ('I don't think I heard a word of English spoken on the way here'), loss of industry or "political correctness" (a common complaint of characters here, at least those of a Brexitish turn of mind).

There's Helen, Sophie's mother-in-law, who astounds and shocks Sophie by harking back to Enoch Powell (but of course Sophie doesn't challenge this: a long and awkward pause on the car journey ensures).

There's Charlie, a long-lost friend of Benjamin's, who's trying to make a living as a children's entertainer while supporting his girlfriend Yasmin and her daughter Aneeqa.

Through the comings and goings, crossed paths and life events, Coe weaves a picture of a deeply uneasy country taking a long look at itself and deciding it doesn't like what it sees. There is a degree of rage, perhaps, the realisation of loss of privilege, the frustration being pushed this way and that, finally to be vented in the events of 23 June 2016. There is - through the subplot with Nigel - the story of vain and stupid politicians who didn't realise, or chose not to see, what they were unleashing. There is nostalgia (a golf club that seems fixed in the 50s) and - Coe has a gift for portraying this - the little nuances of English racism played out in (mainly) everyday moments, almost gone before they're spotted and rarely or never the occasion of any rebuke.

Wrapping round the book are the words of a folk song, credited to Shirley Collins, a haunting ballad telling of lost good times and diminished circumstances ("Adieu to old England, adieu/ And adieu to some hundreds of pounds/ If the world had been ended when I had been young/ My sorrows I'd never have known") . Combined with Benjamin's taste for the elegiac in music and some wistful passages towards the end looking back to his and Lois's childhood ("Beacon Hill. The landscape of his own childhood. Tobogganing in the winter...") and of course the part of the country - the east Midlands - where much of the story is set, there is an almost Housman-like sense of nostalgia and of a lost world. Coe punctures this by having Benjamin point to this as, in a sense, nostalgia for a world that never was but he also cannily uses it to show the very real sense of loss and bewilderment felt by so many at their place in the modern world (Colin, literally lost when he visits the side of the old Longbridge car works). More ominously, Coe shows how that sense of loss - not in itself a malign thing - is worked upon and manipulated by those with an agenda.

Throughout this the theme of different Englands emerges, of a lack of comprehension and shared experience. ("Just as Doug had told him, 'People are getting angry, really angry' even if they could not have explained why, or with whom.") Whether causing a malicious complaint against an academic for their treatment of a student, a violent, racist assault in a small English village or the breakup of a marriage, Coe seems to be saying that we just can't live with each other any longer - an ironic reversal of something he has a French celebrity author say towards the start of this book: 'The French are an intolerant, judgemental people. Not like the British, I think". Perhaps that reputation for tolerance - whether deserved or not - is another aspect of the lost "old England" to which we have sadly bid Adieu.

So this is in many ways a mournful novel, even if often funny. Coe isn't, I think, pointing out anything that hasn't been said or debated in the aftermath of the 2016 Referendum, but he does the subject the courtesy of a scrutiny from all angles (even if it's clear where his sympathies lie). He does suggest that, in the end, some of the divisions may be healed. I think though that if there is to be a fourth book in the Rotters sequence, bringing things to a real reconciliation, it will have to be another few decades in the making - and I'm unlikely to see it written.

Strongly recommended, even if uncomfortable reading at times.

I loved this book and didn't want it to end. I thought I might struggle with it as although I have read some Jonathan Coe books before (What a Carve Up and House of Sleep) many moons ago, I hadn't read the first two books in this series, The Rotters Club and The Closed Circle. I needn't have worried, Coe skillfully weaves in just enough information so that you are comfortable with the background of his old friends and the book reads perfectly well as a stand alone. I would like to know more about the main character, Benjamin's "secret" daughter in the US though. I liked this book so much that I bought the first two books in the series on Kindle straight after finishing reading it.

