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I've been a big Coe fan ever since I picked up The Rotters Club a few years ago. I think he is just about the only literary author whose every book I have bought. He tends to write rather sensibly for The Guardian too, and I recommend a trawl of their website for any bits of his journalism you can find.
The Accidental Woman was his first novel, and in a quite bewildering act of authorial cockiness, it is written as a pastiche of debut novels. This makes it rather hard to read, though at least it is short. When I get home I'll edit this with an example of it, and you will see what I mean. Telling the tale of the life of a woman to whom life seems like an accident, it is a bit whimsical in places, and fairly depressing.
He followed this up with The Dwarves of Death, which at least had a proper plot, and some characters whom it is possible to tolerate. There are some good jokes too.
A Touch of Love can be seen as the last of his novels where he was, if you like, learning the ropes. Again, it is very short, and features another rather depressed person, this time a failed author and post-graduate student, who whilst taking a leak in a public park is arrested for indecent behaviour (thre was a small boy in the vicinity). Interspersed within the text are the four stories this character (can't remember his name) has written, and each section of the novel is based in some way upon this story. Life imitating art and art imitating life, at the same time.
The first three novels are short and difficult to like, I think. I haven't ever had the desire to read any of them a second time.
Having completed his apprentiship, Coe set to work on his first 'big' novel, What a Carve Up!, which is still considered his best work. It's far funnier than his previous books, and miles more ambitious. What's more, it works, too. An angry critique of the culture of greed of the '80s, it features the first obvious signs of infuence from B.S. Johnson (more on him later): the book is made up of two main threads, continuing on alternate chapters. But one of the stories is made up of completlely different styles: third person, first person, radio interviews, diary entries. It's almost like a scrap book style of writing, and it keeps things interesting and fresh. Heartily recommended.
Next up, though slightly less well received, was The House of Sleep. Narrated by four different characters, all of whom cross in and out of each others lives, sometimes not even knowing it, the big stylistic trick is that each alternate chapter is set in the '80s and the '90s. The last sentence of each chapter is not complete, however, and is picked up in the next one, ten years later or earlier. If you see what I mean. Anyway, it' a good read, not as ambitious as WACU! but it does contain one excellent extended joke, where a cock up in the editing of footnotes in a magazine article leads to disaster. The numbers, you see, are knocked out of order by one, and of course, though they still work, the notes are innapropriate, libellous, and hilarious. Good stuff, but not much of a leap forward.
His next novel was The Rotters Club which was cautiously reviewed, but in the end of year round ups everyone seemed to love it. Semi-autobiographical, concerning the trials of growing up in '70s Birmingham, it deals with some big themes in a touching and humourous way. Once again employing the 'scrapbook' style, it again works brilliantly. Time frames jump about, school magazines are included and the character of Harding (the school's Lord of Misrule) is a work of genius. It probably isn't as good a book as WACU!, but it is far more likable, in my opinion. The B.S. Johnson influence also comes through strongly again, not least in the last chapter - which consists of just one, extraordinarily long, sentence.
Like a Fiery Elephant, is a biography of the novelist B.S. Johnson, a modernist most famous for having holes in the pages of one book, so that the reader could see the future (Albert Angelo) and one where the 27 section were unbound and published in a box, so that they could be read in any order, thus mirroring the chaos and randomness of life, apparently (The Unfortunates). His modernism stretched further than these tricks though, and his writing itself was an attempt to push the boundaries and the form of the novel. He considered that 'all stories are lies' and so almost all his novels were autobiographical, or at least based on the lives of people he'd known. Coe's book is sensitive, adventurous, literary and accessible and easily my book of the year. I recommend this to anyone who takes reading and books even reomtely seriously.
The Closed Circle is the sequel to The Rotters' Club, as had been mentioned elsewhere, and continues the style of that book: plenty of narrative viewpoints, lots of uses of different forms (emails, letters, diaries, different perspectives) and big themes: war, terrorism, New Labour, the decline of industry in the UK, love, families, racism. Indeed, many of the criticisms in the press about this book have been that it tries to do too much, and it is a valid one. But I don't think he could have written it any other way. I think that it was always going to have its flaws and would never be a perfect book, but that doesn't make it any the less enjoyable. Most of the loose ends from the first book are tied up, though not always to the protagonists' satisfaction, let alone the reader's. Coe almost seems rushed at times, as if he knows he has a lot of stuff to get through by the end of the book. These two books were originally going to be six, and one wonders whether he has just crammed everything in he could. I don't want to be unduly negative - this is still a great book. It's funny, moving, surprising and heartwarming, just like its predecessor. What Coe does brilliantly is that his characters are just so likeable, even the shallow Paul Trotter elicits sympathy rather than aversion. Benjamin Trotter is the heart and the soul of these novels, and in a way his life runs a parallel course with that of the 'accidental woman' of Coe's first novel. Anyway, it's very good, if flawed. Read The Rotters' Club, then this - you will feel a lot better for it.
