The Closed Circle [Hardcover]

Jonathan Coe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 2005

The characters of The Rotters’ Club—Jonathan Coe’s nostalgic, humorous evocation of adolescent life in the 1970s—have bartered their innocence for the vengeance of middle age in a story that is very much of the moment, charged with such issues as 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

On New Year’s Eve of 1999, with Tony Blair presiding over a glossy new version of Britain, Benjamin Trotter watches the celebration on television in the same Birmingham house where he’d grown up. Watches, in fact, his younger brother Paul, now a member of Parliament and a rising star of New Labour, glad-handing his way through the festive crowd at the Millennium Dome. Neither of them could guess their lives are about to implode.

Paul begins an affair with his young assistant, soon realizes he has made the fatal mistake of falling in love with her, then is threatened with exposure by Doug Anderton, a journalist who happens to be one of his oldest schoolboy enemies. At the same time, Benjamin and his friend Claire, still haunted by memories almost thirty years old, make a desperate attempt to break free of the past, if only to escape the notion that their happiest years are behind them.

As Cool Britannia is forced to address its ongoing racial and social tensions—and as its role in America’s “war on terrorism” grows increasingly compromised—The Closed Circle shuttles between London and Birmingham, where fat cats, politicos, media advisers, and protesters in both locales lay bare an era when policy and PR have become indistinguishable. Meanwhile, its rich cast of characters contends with startling revelations about their youth and the pressing, perennial problems of love, vocation, and family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The Rotters' Club (2002), Coe's witty novel of teenage schoolmates growing up in 1970s Birmingham, England, introduced an expansive cast of characters. With echoes of Anthony Trollope and Anthony Powell, this wonderful, compulsively readable sequel explores the adults those young people became—it opens in 1999 and closes in 2003—and paints a satirical but moving portrait of life at the turn of the century. Claire Newman still mourns her sister, who vanished without a trace in The Rotters' Club. Benjamin Trotter still mourns his one true (teenage) love. His brother, Paul, is an ambitious member of Parliament in "Blair's Brave New Britain." Doug Anderton and Philip Chase became journalists, and the first book's other characters all reappear in some way or another (along with flashbacks to many of their teenage escapades). Coe cleverly works real events into the plot—London's Millennium Eve, the possible shutdown of a British auto manufacturer, the war in Iraq. The theme, as in The Rotters' Club, concerns the conflicts and connections between individual decisions and societal events, but while Coe's political sensibility is readily apparent, this novel, with its incredibly well developed characters and its immensely engaging narrative, is no polemical tract. It's a compelling, dramatic and often funny depiction of the way we live now—both savage and heartfelt at the same time. (May 31)

From The New Yorker

In this sequel to "The Rotters' Club," Paul Trotter wonders, "What sort of country are we living in?" One much changed, Coe is at constant pains to point out, in the twenty-six years since the story began, in nineteen-seventies Birmingham. There are cappuccinos in every café and mobile phones on every ear. The characters, however, remain largely the same. Last seen as a twelve-year-old Thatcherite, Paul is now one of New Labour's rising stars. His older brother Benjamin, the soulful literary aspirant whose concerns drove the first installment, remains obsessed with the school prima donna, whom no one has seen in the intervening years. Others in their group have settled into the usual midlife surprises and disappointments. Coe's knack for capturing an epoch is still strong, but, in contrast to the distant decade of the earlier book, his evocation of turn-of-the-millennium Britain seems very much yesterday's news.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (May 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375414150
• ISBN-13: 978-0375414152
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,693,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unrest, October 24, 2005

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**** "babarluvsceleste" (Pleasant Hill, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Closed Circle (Hardcover)