There is so much to like in this book. It deals with the years leading up to and the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote in the lives of Benjamin Trotter, a fifty something ex accountant and frustrated author and his niece, Sophie a liberal lecturer in art history and their various friends, family and lovers. One of Benjamin's oldest friend's is Doug , a newsapaper political commentator whose meetings with Nigel, a PR for the Cameron camp in the lead up to Brexit are very amusing, especially given that the reader knows the outcome of the referendum. I relly admire and enjoyed how skillfully Coe interweaves all the storylines and how his writing made me really care about more peripheral figures such as Sophie's gay friend, Sohan and the way that even "good people" can become xenophobic and look for other's to blame when their lives go awry. I also thought Coe tackled the "snowflake" generation and Sophie's embroilment (after a clumsy jokey remark) in a transphobic hate case exceptionally well. As someone in the same age range as Benjamin, so much of what Coe writes about strongly resonated with me.

I read almost all of this book on a windy, wet, grey English day whilst succumbing to the sore throat and aching limbs that preceed a nasty cold and this was the perfect antidote. Just as comforting as my hot tea and blanket. The prose just flows and I just kept turning the pages. The sign for me of an excellent book . I was in the hands of a skilled writer. Funny in places, poignant in others and dealing with the big events ( Summer riots, immigration,Brexit) as well as the smaller but equally important life events of redundancy, thwarted ambition, love problems, elderly parents, toxic parents, "casual" rascism etc. All beautifully observed.

This is definitely on my Christmas gift list for friends who I know will also enjoy it. Seriously good.

I found this book to be very interesting. Once I’d started it I found it difficult to put down!
It was both moving and funny and as I live in the Midlands I could relate to the book.

My thanks to Net Galley and Penguin for giving me the opportunity to read Middle England.
This is the first state of the nation novel I've read. I don't know what I was expecting but I think I have discovered a new genre to explore. Jonathan Coe's take on events over the last few years had me laughing and throwing my hands up with frustration in equal measure. The frustration was certainly not because of Coe's writing, but because of the reminder of how our beloved country has got to where it is. I'm sure much of this novel was written with tongue in cheek, but Coe's observations about Brexit in particular are keenly acerbic and very funny, although his political leanings are made fairly obvious, with one side heavily weighted against the other in terms of Mr Nice and Mr Nasty. Our country is going through a difficult time and it's something which we should all take seriously because it will affect our children and theirs, but we should also observe it with some humour, Although there were some laugh out loud moments, I'm pretty sure they were fairly near to the truth. I loved the scene of the clowns fighting one another, perhaps a metaphor for Britain and the EU. I could see them in my mind's eye, slogging it out, and I particularly liked the references to Dave and Nick by Nigel, a "Tory boy" if ever there was one, although reading it made me cringe. Coe's novel is one I would recommend, although I'm not used to reading such long sentences in parts, which go against the grain. Oh, what do I know?

Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up! (US: The Winshaw Legacy) is, in my view, his best book and, along with J G Ballard‘s Running Wild, the best anti-Thatcher novel. Coe certainly has not avoided politics since. His novel Number 11, his most recent novel prior to this one, if we exclude the Broken Mirror, a political parable for children, a contemporary fairy tale for adults, and a fable for all ages, was certainly political but nowhere near as hard-hitting as What a Carve Up! (US: The Winshaw Legacy). However, this novel, as the title sort of gives away, is back to the satire of the earlier book.

Two of Coe’s earlier books – The Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle – concern Benjamin Trotter, his friends and family (and deal, of course, with political issues, the late 1970s in the first one and Blair in the second one). This book takes up the story of Trotter, his friends and family, and places them firmly in recent times (the book opens in 2010) while, at the same time, getting back to political satire and political commentary in a way that is as forceful as What a Carve Up! (US: The Winshaw Legacy).

