The Winshaw Legacy: or, What a Carve Up! [Paperback]

Jonathan Coe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 1996

If Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie had ever managed to collaborate, they might have produced this shamelessly entertaining novel, which introduces readers to what may be the most powerful family in England--and is certainly the vilest. A tour de force of menace, malicious comedy, and torrential social bile, this book marks the American debut of an extraordinary writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this patchily entertaining postmodern pastiche of class warfare, Coe places Michael Owen, a burnt-out middle-class writer, as the family chronicler of the Winshaws, an upper-class British dynasty involved in everything wrong with modern England: television and tabloid journalism (Hilary, the hack); Thatcherite politics and National Health Service Reform (Henry, the back-stabber); industrialized agriculture (the beastly Dorothy); insider stock trading (Thomas, the voyeur); and arms dealing with Iraq (the callous Mark). Coe's contemporary vile bodies are not only utterly unprincipled, greedy and philistine, but their presentation is uninspired and unamusing as well, contracting these issues down to a distinctly parochial dimension. Sandwiching their corrupt stories is an intricate comic plot out of the murder-at-the-manor genre, weirdly reflected in Owen's obsession with an old movie in which he is convinced he stars and which determines his fate. Coe's dry, deflating Midlands sense of humor infrequently rises above the episodes of scrupulously didactic satire and works well with the more quotidian social ills, such as telly-addiction and the unending waits in NHS hospitals. The narrative becomes more interesting toward the end, when Coe gets around to murdering a number of his characters, but since they never become quite real in the first place, the reader doesn't really care. A story closer to this mundane Britain of post-Thatcher disaffection would have been more welcome for his American debut than agitprop Waugh-mongering.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this mordant satire of 1980s greed, a seemingly chance encounter with an employee of a vanity press lands well-reviewed if little-read novelist Michael Owen a commission to write the history of a powerful British family named the Winshaws. The Winshaws have made their mark in every area of British life. Harry is a member of Parliament, Hilary writes a popular newspaper column, Dorothy runs the nation's largest slaughterhouse, Thomas is a merchant banker, Roddy is a London art dealer, and Mark is an arms dealer supplying Saddam Hussein. Yet, as Owen soons discovers, their wealth and power are matched by their shallowness and moral vacuity. Coe stirs elements of the Gothic, detective, and comic genres into a wildly funny, ultimately frightening mix. Though occasionally didactic, this work is nonetheless a tour-de-force-and a delight to read.
Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Vintage Intl edition (January 3, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679754059
• ISBN-13: 978-0679754053
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #482,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly political novel, July 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Winshaw Legacy: or, What a Carve Up! (Paperback)

This is the first Coe book I've read and I loved it. It's funny and clever, develops the plot in a fragmented, looping chronology with multiple perspectives, sources, and interlocking stories - all presided over by a very unhappy and frustrated lead narrator. You know, the sort of things you find in Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Will Self novels (and seemingly all serious films since at least `Pulp Fiction'). But it is more straightforward, with less literary ambition, or pretension, than what I've read from those authors. The story is much easier to follow, and one can say exactly what happens at the end, rather than speculating on the desultory and stridently ambiguous finishes those other authors frequently give us.

The unfashionable clarity is a result of the book's overt politics. I find that Amis and Self bury their political commentary in stories that focus on how tormented their characters feel by the unexplained vagaries of life and how irreversibly complex it's all become. Coe, on the other hand, is willing to identify and blame the forces that have made society such a mess and living so hard to figure out. It's not some Fat Controller with supernatural powers, nor a mysterious seeming-friend doing improbable things with the money system to play out a personal grudge. It's right-wing politicians and businesses who, among other things: control our news sources and fill them with meaningless gossip or misleading agitprop, stoke up wars and profit on arms sales, industrialise food production at the expense of the ecology and consumer health, and intentionally ruin our public services to serve their theological devotion to laissez faire economics. In this way, Coe actually has more intellectual heft than the authors who imply that the world is just cosmically, unfathomably unfair and unpleasant. He's telling us that the malignant forces are entirely within our control, were we willing to stand up to the bent plutocratic filth that are allowed to run our governments and economy.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a corker, September 3, 2001

