The first predecessor to Coe's recent Middle England (although more like a prequel to me given I'm reading them in the wrong order), The Rotters Club is a simply brilliant evocation of the political and cultural zeitgeist of England in the 1970s. Filtered largely through the lives of teenagers at high school (all middle-aged, appropriately enough, in Middle England), it's also - by turns - searing and hilarious on this formative life stage. While there are occasional nostalgic interludes, the novel has bigger fish to fry, with the trades unions and Tories, race relations and the IRA all in its sights. But much of its entertainment value comes from recognition of the teenaged incomprehension, self-importance and angst of its primary characters. While more heightened than my own "skooldaze", I definitely recognised the agonised feelings and the japes, and even some of the characters (our Harding was called Haig). And I also had a shuddering familiarity with the general complicity towards racism painfully traced out. On these facets, it's particularly excellent, but it's much more of a solid all-rounder. The steady buildup of its labour relations backdrop, that completes with the ascension of Margaret Thatcher, is another highlight. As does the infusion of the dark IRA thread, and the timely spectre of the Yorkshire Ripper. Overall, it's a novel that's impossible not to recommend.
Finally, one distinction from Middle England is that this book was written from a position of hindsight, while Coe's Brexit novel is practically reportage. This lets the political scaffolding of The Rotters Club sit half-finished, because we know what calamities happen next. It'll be interesting to see how the future treats the later novel. Except for the fact that we'll have to live through it first.
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