Coe takes as his starting point that England (as the title tells us, it is very much England; apart from a nod to the Scottish independence referendum, the other UK countries barely get a look-in) is divided. There are three main ways that he shows the divide though they are all related. The first is the divide between the haves and the have-nots or, more particularly the metropolitan elite (a term Coe barely uses) and ordinary people (a term Coe does use). There is an incredible fault line running right through British society, Doug will later say, referring to the 2011 riots.

The second is the generation gap. Generation gaps have existed in, I would imagine, every country in the world since time immemorial. However, in this book, Coe emphasises the difference between what is now called the Generation Snowflake (a term Coe does not use; it refers to the younger generation who are considered more inclined to take offence) and the older, less politically correct generation. We see this particularly in the case of one of the characters who inadvertently offends a transgender woman, which results in a Twitterstorm against her (the alleged offender) and has repercussions for her career.

The third difference is between those who voted for Brexit and those who did not. The Brexiters are often in favour of what Coe calls Deep England (see also Merry England and Little England), i.e. those who hark back to an England that never really existed or, at least, only partially (cricket in the village green, the local pub). These people are usually opposed to immigration and immigrants. One of the older characters in this book has a Lithuanian cleaner, Grete, who is very helpful to her in ways beyond her cleaning duties, yet is clearly despised by the older woman. Racism (and homophobia, transphobia and similar ideas) are generally part of this. This divide clearly overlaps with the Generation Gap, with the younger people tending to favour Remain and the older tending to favour Brexit, and the older people being more racist, homophobic, etc.

Coe superbly brings all these differences into the book, showing them through his varied characters, satirising them in many ways. We have Brexiters and Remainers, old and young, and the metropolitan elite and a few (relatively few) ordinary people.

The plot follows Benjamin Trotter and his family. Benjamin had been in love with Cicely, lost her, regained her and lost her again. He claims that he does not care but is now living on his own in the country (having made a killing on his London property) and, amongst other things, writing his magnum opus which is about his life and, in particular, about his relationship with Cicely. It is far too long and even has a large musical accompaniment. He get helps cutting it back to a manageable, publishable form.

There is one other writer. He is Lionel Hampshire, who appeared in Coe’s story in Tales from a Master’s Notebook, who is viciously satirised. While not Martin Amis, he clearly has some of Amis in him. He is lazy, greedy, opportunistic and, apparently, not a very good writer.

We follow Trotter’s family, in particular Sophie, his niece, an art historian and lecturer, who is tired of intellectual men and who twice meets Lionel Hampshire, and Colin, his eighty-two year old father, whose wife, Benjamin’s mother, dies at the beginning of the book. We also follow his friends, including his old schoolfriend, Philip Chase, who has become a publisher and Doug, whose daughter Coriander (Corrie) becomes the representative of the snowflake generation in this novel.

While the plot drives the book, it is the political and social issues which make the novel so interesting. Doug, for example, is a journalist, and establishes a relationship with a young PR man, Nigel, in the office of David Cameron. Coe shows the shallowness of the Cameron administration, as Nigel weasels his way out of every trap Doug sets for him and, like his boss, shows him himself completely out of touch with the ordinary people. To be fair, most of the metropolitan elite seem to be out of touch, as the Brexit vote only too clearly showed.

Coe uses dates and the events associated with those dates throughout the book. The problem with that is while some of the events may well have ongoing importance – elections, Brexit vote – others, such as the death of Victoria Wood, the Rivers of Blood speech or the Gordon Brown-Gillian Duffy confrontation, will be meaningless to most non-English people and will be sinking into obscurity and irrelevance for many English people. Others have used this technique – famously John Dos Passos in his U.S.A. trilogy – so it can work. While Trump, Putin and Macron (but not Merkel) make an appearance, they are not in any way key to this book, which is focussed on English politics, even when talking about Brexit.

However, it all gets back to the divide. There is the sense of simmering injustice, the resentment towards a financial and political establishment which had ripped people off and got away with it, the quiet rage of a middle class which had grown used to comfort and prosperity and now saw those things slipping out of their reach. We even see it in song lyrics, as Benjamin listens to Shirley Collins. However, as one of his characters says, everything changed in Britain in May 1979, the month Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.