To truly enjoy this sequel, first read "The Rotter's Club", which introduces the main characters as teenagers attending British public school in Birmingham during the Thatcher regime of the 1970's. It was an era turbulent with labor disputes, IRA bombings, and countless sacrifices from the working class. "The Closed Circle" opens on the eve of the Millenium and continues to the present. The times are ostensibly more liberal with Tony Blair as PM, but has anything really changed? The problems of the working class continue, as the closing of a Land Rover factory threatens the lives of 50,000 workers. Suspicion of immigrants has intensified and led to increased activity by white supremacist groups. Following the tragedy of September 11th Britain joins in a misguided, increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. "The Closed Circle" picks up with the same characters, now 20 years older and struggling with mid-life self-scrutiny, doubts, and re-evaluations of the lives they've chosen. Benjamin Trotter, once brilliant, sympathetic, and full of promise has disappointed himself, his peers, and the reader by becoming a bland accountant. He is suffocating in a loveless, childless marriage to Emily who knows that she was a second choice. She has always been aware that Benjamin never got over beautiful Cicely, the most desirable girl in school who made love to him and then disappeared to America. Everyone expected multi-talented Benjamin to publish books and music scores. After a 20 year obsession with the lost Cicely, we find him blocked, indecisive, and unable to create so much as a haiku. His brother Paul, a smugly precocious 13 year old in "The Rotters Club" is now an MP in Tony Blair's government. He is single mindedly self-serving and careless of how his actions impact the lives of others. He always serves his interests, whether it's meeting the needs of his constituency to garner publicity for himself, ignoring his conscience while casting his vote to enter the Iraq war, or notifying his wife by text message that he is leaving her and their two daughters for his young mistress. In fact, he votes for war knowing that his journalist brother-in-law will be assigned to Iraq, which will free up his London apartment for Paul's recreational use with Malvina, his former media aide, now mistress. Secondary characters from the first book play significant roles in "The Closed Circle". Doug Anderton, Phil Case, Claire Newman, Steve Richards, Lois Trotter, and the once insanely funny, anarchic Sean Harding are all here, their lives mysteriously, and often hilariously intertwined. What happens to this cast of characters plays out against a backdrop of Britain's current social and political issues. "The Closed Circle" clears up the unsolved mysteries of "The Rotter's Club", including what became of Cicely; who sabotaged Steve, the school's only black classmate, in his A-level exams and subsequently his career; and most poignantly, what happened to beautiful, promiscuous Miriam Newman who ominously disappeared 25 years earlier. "The Closed Circle" is not unlike other "millenium" era stories like Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" and Ian McEwan's "Amsterdam". However, "The Closed Circle's" multiple story lines tie up more cohesively, the characters are much more human, and Coe is the most hilarious writer. I can't fathom why McEwan and Smith are nominated for Man Booker prizes and not Coe. Having read "House of Sleep", "The Winshaw Legacy", "The Rotter's Club", and "The Closed Circle", I can honestly say that Jonathan Coe has become my favorite comtemporary writer. The only disappoinment in finishing "The Closed Circle" is having to wait for Coe's next creation.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warm, angry, and witty., May 29, 2005

By 

Fuzzbottle (Freehold, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Closed Circle (Hardcover)

Absolutely compelling. Coe is a rare novelist--someone equally concerned with (and in control of) style and storytelling. This novel has humor, wisdom, anger and soul. Unlike Martin Amis, Coe is never guilty of empty pyrotechnics. Unlike McEwan, his characters are human. Yes, Coe and his subject matter are as British as...I dunno, really British stuff. And yes, you should definitely read the Rotter's Club first. And you should absolutely read the Winshaw Legacy, which is probably one of the best British novels of the last 20 years. Get this book now. Do it. Do it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The left's moved way over to the right, the right's moved to the left", September 29, 2005

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Closed Circle (Hardcover)

Claire Newman has just returned from a sabbatical in Italy, she has spent years looking for her sister Miriam, who inexplicably vanished twenty years ago; Doug Anderton is a journalist who is somewhat frustrated with his stalled career; Benjamin Trotter- the brilliant one - is a writer, accountant and composer, who has never got over his love for Cicely; Paul Trotter, Benjamin's little brother- is a self absorbed MP for Tony Blair's New Labour Party, weak and yet creepily ambitious.

The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe's sprawling, epic and satirical British soap opera begins in 1999 and ends in sometime 2003, covering the years of England under New Labour. Union strife, the closure of Longbridge BMW factory, the domination of the free markets, the culture of celebrity, September 11th, the Iraq War, all form a complex historical, political, and social background to the loves, losses and heartaches of a cast of fully realized characters.

Paul Trotter remains at the center of the novel and is perhaps emblematic of all the opportunism and selfishness of the West's love affair with materialism. He's an up-and-coming Member of Parliament, a go-getting sycophant who sucks up to Tony Blair at every opportunity and is happy to subvert his political conscience for personal gratification. He's dashingly attractive and his love affair with the media is matched only by his obsession with his young and ravishingly pretty media adviser, Malvina.

But Paul's older brother Benjamin also has eyes for Malvina. Caught in a childless marriage to Emily and resenting his lot in life, Benjamin, a successful accountant, is a deeply unhappy man, who still struggles with his huge magnum opus that combines prose and music, and still mourns his one high school love, Cicely Boyd. Doug Anderton has been demoted from political editor to literary editor, but remains unashamed of his working class roots. The son of a union man, he married into the "posh set," and now breed's children with names like Coriander and Emerald.

Coe's book is a big, broad state-of-England saga, a brilliant, and hugely entertaining story that is also an expression of the countless forces, personal and political, rational and irrational, which drives us, occasionally resulting in powerful events that are beyond our control. Coe perfectly skewers the pretensions of the middle class, Paul eventually learns some hard lessons about sex and commitment even risking and sacrificing his marriage and his career.

Coe absolutely nails his characters - their flaws, insecurities and their disappointments. The Closed Circle is a big, bold, and intricately plotted novel where the characters are forced to confront their affectations, and timidity, their perfectly orchestrated public facades, resulting in secrets being unveiled and lies eventually revealed.

The social convulsions of the Seventies, the global upheavals of the new millennium and the vulnerability of human attachment are at the heart of this story, and although the novel ends in a burlesque bout of disclosure and happenstance, one can not help but admire Coe's sweeping and all-encompassing vision of England - and the world - today. Mike Leonard September 05.