The Accidental Woman was his first novel, and in a quite bewildering act of authorial cockiness, it is written as a pastiche of debut novels. This makes it rather hard to read, though at least it is short. When I get home I'll edit this with an example of it, and you will see what I mean. Telling the tale of the life of a woman to whom life seems like an accident, it is a bit whimsical in places, and fairly depressing.
He followed this up with The Dwarves of Death, which at least had a proper plot, and some characters whom it is possible to tolerate. There are some good jokes too.
A Touch of Love can be seen as the last of his novels where he was, if you like, learning the ropes. Again, it is very short, and features another rather depressed person, this time a failed author and post-graduate student, who whilst taking a leak in a public park is arrested for indecent behaviour (thre was a small boy in the vicinity). Interspersed within the text are the four stories this character (can't remember his name) has written, and each section of the novel is based in some way upon this story. Life imitating art and art imitating life, at the same time.
The first three novels are short and difficult to like, I think. I haven't ever had the desire to read any of them a second time.
Having completed his apprentiship, Coe set to work on his first 'big' novel, What a Carve Up!, which is still considered his best work. It's far funnier than his previous books, and miles more ambitious. What's more, it works, too. An angry critique of the culture of greed of the '80s, it features the first obvious signs of infuence from B.S. Johnson (more on him later): the book is made up of two main threads, continuing on alternate chapters. But one of the stories is made up of completlely different styles: third person, first person, radio interviews, diary entries. It's almost like a scrap book style of writing, and it keeps things interesting and fresh. Heartily recommended.
Next up, though slightly less well received, was The House of Sleep. Narrated by four different characters, all of whom cross in and out of each others lives, sometimes not even knowing it, the big stylistic trick is that each alternate chapter is set in the '80s and the '90s. The last sentence of each chapter is not complete, however, and is picked up in the next one, ten years later or earlier. If you see what I mean. Anyway, it' a good read, not as ambitious as WACU! but it does contain one excellent extended joke, where a cock up in the editing of footnotes in a magazine article leads to disaster. The numbers, you see, are knocked out of order by one, and of course, though they still work, the notes are innapropriate, libellous, and hilarious. Good stuff, but not much of a leap forward.
His next novel was The Rotters Club which was cautiously reviewed, but in the end of year round ups everyone seemed to love it. Semi-autobiographical, concerning the trials of growing up in '70s Birmingham, it deals with some big themes in a touching and humourous way. Once again employing the 'scrapbook' style, it again works brilliantly. Time frames jump about, school magazines are included and the character of Harding (the school's Lord of Misrule) is a work of genius. It probably isn't as good a book as WACU!, but it is far more likable, in my opinion. The B.S. Johnson influence also comes through strongly again, not least in the last chapter - which consists of just one, extraordinarily long, sentence.
Like a Fiery Elephant, is a biography of the novelist B.S. Johnson, a modernist most famous for having holes in the pages of one book, so that the reader could see the future (Albert Angelo) and one where the 27 section were unbound and published in a box, so that they could be read in any order, thus mirroring the chaos and randomness of life, apparently (The Unfortunates). His modernism stretched further than these tricks though, and his writing itself was an attempt to push the boundaries and the form of the novel. He considered that 'all stories are lies' and so almost all his novels were autobiographical, or at least based on the lives of people he'd known. Coe's book is sensitive, adventurous, literary and accessible and easily my book of the year. I recommend this to anyone who takes reading and books even reomtely seriously.
The Closed Circle is the sequel to The Rotters' Club, as had been mentioned elsewhere, and continues the style of that book: plenty of narrative viewpoints, lots of uses of different forms (emails, letters, diaries, different perspectives) and big themes: war, terrorism, New Labour, the decline of industry in the UK, love, families, racism. Indeed, many of the criticisms in the press about this book have been that it tries to do too much, and it is a valid one. But I don't think he could have written it any other way. I think that it was always going to have its flaws and would never be a perfect book, but that doesn't make it any the less enjoyable. Most of the loose ends from the first book are tied up, though not always to the protagonists' satisfaction, let alone the reader's. Coe almost seems rushed at times, as if he knows he has a lot of stuff to get through by the end of the book. These two books were originally going to be six, and one wonders whether he has just crammed everything in he could. I don't want to be unduly negative - this is still a great book. It's funny, moving, surprising and heartwarming, just like its predecessor. What Coe does brilliantly is that his characters are just so likeable, even the shallow Paul Trotter elicits sympathy rather than aversion. Benjamin Trotter is the heart and the soul of these novels, and in a way his life runs a parallel course with that of the 'accidental woman' of Coe's first novel. Anyway, it's very good, if flawed. Read The Rotters' Club, then this - you will feel a lot better for it.
