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Bournville: From the bestselling author of Middle England
Jonathan Coe
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Description for Bournville: From the bestselling author of Middle England
Paperback.
From the bestselling author of Middle England and Mr Wilder and Me comes a brilliant new state of the nation novel
In the Birmingham suburb of Bournville, a family celebrate VE Day in 1945. With the joy of such an occasion there also come larger national questions about the nature of the horrific war the country has just been through. Following this family through generations as they navigate seventy-five years of drastic social change, from wartime nostalgia and English exceptionalism to the World Cup and coronavirus, domestic secrets and national myths leave characters and a country adrift, bewildered and ... Read moredivided.
Bournville is the story of who we are - at our worst, and best. From bestselling author Jonathan Coe comes a novel of rare humour and humanity, a novel that holds up a mirror to our past and our present.
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Product Details
Publisher
Penguin Books Ltd
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
About Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as What a Carve Up! and Number 11, and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls, his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen ... Read more(both for Middle England). Show Less
Reviews for Bournville: From the bestselling author of Middle England
With his third novel in four years, Coe is on a roll; he tracks the fortunes of a family through snapshots of communal experiences, from the Queen's coronation through the 1966 World Cup to pandemic lockdown, in a moving, compassionate portrait of individual and national change
Guardian, Best Fiction of 2022
The way Coe starkly captures the paranoia ... Read moreand fear of the early days of the pandemic is impressive and he has written what he calls a "faithful account" of the death of his mother during lockdown. It makes an intensely affecting finale to a fine novel.
Independent, Best Book of the Year
Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state of the nation novel: Jonathan Coe is one of them
New Statesman
Epic in scope, but personal in resonance
Elizabeth Day Coe's interwoven paeans to the lives of those rooted in the very centre of the UK - The Rotter's Club and Middle England among them - blend comedy, tragedy and social commentary in enjoyably memorable fashion, and his latest, Bournville, is no exception . . . Coe's particular gift is to understand how nostalgia, regret and an apprehension of what the future will bring might make us more, not less, empathetic to the frailties of those around us
FT, Best Audiobooks of the Year
Very tempting
The Times
In this affecting generational saga, framed by the pandemic and structured by seven milestone broadcasts, Jonathan Coe - known for his state-of-the-nation novels - once again takes the temperature of Britain
FT, Best Books of 2022
At heart Bournville is a novel designed to make you think by making you laugh, and the seriousness of the subject matter is tempered throughout by the author's piercing eye for the more ludicrous elements of human nature
New Statesman
A compelling social history that's sprinkled throughout with Coe's inimitable humour, love and white-hot anger
Evening Standard
A hugely impressive state-of-the-nation tale
Observer
British novelists love to diagnose the state of the nation. Few do it better than Jonathan Coe, who writes with warmth and subversive glee about social change and the comforting mundanities it imperils
Spectator
This charming read is as warming, rich and comforting as a mug of hot chocolate
The Times
This is another eminently readable Coe, full of believable characters and fizzing dialogue. And it couldn't be more timely
Big Issue
Coe has the great gift of combining engaging human stories with a deeper structural pattern that gives the book its heft
Guardian
Set in Coe's native Midlands and told through the lives of four generations of one family, beginning with 11-year-old Mary in 1945, Bournville is a poignant, clever and witty portrait of social change and how the British see themselves.
Radio Times, Best Books of the Year
Bournville is Jonathan Coe's most ambitious novel yet . . . a novel about people and place. Entertaining and often poignant, it presents a captivating portrait of how Britons lived then and the way they live now
Economist
A book of things blended together: comedy with tragedy, England's past with its present, and cocoa solids with vegetable fat . . . the best fictional portrayal of lockdown that I've read
Irish Times
Told with compassion, steadiness, decency and always a glint in the eye, this is a novel that both challenges and delights. For anyone who has felt lost in the past six years, it is like meeting an ally
Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle Coe is an eminently readable novelist
Daily Mail
Full of vibrant characters and fabulous dialogue, which switches from laugh-out-loud funny to extremely poignant
Independent
The changing face of postwar Britain is brilliantly captured
FT
As the latest in J Coe's Unrest sequence, Bournville is one of the most warm-hearted, brilliant and beguiling of his State of the Nation novels. To show three generations of an ordinary Midlands family, their paths taken and not taken, their friends, lovers, jobs, achievements and losses; to interweave this with 75 years of national history - and to do so with such a lightness of touch is a tremendous achievement. All the absurdities of our nation wrapped up in something as bitter, sweet, and addictive as a bar of the best Bournville chocolate
Amanda Craig, author of The Golden Rule Affectionate, full of good humour, and often moving, this is Coe at his best.
Crack Magazine
Slips down a treat
Daily Mail
For all the novel's satirical tang and historical sweep, it's at root a tender portrait of apparently simple folk trying to fathom the mystery of their own personalities
Spectator
A tender portrayal of the state of the nation through the prism of family relationships
Woman & Home
There is much to enjoy here, as in all Coe's novels . . . an intelligent criticism of our shared history since 1945
Scotsman
[Coe] has a huge talent for balancing humour with poignancy
Book of the month, Good Housekeeping
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