Lionel Hampshire has a discussion with a French novelist and both writers agree that the British are moderate or a nation of harmless cranks, as someone else states. Without directly commenting on this, Coe skilfully shows that the famous British moderation is fast disappearing. Racism, riots, anti-immigration, Twitterstorms, political correctness (the new Fascism, one character comments)and English nationalism all contribute to its disappearance. Or is the idea of British moderation merely a part of Deep England, a nostalgia for an England that never really existed?

The novel was published in November 2018. Coe takes us up to September 2018, well into the Brexit negotiations but obviously before Brexit takes place. He avoids recent events concerning Brexit such as the Irish backstop issue and other tortuous discussions. He does not, however, ignore the fact that, in his view, it is a horror show. If there is a motto for this book it is the comment of Benjamin Trotter towards the end of the book – Fuck Brexit! However, we have already seen other negative effects, such as Grete getting attacked for speaking Lithuanian on her mobile phone and being called a Polish bitch, the nasty games of an Arron Banks figure, called Ronald Culpepper (whom Ben Trotter was at school with) and evidence of couples breaking up over Brexit.

The best comment comes from a politico: We’re fucked…We’re utterly and irredeemably fucked. It’s all chaos. Everyone’s running around like headless chickens. Nobody has the faintest idea what they’re doing. We’re so, so fucked…Everyone at each other’s throats. Foreigners being shouted at in the streets. Being attacked on the bus and told to go back where they came from. Anyone who doesn’t toe the line being called traitors and enemies of the people. I can only agree with this comment.

This is undoubtedly Coe’s best book since What a Carve Up! (US: The Winshaw Legacy). The stories of the characters we follow are well told, interesting and link into without being dominated by the political environment, including but certainly not limited to Brexit. There is no question that Coe has his finger on the pulse of what is going on in British or, rather, English politics, that he can skilfully integrate what is going on into his story and that he is a first-class satirist – the novel is very funny, indeed. Though it is certainly not just about Brexit, it will be dubbed a Brexit novel. If you are pro-Brexit, you may feel that Coe wears his heart too much on his sleeve. While he certainly is opposed to Brexit, he is also not averse to mocking Remainers and other member of the liberal metropolitan elite. Ultimately though, this is a Fuck Brexit! novel and all power to Coe for writing such a fine work.

This is the first Jonathan Coe book I have read - perhaps I should be ashamed. However, having read ‘Middle England’ and got to the end, I learned that some of the characters also appeared in two of Coe’s other novels, including ‘The Rotters’ Club’.

‘Middle England’ follows a cyclical narrative with a river motif at its heart - or I should say winding throughout. It’s a state-of-the-nation novel, covering, in subtle and not so subtle ways, issues from Brexit to racism, small mindedness to relationships.

In some ways, it felt a little like Coe was ‘ticking off’ the contemporary British issues in order to cover his back (he didn’t deal with the increase in London’s gang/knife crime, though, perhaps surprisingly). However, it’s epic expansive qualities outweigh any issues I have and I sincerely hope this does well. It is certainly being published at a pivotal time for our green and pleasant land.

Maybe because he's often seen as a comic novelist, Jonathan Coe remains under-rated. Middle England, partly a sequel to The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, takes on the last ten years or so of English history with a lightness of touch that enables it to cover issues like austerity, brexit and gender fluidity and point to failures on both sides of ideological divides without being preachy or dull. It's also very funny - the section when a former government adviser finally allows his mask to drop and say what he really thinks about Cameron et al is hilarious, as well as scary. Well worth your time..

