Bournville: From the bestselling author of Middle England

Product Information

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 * 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 From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family. The perfect gift for book lovers this Christmas! His fiction has always been very successful in Europe. “I don’t present that many challenges to translate because the prose I write is very rarely poetic,” he says. And while it is not true that he has “never written a beautiful line”, as he puts it, he wants his books to be easy to read. “I regard that as a positive.” Four of the occasions are monarchy-related, from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to the funeral of Princess Diana, while the novel is bookended by VE day and the seventy-fifth anniversary of VE Day, coming full circle (also with the Prologue); the other one is the 1966 World Cup final.

He had long toyed with the idea of writing a novel set during the week of Princess Diana’s funeral, but he wanted to take a longer view than he has in the past. The public reaction to the Queen’s death – in particular “the queue” – confirmed his growing belief “that we’re a nation mainly driven by emotion”, he says. Where he used to regard events such as the response to Diana’s death and the Brexit referendum as “turning points, moments when the country changed direction”, now he is not so sure. Instead, he sees them as “symptoms” of a national identity crisis that has been brewing for decades. “We are starting to look like a country that is not driven by facts and evidence and reason at all, but in the far extremes of Brexitland by a kind of fantasy and wishful thinking.” 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 *Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state of the nation novel: Jonathan Coe is one of them * New Statesman * Bournville is an enjoyable family saga, centred on the memorable Mary - inspired by Jonathan Coe's own mother - whom we first meet in her little village on VE Day.

In 2012 Coe was invited by Javier Marías to become a duke of the kingdom of Redonda. He chose as his title "Duke of Prunes", after a favourite piece of music by Frank Zappa.

Retailers:

This is another eminently readable Coe, full of believable characters and fizzing dialogue. And it couldn't be more timely * Big Issue * The name of a village not just founded upon, and devoted to, but actually dreamed into being by chocolate. Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself.

The book also builds a deeper integrity out of echoes and motifs, like a piece of music. The phrase “all that caper”, a particular corner of a Birmingham pub, a yellow cravat, a line of Latin verse, the sound of laughter in a school playground – all set off chains of associations that ripple throughout the novel. A piece of casual homophobia will be recalled decades later by a son trying to come to terms with his sexual orientation.From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family Disappointing stuff. I think this novel was trying to do way too much and as a result didn't end up achieving any of it. Jonathan, Coe (8 November 2018). Middle England. [London]. ISBN 9780241309469. OCLC 1065525001. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Mary Lamb, the matriarch at the centre of this bittersweet family saga, a PE and music teacher, is modelled on his mother Janet. The rest of the family are fictional, he says, although the youngest son Peter, a musician, is a familiar Coe figure: “passive, slightly depressed men – often failed writers or composers or both – who show a rather uncommitted sexuality”, as the author himself once observed of his protagonists. Structured around seven national occasions, Bournville opens with a prologue at the onset of the pandemic and ends with the distressing circumstances of his mother’s death. He hadn’t set out to include so many royal landmarks – the coronation, the investiture of Prince Charles, the royal wedding, Princess Diana’s funeral – but as he was writing he realised they are often the triggers for moments of national coming together. It is, he says, both his most personal and political novel.Floppy-haired Boris, who popped up in Middle England, is here, in his early days as a reporter in Brussels, already known only by his first name. As Coe reflects drolly in an author’s note: “Whether he’s a fictional character or not remains hard to determine with any certainty.”

This novel is intended to stand alone, but is also part of a loosely connected series of books I've been writing for some years under the general title of Unrest.Parts of Bournville feel episodic, and the cast is so large that not every character can make an impression. However, these flaws are outweighed by the book’s many delights, particularly its involving storylines, comic set pieces and astute analysis. (...) This is 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." - The Economist Coe's 2019 book Middle England won the European Book Prize [5] [6] and also won the Costa Book Award in the Novel category. [7] Film and TV adaptations [ edit ] From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family. Many members of the Lamb family figure prominently and we follow quite a few life-stories, but the anchoring figure is Mary Lamb -- "based closely", Coe admits, on his own mother (while he claims there is no connection between his and the rest of the Lamb family).