Rating: 
Summary: Dawning of a New Era
Review: If you're looking for an hilarious and poignant coming of age story interwoven with a sociopolitical history of '70s Birmingham (England not Alabama!), which serves as stand-in for pre-Thatcherite Britain-well, this is the book for you! Of course that description can't really do justice to this masterfully crafted 400 page novel, which will have a sequel covering the subsequent decades. First of all, larger themes aside (more on those later), the adventures and trials of the four boys who enter into and pass through teenagerdom over the course of the book and those of their siblings, schoolmates, and girlfriends are a delight. All the familiar aches and pains of teenage life are here in bucketloads, angst, humiliation, betrayal, unrequited love, awkward fumblings in the closet, drifting friendships, the birth and death of a band, and first love. The book will remind the vast majority of readers of how awful teenage life was, but Coe's depiction is always deft and empathetic, even during scenes that will cause one to cringe in recognition. If that were all there was to it, one would be happy to enjoy the book as a simple coming of age flashback novel. However Coe also immerses the reader in the lives of the boys parents, which aren't any more complicated, but invoke much higher stakes and are emblematic of the forces changing Britain. One boy has a father who's a union shop steward in a local auto plant, while another's father is in management. Through the two men, the reader is propelled into the emasculation of organized labor, the violent death of British socialism (one harrowing sequence takes the reader into a union demonstration that is attacked by police), and the entire malaise of post-imperial Britain. Imagine that, a novel where characters actually discuss politics! Also present is a reminder of the prevalent anti-immigrant racism that existed then, as well as the violent appearance of IRA activity in the British heartland. Some will find this fascinating and absorbing stuff, expertly fitted to the lives of the large cast of characters. Others (especially non-British readers) may find the sociopolitical aspect, time period, setting, and cultural milieu of the novel distracting and cumbersome. Some may also be frustrated by the lack of conclusion, as Coe ends the book with Margaret Thatcher's election at the end of the decade, and asks readers to continue the characters' stories in the next installment. Personally, none of this bothered me, given its grand sweep, the book is an amazingly written tale littered with wit and insight. I can't wait for the next half.
Rating: 
Summary: "Does narrative serve any purpose? I wonder about that."
Review: In this novel of enormous reach, Coe attempts to give epic significance to the 1970's in Birmingham, England. Abandoning the extremely tight, limited focus he employed in The House of Sleep, Coe here employs a huge cast of characters, eight or ten of them teenagers (somewhat difficult to keep track of because they are not yet fully formed or unique), along with their parents and their parents' lovers, their brothers and sisters and the brothers' and sisters' lovers, and their teachers and some of their lovers. Starting with a meeting in 2003 between the adult children of some of the characters from the 1970's, the novel switches back and forth in time through several different points of view, offering insights about what has happened in the interim. The teenagers' lives are depicted in minute detail as they work on school magazines, collect new rock albums, create their own bands, score with girlfriends, and do all the superficial things teenagers do the world over, told from the well-developed, if not particularly compelling, perspective of the '70's. Coe can be very funny, and his view of teenage life is often amusing, but the teenagers also reveal their intolerance of differences, their casual cruelty, doubts about religion, ignorance of the political system, and general insulation from the forces which are shaping their world. Their parents' lives are completely separate from their children's, dealing with union vs. management issues, Labour vs. Tory political goals, a stagnant economy, resentment over immigration, IRA activity, some anti-semitism, and a belief that their dreams probably will not come true. These huge and important themes seem a bit jarring when juxtaposed against the superficial, day-to-day activities of the teenagers who are the main characters. Coe has enormous, very obvious talents, but this book feels fragmented, with too many characters pursuing too many different ends, the ultimate goal seeming to be the recreation of the entire sociopolitical history of 1970's Birmingham. At the end of 400+ pages of this book, Coe himself states that a second volume will continue this story, perhaps the author's acknowledgment that his reach has exceeded his grasp with this one.
Rating:
Summary: A book reviewer's favourite, RC is a delightful read
Review: Incredible but true. Jonathan Coe's "The Rotters' Club (RC)" was at the top of nearly every London book reviewer's year-end recommended reads list last year. I was curious but sceptical, expecting another lightweight Nick Hornby type novel to while away the weekend but, seriously folks, there's more depth to RC than meets the eye. Heartwarming, touching and poignant, it is also fun, friendly and easy to read but it isn't pulp fiction. It may even be literature. RC captures perfectly the political climate of 70s UK before Thatcher squashed the trades unions and steered England back onto its capitalist path. There's no doubt we're in the midst of a class war and Coe deftly throws us a shocker a quarter of the way through to remind us of the horrors of war and conflict - but RC isn't all grim and horrible. Hardly. The fellas on the shopfloor may be fighting their bosses by day, but they don't forget to have their bit of fun by night. Meanwhile, their children - the gang of four, whose varied exploits this novel is occupied with - experience the pains and the usual ups and downs of adolescence. Though awkward, irritating, confused, self conscious and love lorn, these kids dare to dream and it is the honesty and spontaneity of their dreams that make them such an endearing bunch. Nobody is painted in black or white. Even Cicely Boyd, the golden girl of every boy's wet dream, isn't a caricature of the school flirt we might expect. Maybe it's too early to tell. Let's see how the story pans out in the sequel promised to us. And a sequel there must be, for the last chapter ("Green Coaster") is all build-up and no climax, a tease with the promise of a pay-off in the next instalment. Coe is also a master of wit and comedy. Benjamin's encounter with God viz the just-in-time appearance of a mysterious pair of swimming trunks is just one unforgettable and funny episode RC offers. There're loads more to delight you. Instantly accessible and great fun, I know why the reviewers loved it.
