July 03, 2004

The Rotters' Club

My book recommendation for this weekend is one of my favorite novels of the last few years, Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters’ Club. It deals with the trials and tribulations of four guys growing up around Birmingham, England in the early 1970’s. This setting allows all manner of social commentary, both funny and dark as pitch. But the deeper story is the tale of these four young men, what they learn, the choices they make, and who they become. I think Stephen Amidon’s review in The Atlantic Monthly was on target in saying that “the strength of The Rotters’ Club lies in its comic humanity”. This is a rapier-sharp coming-of-age story, both of the four principals and of the society they inhabit, but it is not remotely cynical.

Posted by armand at July 3, 2004 10:34 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Books


Comments

This afternoon I finished reading The Closed Circle - the follow-up to The Rotters Club. Honestly, it's nowhere near as good that earlier novel. But if you liked the characters in The Rotters Club and want to see how they continued to cross each others lives as the decades went by, you might well enjoy its diversions.

Posted by: Armand at February 10, 2007 07:57 PM | PERMALINK
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