From the Jacket
The characters of "The Rotters'' Club--Jonathan Coe''s nostalgic,
humorous evocation of adolescent life in the 1970s--have bartered
their innocence for the vengeance of middle age in a story that is
very much of the moment, charged with such issues as 9/11 and the
invasion of Iraq.
On New Year''s Eve of 1999, with Tony Blair presiding over a glossy
new version of Britain, Benjamin Trotter watches the celebration on
television in the same Birmingham house where he''d grown up.
Watches, in fact, his younger brother Paul, now a member of
Parliament and a rising star of New Labour, glad-handing his way
through the festive crowd at the Millennium Dome. Neither of them
could guess their lives are about to implode.
Paul begins an affair with his young assistant, soon realizes he
has made the fatal mistake of falling in love with her, then is
threatened with exposure by Doug Anderton, a journalist who happens
to be one of his oldest schoolboy enemies. At the same time,
Benjamin and his friend Claire, still haunted by memories almost
thirty years old, make a desperate attempt to break free of the
past, if only to escape the notion that their happiest years are
behind them.
As Cool Britannia is forced to address its ongoing racial and
social tensions--and as its role in America''s "war on terrorism"
grows increasingly compromised--"The Closed Circle shuttles between
London and Birmingham, where fat cats, politicos, media advisers,
and protesters in both locales lay bare an era when policy and PR
have become indistinguishable. Meanwhile, its rich cast of
characters contends with startling revelations about their youth
and the pressing, perennial problems of love, vocation, and family.
About the Author
Jonathan Coe's awards include the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the
Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the Prix Médicis Etranger, and,
for The Rotters' Club, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse
Prize for Comic Writing. He lives in London with his wife and their
two daughters.