Rating: 
Summary: Rubbish
Review: It may be unfair to review a book you didn't finish. I would certainly say so, in any case but this. I read half of it, and it would have had to undergo a pretty startling metamorphosis in the second half for me to feel even somewhat glad I'd read it, let alone recommend it. There are three principal things wrong here: 1) Any novel which focuses on a group of characters, each one of them as important as another, has to establish
each personality very quickly and disctinctly, so that they can be told apart. In this respect, Coe failed miserably. Even after several chapters, the main characters are indistinct, and sudden attempts to establish them as 'the musical one' or 'the political one' are by contrast unsubtle and destructive. Basically, I think, Coe isn't very good at imagining or developing characters, but he might have been able to do a little better if he had focused on one protagonist. 2) The tone, I guess, is supposed to be comical, but it ends up being simpering and smug and generally irritating. I found myself wanting to slap the author as often as I actually laughed (which, granted, I did sometimes). 3) The political overtones have the subtley of an artillery piece, and are presented as a matter of fact(...). I was entirely unsympathetic to the causes the book seems to champion, even ones which shouldn't be very difficult to arouse sympathy for, such as anti-racism. How can a book fail to make a good anti-racist point? It's like missing a brick wall at five yards, and it's certainly an achievement. This is a first novel, which explains a lot, but it's not quite a sufficient excuse. Somebody needs to take away his word processor.
Rating:
Summary: A Hilarious and Heartbreaking Novel
Review: Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club is a very amusing, engaging story of four teenage boys and their families and friends in Birmingham, England in the 1970s. Much went on in England, and Birmingham, at the time--strikes, pub bombings--and that affects the story in the novel. But equally important and disastrous are the goings on in the individual families--extramarital affairs, deaths, disappearances. These all happen, yet the boys in the novel manage to have an amusing trip into adulthood. They come of age, despite everything, and manage to do OK. The novel will make you laugh out loud and it will make you think about the sadnesses in life. I really enjoyed this one. Coe is a talented, very funny writer. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Where no novelist has gone before
Review: Like the gnarly prog rock of which Coe's obviously a (recovered?) fan, this coming-of-age novel is in places a bit too sprawling and ambitious for its own good. Some of the setpieces and symbolism seem contrived (a schematic birth-of-punk scene being a prime example), its many main characters don't all manage to rise above one-dimensionality, and its multiple plot lines don't always seem born of necessity. Counterbalancing these flaws are the novel's overall narrative drive -- it's the sort of book you may well end up devouring in a sleepless night -- its moments of poignancy, and its frequent laugh-out-loud passages, including one of the funniest 'letters to the editor' I've ever read. It's an intensely British book, but Americans who made High Fidelity a best seller should have little problem negotiating this one. (Extra points to Coe for being the only literary author I've seen to reference such prog icons as Henry Cow, National Health, and Yes' 'Tales from Topographic Oceans' at all, much less with such humor, sympathy and authority. The novel's title is itself an homage to an obscure British prog band, Hatfield and the North, who released an album called 'The Rotter's Club' in 1975.)
Rating:
Summary: Simply splendid
Review: Sorry that all the others feared manipulation by this wonderful book. I was, quite simply, entranced. In part, no doubt, as an ex-pat contemporary of the novel's protagonists. Even as a Londoner, I remember strikes, dreary three day weeks, coming home from school in the dark fog during powercuts, and the terrifying rise of Maggie. 70's Birmingham, with all its class struggles and grimy angst, looked quite familiar to me (I don't know what part of London Philip from Atlanta must have grown up in). But anyone, especially the 40-somethings, should be touched by this book and its flawed heroes. I can't wait for the next.
Rating: 
Summary: Not A Carve Up!
