Particularize Containing Books The Rotters' Club (Rotters' Club #1)
Title | : | The Rotters' Club (Rotters' Club #1) |
Author | : | Jonathan Coe |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 415 pages |
Published | : | February 4th 2003 by Vintage (first published February 22nd 2001) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Contemporary. European Literature. British Literature |
Jonathan Coe
Paperback | Pages: 415 pages Rating: 3.96 | 10386 Users | 601 Reviews
Representaion As Books The Rotters' Club (Rotters' Club #1)
Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, corrosive class warfare, adolescent angst, IRA bombings. Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by guitar rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school. As the world appears to self-destruct around them, they hold together to navigate the choppy waters of a decidedly ambiguous decade.Describe Books Concering The Rotters' Club (Rotters' Club #1)
Original Title: | The Rotters' Club |
ISBN: | 0375713123 (ISBN13: 9780375713125) |
Edition Language: | English |
Series: | Rotters' Club #1 |
Setting: | Midlands, England Birmingham, England |
Literary Awards: | Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction (2001) |
Rating Containing Books The Rotters' Club (Rotters' Club #1)
Ratings: 3.96 From 10386 Users | 601 ReviewsJudge Containing Books The Rotters' Club (Rotters' Club #1)
A wonderful tale of growing up in 1970s Britain, with its strikes, powerful unions, IRA bombings; and the joys and hardships of the Trotter family. Near the end of the book are the reminiscences of Benjamin Trotter: a real "tour de force" of author Jonathan Coe, for it runs for 37 pages without a single full stop... And it is still very readable!By page 300 I was pretty sure about the review I'd give this book. I definitely wasn't expecting this... The end really messed me up. The whole Green napkin part was excrutiating. A ~40 page long sentence????? ARE YOU PEOPLE MAD? IT WAS HORRIBLE. The whole time I thought this sure makes up for Benjamin's lack of responses during conversations throughout the book. "Longest English sentence. 13,955 words". Damn you, Jonathan Coe. This book left me exhausted. Loved it.
I'm not sure why I gave this only three stars when I first read it five years ago. It was probably that final chapter, the 13000 word sentence, which felt too far removed stylistically from the rest of the novel to really work. This same final section remained jarring second time around, but with a near-perfect first 350 pages, I can't possibly give the whole book less than four stars.
I could not finish this book. The characters are boring and flat. The author switches between the charecters so frequently and at such quantity its hard to keep up with the names and relations.
In physical years, the 1970's are closer to the end of WW2 than they are to where we sit today in 2017. But as a State of mind, the 70's seem light years away, an anomaly of a Decade or a unique State of Mind that was very different to the Swinging 60's preceeding it or the 80's that came after. For myself and my contemporaries now in our late 40's, the 70's inhabit a dusty, murky corner of Childhood memory, and for friends of mine in their 50's they define an adolescence with a context that was
This gave me almost everything I want. What do I want from a novel? I want it funny but sincere; hard-nosed but sentimental; readable but formally interesting; restrained but also balls to the wall. Ideally it'll be concerned with social events while grounding them in personal lives. RC isn't laugh out loud funny, but it's pretty funny. I felt a bit bad laughing at people who get excited at the culinary possibilities of sour cream and sometimes Coe takes too many cheap shots of the 'boy the
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