Middle England (novel)

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Middle England is a novel by Jonathan Coe , published by Viking in 2018 . It is the third volume in a trilogy after The Rotters' Club (2001) and The Closed Circle (2004). The novel describes the experiences of the main characters in the previous books against the background of what happened before, during and after the Brexit referendum .

main characters

  • Benjamin Trotter lives at the beginning of the novel in an old mill in Shropshire , which he bought from the proceeds from the sale of an apartment in London before the financial crisis. He has not spoken to his brother Paul since the events of the previous novel, Class Reunion ("The Closed Circle"). He has been working on the same book for thirty years, the central point of which is his failed love for Cecily.
  • Colin Trotter moves in with his son Benjamin after the death of his wife Sheila. Colin used to work as an industrial worker for the now defunct British car manufacturer British Leyland . His role illustrates the psychological effects and physical decline at the end of a life and is symbolic of the industrial decline of Great Britain.
  • Lois Potter (Benjamin Trotter's sister) suffers from the aftermath of the trauma she suffered in the Birmingham bombings , which resulted in the death of her then fiancé. She lives separated from her husband Christopher and no longer feels an inner connection to him, but cannot bring herself to end the relationship.
  • Christopher Potter lives separated from his wife Lois and is happy when his daughter Sophie decides to move in with him temporarily.
  • Sophie Potter works as a lecturer in art history. At the beginning of the novel, she has to take part in a follow-up training session due to being over speeded. She falls in love with one of the driving instructors, whom she eventually marries.
  • Ian is a driving instructor. He met Sophie at one of his training courses and later married her. When an expected promotion goes to a colleague from Asia, he feels set back, which affects his voting behavior in the Brexit referendum .
  • Helena is Ian's mother. Her political views create tension with her daughter-in-law Sophie and, to a lesser extent, with her son. She is Eurosceptic and in favor of an immigration freeze. At one point it declares its agreement with the xenophobic views that Enoch Powell expressed in his infamous Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 in advance of Britain's accession to the EC.
  • Douglas (Doug) Anderton is a leftist journalist who writes opinion columns for the Guardian and other newspapers. Although he grew up in a strictly socialist family, he lives in the middle-class district of Chelsea and is married to a wealthy heiress. He attended the same school as Benjamin and Philip in the 1970s.
  • Philip Chase is a good friend of Benjamin and Doug, with whom he went to high school together. Philip has his own publishing house, whose core business is art books with archive images of English cities. He supports Benjamin by publishing his book.
  • Charlie Chappell is a childhood friend of Benjamin. Although he attended another secondary school and thus no longer part of Benjamin's immediate environment for many years, they revive their friendship as adults. Charlie works as a child clown.
  • Ronald Culpepper attended the same senior year as Benjamin, Doug, and Philip at King William's School. At that point, he was expressing racist views about black classmates. In the period of current actions, he is the head of a right-wing think tank to strengthen English nationalism .
  • Sohan is Sophie's work colleague from Sri Lanka . Sophie attends the marriage ceremony with his partner Mike and the subsequent wedding celebration.

Other characters from Coe's earlier work reappear, such as writer Lionel Hampshire and his assistant Hermione (from the short story Canadians Can't Flirt , included in Tales from a Master's Notebook ), while characters from The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle as Cicely Boyd and Paul Trotter are only mentioned in the retro perspective.

History of origin

In the author's note at the end of the book, Coe explains that two main inspirations determined his desire to reinvigorate the main characters of earlier works. After an interview with the writer Alice Adams, in which she praised his work The Closed Circle , he entered into correspondence with her. Their “enthusiasm” convinced him to revive characters that had been put aside. After a visit to a theater adaptation of his work The Rotters Club by Richard Cameron, the significance of the sibling relationship between Benjamin and Lois for his book series became clear to him, which made him want to develop these characters further. In addition, Coe states that the character Emily Shamma is named after a woman who successfully applied as part of a fundraising campaign to play a role with someone under her name in Coe's next book. In an article the author wrote for the Guardian a few days before the novel was published , he stated that "he wanted to convey a powerful and specific feeling for the nature of English public life over the past eight years". Although he doubted whether this would affect the longevity of his novel, he ultimately decided that it was important for writers to look at contemporary events, as their work was thus a "living basis for the attempt to to understand what happened ”.

reception

Alex Preston , who writes for the Guardian , felt that Coe's use of characters spanning generations and spanning nearly an entire decade would make him the first author to address the current national identity crisis in a way that is extremely suitable for this task and thus stands out from simultaneous projects such as those of Ali Smith and Amanda Craig . In the Irish Times , John Boyne concludes his review by stating: "Millions of words have been and are being written about Brexit, but few hit the point of why it is so radical, as accurate as the novel 'Middle England'." A number Reviewers have compared Coe's novel suite with the works of Anthony Powell , with Ian Sansom referring to Powell's Dance to the Music of Time as the closest thing to a description of contemporary middle class England. Preston and Sam Leith , on the other hand, have the impression that Coe's closeness to present-day events leads to weaknesses in the narrative, with the former noting that the ending makes a “somewhat piecemeal” impression, whereas the latter sees the novel in its entirety in his efforts to address the situation to describe the nation as not completely successful. Some critics also questioned how relevant the open political aspects of the novel would be after it was published, with Leith commenting that because of Coe's attempt to explain current events, "certain passages feel clunky."

