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| The Rotters' Club | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Coe
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  50 reviews
Sales Rank: 24950
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.3
ISBN: 014029466X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140294668
ASIN: 014029466X
Publication Date: March 19, 2002
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Excellent condition. Name on inside flap.
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Amazon.co.uk Review
At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan What a Carve Up Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of quite how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains of four Brummie schoolboys--Philip, Sean, Doug and Benjamin--who must not only come to terms with the normal pangs of adolescence but with terrible knitwear, ludicrous pop-music, nightmarish food and insidious racism, all set against the awful, surreal and tragicomic reality of a post-imperial nation.The book suffers in its programmatic attempts to make the four boys and their families symbolise, or represent, Something Important To Do With British Life. Doug, for instance, symbolises Industrial Decline, via his dad, a shop steward at the doomed British Leyland Longbridge plant. For Sean its Sexual Liberation--at least he's the one that looks most likely to get his rocks off. And young Ben Trotter would appear to represent A Young Jonathan Coe. But if this aspect of the novel seems contrived, then the author's capricious, deft, wryly comedic and touchingly empathetic style keeps things chugging along, as he knits together the troubles and tragedies of some fairly ordinary people living through fairly extraordinary years. --Sean Thomas
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 Just Falls Short May 21, 2008
I really thought I was going to like this book after the first page which made me chuckle. It's 2003 in Berlin. Two young people are sitting down to dinner and talking about their parents. One asks the other where he thinks they have gone. "Clubbing, probably. Checking out the techno places," says one. "Are you serious?" comes the reply. "Of course not. My dad's never been to a club in his life. The last album he bought was by Barclay James Harvest." "Who" "Exactly."
Now as anybody who knows me will testify I am more than a bit partial to BJH, as I would suggest the author is to have brought it up. And of course at the height of their career BJH were massive in Germany and in particular Berlin.
I suppose the fact that this is the most memorable part of the book rather shows that I found it disappointing. For me the early 1970s were wonderful years. Years when the world was changing in a strange and marvellous way. Coe tries to evoke this world but sadly falls rather short of doing so successfully.
The fact it took me three months to finish the book, probably says it all as time after time I lost patience and gave up. It must be said, however, that there was an attraction that made me return, but it wasn't a strong enough rights of passage book to make me want to read the sequel The Closed Circle.
The Very Maws of Doom September 24, 2007
"The Rotters' Club" was first published in 2001, and went on to win Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. It's set in 1970s Birmingham, and incorporates a number of real-life people, places and events into the back-story - including the Birmingham Pub Bombing (which led to the imprisonment of the Birmingham Six), the infamous British Leyland plant, the Unions and the inevitable strikes, Enoch Powell, the National Front and various other similar factions and the changes in musical fashion - most notably, from prog to punk rock.
The book tells the story of Ben Trotter's life at secondary achool, and opens in 1973. Ben has one older sister, Lois, and a younger brother, Paul and all three attend King Williams School - quite a prestigious establishment, though seen as a school for "toffs" by the city's working class. Of Ben's two siblings, Lois is much more likeable - and, as it turns out, a great deal more unfortunate. She starts dating Malcolm - generally just referred to as 'Hairy Guy' - shortly after the book opens. (Hairy Guy proves to be a big influence on Ben's musical taste). Paul, Ben's younger brother, generally tends to be a poisonous, spiteful brat. Among Ben's friends at school are Philip Chase, Duggie Anderton and Sean Harding. Like Ben's father, Duggie's father also works at British Leyland. However, where Ben's father is management, Duggie's father is a shop steward for the Union and a committed socialist. Ben, like every other boy at school, is hopelessly in love with Cicely Boyd. It's a pity, really, as he would have been much better off with the very likeable Claire Newman. (Meanwhile, Claire's sister - Miriam - is having an affair with Duggie's dad as the book opens).
The story is mostly told by Sophie - Ben's neice and Lois' daughter - looking back to the 1970s. Occasionally, some of the characters tell part of the story in their own words - a short story by Ben himself, a speech given by Duggie, sections of Lois' diary, the editorials of the school newspaper - even, at one point, a letter written to Ben by another character. On the whole it is a very readable, very enjoyable book - the only sections that disn't work for me were the introduction and the conclusion - featuring Sophie and Patrick. (In fact, the introduction was so bad I nearly didn't bother with the rest of the book). The book also, apparently holds the record for the longest sentence in English literature - Coe would've been better off just using punctuation, and forgetting about the record books, but it's not really that big a deal. Good enough for me to keep an eye out for its sequel - "The Closed Circle", which was released in 2004 and picks up the story in 1990s.
 Funny and Charming August 19, 2007
This was a good nostalgic read, with great characterisation. Funny, moving, very well written - Lois's story was particularly poignant. I would highly recommend this book. I also enjoyed the sequel, although Ben does become very odd!
The perfect holiday novel October 23, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The Rotters' Club is a charming and ambitious novel which chronicles four adolescent schoolboys growing up in 1970s Birmingham and trying to make sense of their lives.
It is a rewarding book and one that I would thoroughly recommend to my friends. Johnathan Coe is an imaginative writer who cleverly uses simple narrative to introduce many complex and emotive issues. In doing so, he is able to create a compelling story from the ordinary lives of people.
I am glad that I took a chance on this novel having initially been unsure as to whether I would be interested in a book about 1970s school children. I need not have worried. This is not a novel about 1970s life. It is about relationships and growing up.
For that reason, this book may disappoint people looking for amusing tales of Blue Nun. For those looking for an engaging novel that will make you feel different about how you view the world, this is a perfect fit.
So ignore the 1970s advertising and realise that Coe has used the backdrop of frustrating industrial stalemate so he can beautifully offset this with the youthful optimism that permeates this book.
This is one of those rare books that is thoroughly engaging as you read it and leaves you feeling great about the world. For that reason I cannot think of a better holiday book.
I fail to see what all the fuss is about July 17, 2004
4 out of 16 found this review helpful
This is a fairly undemanding read about which there seems to have been a great deal of fuss. It's a moderately engaging stroll through one boy's adolescence with a background of national events providing some anchor points for non-Brum readers. That's about it really -- it's hardly Catcher in the Rye, still less To Kill a Mockingbird. More a sort of cleaned up Molesworth with better spelling and less laughs, veering strangely between pathos and bathos -- but then I suppose most people's lives do that anyway.
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