Although Jonathan Coe continues the stories of characters from his earlier novels ‘The Rotters’ Club’ and ‘The Closed Circle’ the reader does not have to be familiar with their pasts in order to enjoy ‘Middle England’, a state of the nation novel which moves through England’s extraordinary last decade. Some of the minor characters are less than subtle representations whose behaviour serve to reflect Coe’s political sympathies: Ian’s hideous mother is a case in point as is her cleaner Grete. However, as ever, much of his characterisation is masterful. Sophie, her uncle Ben and his friend Doug, all staunch Remainers, are portrayed as decent people struggling to cope with the explicit xenophobic fuse that has been well and truly lit by Brexit. Their complicated relationships with partners and friends are recognisably messy; Coe is very good at portraying conflicting opinions, unwise choices and domestic crises whilst allowing the reader a wry smile in recognition of the fact that this is how life is!
Coe’s commentary on Cameron’s Conservative party, as portrayed through the conversations between political journalist Doug and the ever-loyal deputy assistant director of communications Nigel Ives, is very funny, even though one is simultaneously appalled to think that the madcap policies and cut-throat plotting portrayed are entirely recognisable. ‘Nobody knows the way forwards. I call it radical indecision – the new spirit of our times. And Nick and Dave embody it perfectly.’ Nigel explains enthusiastically to an incredulous Doug.
It is no surprise that, at the end of the novel, Ben, his sister Lois and their mutual friends are gathered drunkenly in Provence, rather than Birmingham. The Trotter brother and sister have left England behind for a new life hosting writing courses in the sun. What, after all, is left for them in England? That dismal question is yet to be answered.
My thanks to NetGalley and Viking Penguin Books UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

Jonathan Coe has been one of our foremost British exponents of the ‘state of the nation’ genre, with a series of novels following a group of friends throughout their formative years, starting from their schooldays in 2001 with the Rotters Club. His current novel covers eight years from 2010 and includes many memorable news references:- Gordon Brown’s faux pas about the ‘bigotted’ woman, Ed Miliband’s bacon sandwich, the 2012 Olympics – and his main topic here - the political fault lines leading to the earthquake of Brexit.
Coe’s comedy-of-manners style is polished and very readable but his satirical approach is disappointingly marred in this instance by his own nakedly biased stance. The sympathetic characters are all Remainers and the Brexiteers are all depicted as 'deplorables' – with one character in particular coming across as such a villainous caricature as to be laughable rather than despicable. Unfortunately, this level of comedy is just about the only humour in the novel. The black and white stereotyping results in the characters being mere mouthpieces for the views of a metropolitan elite of writers, academics and left-wing journalists who all toe the line of Guardianista editorials.
I think a more balanced and nuanced interplay of personal relationships could have made the satire a lot sharper - and more honest, too.

I liked this book a lot, especially because there were some of the characters from the Rotter's club and it was like meeting some long forgotten friends whom you really enjoy to see again. The story was not so complicated. but as it was settled from 2010 to now, it was interesting for me to follow what precedes and came right after brexit. After the not so good last book (Numer 11), I enjoyed this new Coe a lot.

Questo libro mi é piaciuto parecchio, anche perché l'ultimo di Coe (Numero 11) non mi era piaciuto poi tanto e inoltre in questo c'erano i vecchi personaggi del Rotter club e mi sembrava quasi di ritrovare dei vecchi amici dei quali uno si dimentica, ma che é felice di rincontrare. La storia non era poi cosí complessa, ma lo sfondo dell'Inghilterra tra il 2010 ed il 2017 rende il tutto molto piú interessante, specialmente alla luce della Brexit. Un piacevole Coe dei vecchi tempi.

A commentary on how Britain has got itself into the current pickle we are experiencing on a day to day basis. It is sad and humorous tale, again a bit like modern Britain, and my one disappointment was that I hoped it would all tie up in the end and there would be a happily ever after, unfortunately we will have to wait and see what happens in the real world.

It was enjoyable meeting up with Jonathan Coe's characters from his previous books, as well as making new friends. A gentle read that deals with the divisive issues that have dogged society for the last few years, showing how families, friends and colleagues have been affected on a personal level.