With regard to Coe's political stance, Leith felt that he was playing the role of the great father of a novel that urges readers to sympathize only with people who have voted for Britain to remain in the EU. In his review for Prospect , Ian Sansom describes the book as a "brilliant Brexit novel," but notes that "anyone who votes for Brexit in the novel is portrayed as slightly or explicitly racist or at least a bit simple-minded". Craig Brown , who writes for The Mail on Sunday , felt that the bias perceived by Coe was the reason for failing to resolve the contradictions of a political novel, since a novel is supposed to represent human complexity while politics is more of a simple matter dissolve in black and white. In contrast, Jonathan Derbyshire of the Financial Times notes that Coe's work, despite its Eurocentrism, is interesting because of its ambivalent embrace of the English character, while Allan Massie in The Scotsman praises the author for his sympathy for his protagonists, acknowledging that “ a large part of the anger about political correctness and the resentment of people who do not feel at home in their own country “is not unjustified. Many critics praised the quality of Coe's writing style, the drafting of the plot, the drawing of the characters and his humor. Leith described it as "effortlessly successful as always" and praised the humor of the plot details. Brown noted that Coe was "extraordinarily adept at creating the plot, tackling big, ambitious topics." In his review for The Spectator , Jon Day Coes recommended "crafty and precise" writing, as was the author's talent for transitions to shape between scenes. But he also had the feeling that while the author was writing “irresistible, human and funny novels”, the lack of experimental elements in his otherwise pleasing work confirmed rather than challenged the prejudices of the readers. In comparison, Mark Lawson , who writes for Literary Review , felt that Coe had moved from a more experimental mode to a more reserved writing style with a talent for character drawing and compelling narrative, and that this transformation was reflected in the scene in which, in the course of the revision process for publication, transforms Benjamin Trotter's oversized postmodern masterpiece into a conventional novel that is subsequently nominated for the Booker Prize.
The German-language press has now also discovered Brexit as a literary genre. In her article from February 11, 2019 in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , Marion Löhndorf gives an overview of the literature that has emerged on this. About Middle England , it says in her post that here political events are interwoven with relationship stories about middle-class people from the Midlands.

Awards

expenditure

Translations

  • Translated by Maria Giulia Castagnone. Feltrinelli Travelers , Paperback, published November 15, 2018, ISBN 978-88-07-03319-3 , (it.)
  • Translated by Maria Giulia Castagnone. Feltrinelli Editore, EBook, publication date November 15, 2018, (it.)
  • Translated by Maria Giulia Castagnone. Kindle edition, published November 15, 2018, (it.)
  • Klein Engeland , Übers. Otto Biersma and Petra van der Erden, Bezige Bij , paperback, published on March 21, 2019, ISBN 978-9403149004 , (nl.)
  • Middle England. Roman , transl. Cathrine Hornung and Dieter Fuchs. Folio Verlag , publication date February 11, 2020, ISBN 978-3-85256-801-0 (hardcover), 978-3-99037-101-5 (e-book), (German)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Coe: Middle England | The Modern Novel .
  2. ↑ Jonathan Coe: Middle England . Viking, London 2018, ISBN 978-0-241-30946-9 , pp. 423-424.
  3. ↑ Jonathan Coe: Jonathan Coe: can fiction make sense of the news? (en-GB) . In: The Guardian , November 3, 2018. 
  4. ↑ a b Alex Preston: Middle England by Jonathan Coe review - Brexit comedy (en-GB) . In: The Observer , November 25, 2018. 
  5. ↑ John Boyne: Middle England review: Delving into the heart of Brexit Britain ( en )
  6. ↑ a b Mark Lawson: Rotters' Return ( en )
  7. ↑ a b c Jonathan Derbyshire: Has Jonathan Coe written the first great Brexit novel? ( en-GB )
  8. ↑ a b Ian Sansom: Jonathan Coe's new novel has a Brexit blind spot ( en-US )
  9. ↑ a b c d Sam Leith: Middle England by Jonathan Coe review - a bittersweet Brexit novel (en-GB) . In: The Guardian , November 16, 2018. 
  10. ↑ Ian Sansom: A novel view of Brexit: Middle England, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed ( en-US ) November 3, 2018.
  11. ↑ a b Craig Brown: Jonathan Coe's Middle England: 'Too obvious to be satire' . October 27, 2018.
  12. ↑ Allan Massie: Book review: Middle England, by Jonathan Coe ( en )
  13. ↑ Jon Day: A novel view of Brexit: Middle England, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed ( en-US ) November 3, 2018.
  14. ↑ Marion Löhndorf: Brexit is now literature , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 11, 2019, accessed on April 8, 2019
  15. ↑ Costa Book Awards 2019 winners revealed , irishtimes.com, January 6, 2020, accessed January 29, 2020.