Coe for Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse... Well, not quite, not yet, but the Silly Season is upon us and incurable readers like me need lots of lovely books to help us through the silliness.

At this time of the year we want our reading matter to be relatively pain-free, not necessarily 'easy', but not too complicated, dark or depressing. (It's dark enough outside if you're living in the Northern Hemisphere.) We want books that are well-written, that goes without saying, gripping and convincing, preferably with a decent dose of humour.

I got lucky and kicked off the Festive Season with a book that meets all the above requirements. Jonathan Coe's The Closed Circle  is a sequel to his hilarious portrait of adolescence in the seventies in Britain, The Rotters' Club. You don't have to read the seventies novel before the sequel - set three decades later in Blair's New Labour Britain at the beginning of the 21st century - because Coe provides a synopsis of The Rotters' Club for those who have not read it, or have read it and (in the writer's own words) 'inexplicably forgotten it'. This tongue-in-cheek phrase from the Author's Note sets the tone for a satirical and entertaining novel, 'with a disturbing undertow of menace', according to the Literary Review.

I got aquainted with The Rotters' Club during a lazy summer week on a yacht off the Croatian coast last year and found it such perfect holiday reading that I promptly posted a blog about it (http://maritareadingspace.blogspot.com/2010/08/those-lazy-hazy-days-of-summer.html). Much to my delight I can now report  that the sequel is just as enjoyable and eminently suitable for the Silly Season. 'Intensely readable', is how Ian Rankin rates it - and he should know, having written some intensely readable books himself. I have to confess I still prefer the earlier novel, but then I'm a child of the seventies. I  could identify with everything depicted in The Rotters' Club, from the punk rock to the ugly brown wallpaper.

In The Closed Circle Benjamin Trotter and his old school friends are on the brink of middle-age: married, divorced, disillusioned and angst-ridden. Coe manages to achieve the same irresistable mix of politics and sensual pleasures, satire and seriousness, as in the earlier novel - and music once again plays a prominent role.  

The Rotters' Club, after all, is also the title of an album by the cult group Hatfield and the North. And one of the three sections of The Closed Circle is called High on the Chalk, inspired by a song with the same title from the album Beet, Maize and Corn by The High Llamas. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of these groups. Even my French partner, who's a walking encyclopedia of modern music and often listens to Hatfield and the North, had to admit he doesn't know The High Llamas.   

By the way, it's through my partner that I got to know Coe's work, only after I'd moved to France, where they adore him. He seems to be one of those English authors who are perhaps even more popular in France than in some Anglo-Saxon countries. So if you're still searching for something to read while you're digesting your Christmas turkey or trifle, I can assure you that most of his novels would make pretty good festive fare for the spirit: What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep, The Dwarves of Death...

Season's Greetings to all readers out there - and may Santa bring you at least one great book this Christmas.



     

Those lazy hazy days of summer

Summer reading. What a lovely phrase that is, conjuring up images of swaying hammocks under shady trees, comfortable old couches on verandahs, lazing next to sparkling swimming pools. Sipping cool drinks and enjoying cool books - because summer reading should be like summer drinks: cool and light and fun rather than dark and heavy and serious.

Although light, when it comes to books, doesn't have to mean frivolous, brainless or badly written. Some of my all-time favourite books have been read during summer holidays, in a hammock or on a beach or on the deck of a boat. Many readers regard crime fiction or thrillers as perfect summer reading, others like biographies or non-fiction with a light touch. I tend to go for humorous novels with a literary undertone - or literary novels with a lot of humour. But then I tend to go for humorous literary novels in autumn, winter and spring too. A good summer read should be a good read right through the year.

Last month, while spending a sunny week on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, I managed to read four novels in five days. That's pretty much my idea of a perfect vacation. All four books were humorous and serious at the same time, but the most memorable was Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club. Coe's translated novels have been popular in France for at least a decade; The House of Sleep won the coveted Prix Médicis Etranger in 1998, and my French partner has read most of his books. But since it seems easier to find Coe's publications in France than in South Africa, where I buy most of my English reading matter, I haven't read him until last month. And what a delightful discovery it was!

The Rotter's Club is a richly comic coming of age tale set in 1970s Britain, featuring, among other things (quoting the jacket): 'IRA bombs, prog rock, punk rock, bad poetry, first love... prefects, detention, a few bottles of Blue Nun, lots of brown wallpaper...' You get the drift.

But it deals with much more than 'just' adolescence. The teenagers' parents and even grandparents' lives and loves are featured too, and the story is seen through the eyes of two of those erstwhile teenagers' children two decades later. It is above all a novel about the ecstacies and the agonies of the seventies. It would certainly be enjoyed by readers of all ages, but if you happen to have been young in the seventies, you might just adore it.

I grew up in seventies South Africa, which was a very different place from seventies Britain, and yet also eerily similar. In fact, reading this honest, sometimes tragic, often vividly funny account of Benjamin Trotter and his friends' struggle towards adulthood among ugly brown wallpaper, I was reminded that adolescence is always another country - no matter in which country the adolescent actually lives: Britain, South Africa, France or the dark side of the moon, like most teenagers.

And thank heavens for authors like Jonathan Coe who can lead us back to that country, laughing out loud in wonder and embarrassment, while we sip a chilly drink in a shady spot. Ah, the joys of summer reading...