Review: The Rotter's Club, in which author Coe attempts to do for the seventies which What a Carve Up! did for the eighties, unfortunately suffers by comparison. The intricate and satisfying plotting of that earlier novel (arguably Coe's best to date) is replaced by a much more diffuse structure, which at times strains to cohere satisfactorily. Coe's narrative centres around a quartet of young friends at a Birmingham school and their social, sexual, political and artistic rites of passage. Trotter, Harding, Anderton and Chase are a carefully selected group each of whom allows Coe to make some characteristically gentle insights into the society and mores of the time. These are the dying years of the Labour government, of wildcat strikes; of Enoch Powell and the immigration controversy; of the advent of punk rock; of when NME was a force abroad in the land (at least to some members of the younger generation) and the IRA was bombing pubs in Birmingham. Against this background, Coe focuses on his four central characters. Sean Harding's anarchic figure makes him a legend of lunacy at the school (while concealing a broken family life and a degree of artistic sensibility). Doug Anderton begins to absorb the political lessons of his father a leading shop steward at British Leyland's troubled Longbridge plant, a worker-comrade with 'Red' Robbo. (Anderton senior also has an affair with a young girl who abruptly vanishes). Philip Chase struggles to live with his parent's faltering marriage and his faltering career as a progressive rocker. (His mother meanwhile has an affair with Mr Plumb, one of his teachers). And Benjamin trotter, the nominal hero and at the centre of the book is an aspiring composer, novelist, Christian madly in love with the distant Cicely. All four edit the school magazine 'The Bill Board', the editorial content of which gives the book some some of its best moments. There are some very pleasing things here, such as Harding's antics (his inking-up to stage a part in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in class is particularly cherishable), Benjamin's misfortunes as Prefect, or the delicious depiction of the Chase dinner party. The gentle mockery of the pretensions of the lower bourgeoise, the little ironies of everyday life in and out of school, always seem to bring the best of Coe, and are the main reasons to read this book. He is less steady when it comes to big issues of the day. Industrial strife, mainland terrorism and racism are threaded through the narrative proficiently enough, but without making much impact. One feels they are painted in, but without any shade or shadow. It is as if he feels he has to 'cover' them, rather than offer any fresh insights as a writer. Significantly, some of the most unconvincing elements in the book surround these larger issues, such as the ghastly tale of Lois' tragedy (which treads dangerously close to bathos), or the industrial strife at Longbridge. Most revealing, while the somewhat prissy Ben is given extensive page coverage, one character which perpetually contains the greatest dramatic potential - that of the solitary, harrassed, black student Steve Richards - hardly utters a word thoughout. His feud with the racist Culpepper, if anything, is underwritten. Perhaps realising, and wishing to balance this, Coe seeks to pump up Ben's presence as a character with a long penultimate section, 36 pages of internal dialogue, written with a full stop. While an interesting formal experiment, this is part of the book that this reader at least found wearisome verging on self-indulgent. Together with some other sections which can be detatched from the plot as separate episodes (the holiday in Denmark and the grandmother's story, for instance) show a distracting lack of focus. Coe's natural skills as storyteller paper over many of the cracks however, although some loose ends remains unresolved (what did happen to Miriam?). He obviously cares about his characters, and performs the difficult task of providing gentle social satire without the outright mockery which would make the story cruel. I'd recommend this to those who have enjoyed Coes's other books. To one who has not, and wants a representative title to try, I'd suggest the aforementioned What a Carve Up!
Rating:
Summary: Back to school
Review: This is a comic but serious novel about the pain and joy of growing up and surviving school. Ben Trotter (aka Bent Rotter) negotiates his way through the minefield of adolescence, while trying to keep his oh so sensitive soul intact against all the odds. I went to a school very much like the one Jonathan Coe describes, and reading the novel took me right back there - the angst, the cruelty, the stupid rules, the winter of discontent, the sudden death of prog rock, the friendships, the rainswept summer holidays, the girlfriends. The book is set in 1970s Birmingham, and Coe does a good job of evoking the sheer strangeness of the period. To be taken back there, pre-Thatcher,when unions had some power, and 'socialism' still meant something, is to realise just how much has changed, how British society is so shaped by the era but could never ever go back to it. Althought there is politics here, this is not primarily a political novel. Rather its great idea is the possibility that there are moments in time, instants in our lives, that 'are worth worlds' - moments that make life worthwhile, moments that we wish could go on forever. The characters' experiences of such moments are ultimately what drive the novel forward. There were times when I laughed out loud, and many more times when I smiled in recognition. If I have one complaint it is that this is the first part of a two-novel sequence and I can't wait for the sequel.
Rating: 
Summary: Ho Hum
Review: Was writing for the high school paper a really important factor in shaping your personality? Was it important to you to be in the "right" group in high school? If yes, then you might find The Rotter's Club interesting. If, however, you never even knew your school had a paper, or didn't care about what was happening in the faculty lounge then you will find The Rotter's Club, and the group of kids in the book whose life seems to revolve around their school activities painful to read. The premise of this book is great: growing up in an England that is in economic and social disarray. There are strikes, IRA bombs and new artistic movements that are changing the landsacpe in England. But, what do we read about in this book? Mostly how much a character, Ben Trotter, who is insufferable, wants to get into the pants of the school hottie. Guess what, because of his sincerity and writing ability, he does. Like, who cares?
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