Since I’ve spent the last four years as a welcomed guest in the Netherlands, this distillation of the major events of the decade in the UK (just England really as the title suggests) came along at just the right time for me and I would guess many others of us living across the channel, looking on aghast at the chaos at home and considering our future. Interesting that the upbeat ending should lean so heavily towards Europe.

I have enjoyed Jonathan Coe’s writing over the years, but haven’t read ‘The Rotters’ Club’ or its sequel. I realise now that the characters I most engaged with here are integral to those two books. Yet ‘Middle England’ is perfectly successful as a stand-alone novel - there are brief mentions of past events but none of the laboured rehashing often seen in sequels. I was particularly swept up in two of the relationships (Ben/Jennifer, Sophie/Ian), written with a sympathetic and delicate touch, but I have one major niggle about the characters. Where did the gorgeous and doughty Naheed go? I would have liked her to continue to feature large as the story unfolded.

High calibre writing (as you’d expect from Coe), but not a lot of laughs (and I’d come to expect more of those from him). The situation is too real and raw to be funny, certainly not yet.

Middle England revisits characters from Coe’s earlier novels The Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle – I suppose the three books could be said to form a loose trilogy – and follows them from 2010 to the present day. Their experiences are juxtaposed with a wealth of political developments and newsworthy events: the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, Amy Winehouse’s death, the London riots, the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, the run-up to the EU referendum, Victoria Wood’s death, the murder of Jo Cox, the results of the referendum and its aftermath – to name a few of the developments that loom large in this particular story.

While all this is going on, we get glimpses of what's happening in the lives of our cast, made up of the The Rotters’ Club alumni, now middle-aged, and their younger relatives. Doug struggles to connect with his teenage daughter, the unfortunately-named Coriander. Benjamin gets a book published and it’s unexpectedly nominated for the Booker. His niece Sophie marries a man she isn’t sure about, and later gets suspended from her job in academia when she’s accused of discriminating against a student. (Sophie is in many ways the saving grace of this novel, but my god, her relationship with Ian resulted in some of the strongest second-hand frustration I’ve ever felt.)

I often found myself thinking Middle England would make a better read for someone who knows very little about British politics and current affairs of the past decade and is looking for an entertaining primer. If you’re British and/or live in the UK, you can’t fail to have been aware of the events depicted in this book, because they’re all major social or political developments that happened 7 or 8 years ago at most. In fact, I’d imagine most readers will have had more meaningful experiences of these things than Coe’s characters do. Too many sequences feel like they are merely soulless rehashes of news stories.

It was nice to read a novel about this political era set predominantly outside London (most of it takes place in and around Birmingham). There are some fantastic individual scenes: Benjamin and Lois scattering their parents’ ashes, for example, and Sophie’s reconciliation with her trans student Emily, and Benjamin and Jennifer’s goodbye. In these small, personal moments – too-scarce glimpses into the humanity of the characters – the book is at its best. A few entertaining sections in which a journalist meets up with a obsequious politician, illustrating the changing nature (but consistent hypocrisy) of government over the years, are also very good.

The bigger picture, however, is disappointing. The novel culminates in a plotline about the effects of Brexit in which the worst the characters have to fear is feeling a bit put out. The nods to diversity with a few minor characters don’t take away from the overwhelming sense that this is a story about people so privileged nothing can really touch them. There are troubling omissions (Naheed just disappears), disturbing details that are oddly glossed over, and some developments that simply don’t make a lot of sense.

It’s totally understandable that an established British novelist would want to write something that serves as a response to the current political moment. But Middle England is a largely toothless satire that offers neither an interesting perspective on society nor particularly engaging characters. As a state-of-the-nation novel, it also has the misfortune to have been published within a few months of Sam Byers’ vastly superior and much more vicious Perfidious Albion, which I would recommend over this.