A WBS™ Pick! Middle England by Jonathan Coe

A WBS™ Pick! Middle England by Jonathan Coe

Official Synopsis:

‘It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people’

Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change.

There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about the future of the country and, possibly, the future of their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse, and his radical teenage daughter who will stop at nothing in her quest for social justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote in the European referendum.

And within all these lives is the story of modern England: a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage.

‘From post-industrial Birmingham to the London riots and the current political gridlock, [Middle England] takes in family, literature and love in a comedy for our times’ – Guardian

‘Coe’s comic critique of a divided country dazzles . . . Properly laugh-out-loud funny . . . it is also incisive and brilliant about our divided country and the deep chasms revealed by the vote to leave. Do not miss’ – The Bookseller

Official Author Bio: Jonathan Coe was born on 19 August 1961 in Lickey, a suburb of south-west Birmingham. His first surviving story, a detective thriller called The Castle of Mystery, was written at the age of eight. The first few pages of this story appear in his novel What a Carve Up!

In the late 1980s he moved to London to pursue his literary and musical enthusiasms, writing songs for his short-lived band The Peer Group and a feminist cabaret group called Wanda and the Willy Warmers. The Accidental Woman was published in April, 1987, and was followed by A Touch of Love (1989) and The Dwarves of Death (1990), but it was not until the publication of his fourth novel, What a Carve Up! that he began to reach a wider audience. It became his first international success, with translations in sixteen languages.

His work has received many prizes and awards, mainly from continental Europe. In France he won the Prix Médicis for The House of Sleep and has been appointed Officier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres.

 In Italy he has recently won the Premio Flaiano (for Number 11) and the Premio Bauer-Ca’ Foscari. The citation for the latter prize concluded that ‘for his keen interest in the most crucial issues of contemporary civilization, Jonathan Coe may be considered a complete novelist and a classic of our times’.