By 

peter wild - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Winshaw Legacy: or, What a Carve Up! (Paperback)

This is one of those books that I put off reading for years, despite the fact that countless people recommended it. The number of times I found myself cornered at parties by the kinds of people who really rate "Birdsong" or "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" was enough to deter me. On top of that, I hated the title. I thought it was a terrible title for a book (and sometimes that is enough).

When I finally did decide to give the thing a go, it was for the most shallow reason conceivable: I read an interview in which Thom Yorke admitted that "What a Carve Up!" was a huge influence on "The Bends". Now, it isn't like I'm the world's biggest Radiohead fan or anything, but I have to admit that I was intrigued to learn the relationship between the book and the CD (and having read the book, I can see what inspired Thom Yorke).

Loathe as I am to admit it (for reasons that are not even completely clear to myself), "What a Carve Up!" is a barnstormer: it's like an enormous brass band, made up of twenty or thirty thousand people, making its way through the bendy curvy streets of some polite English village in the thundering rain. Which may seem like a strange analogy, but I'll explain: the enormous brass band because it is funny (funny like that old Ealing movie, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" - in fact, there is the best recommendation - if you like that movie, read this book); the bendy curvy streets of the village, because there is a pervasive Englishness at work here, the same Englishness that lurks at the heart of Julian Barnes' best novels, the same Englishness that lurks at the heart of AS Byatt's "Possession"; and the thundering rain? Well. The thundering rain would be the stark political context the book expands within: the abuse of the upper classes, the corruption that became emblematic in English politics in the 1980s (manifest in the talk of insider trading, arms dealing, the old school tie, Miners' Strikes, call it what you will).

Taken together, this means that Jonathan Coe has fashioned the kind of novel you don't read all that often (proof positive that the novel is alive and well and running three marathons a week).

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Multi-layered Tale About Greed and One Heckuva Mystery, November 27, 2001

By 

JD Cetola (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Winshaw Legacy: or, What a Carve Up! (Paperback)

Jonathan Coe's "The Winshaw Legacy" is a multifaceted, occasionally humorous, often touching, and insightful tale about greed and its consequences. It's also a love story and several mysteries skillfully wrapped into one cohesive novel. Somewhat farcical and rather black in the humor department, this excellent novel tells the story of three (focusing on the last two) generations of Winshaws--a prominent, wealthy, and well-connected Yorkshire family.

Coe divides his novel into two parts (after a brief prologue detailing two tragic events involving the Winshaws (one during WWII and the other in 1961--the novel essentially runs from 1940 to 1990 and is set in Yorkshire and London)). Part One alternates between the engaging first person narrative of Michael Owen (a novelist who's lost inspiration and stopped communicating with humankind for 2-3 years, one of the intriguing mysteries in this novel) who has been tapped by Tabitha Winshaw (the only putatively insane family member to be committed) to write the Winshaw Memoirs and a third person narration detailing the lives of the third generation Winshaws.

Owen's narration is full of mystery and wonder. Why has he essentially withdrawn from society the last three years? What exactly does he have to do with the Winshaws? How is it all going to end? And what does a movie he saw as a child have to do with the Winshaws (you'll find out)? As if all this isn't enough, Coe throws in a very touching encounter with one of Owen's neighbors (the well-drawn Fiona) who finally draws Owen out of his torpor. This is engaging stuff, although not as humorous as expected.

The chapters detailing the lives of third generation Winshaws are equally captivating. Coe cleverly mixes real world events and personalities (Margaret Thatcher and Saddam Hussein for two) with the greedthristy Winshaws to detail the depraved nature of his powerful antagonists. Whether it's politics, gossip, bio-agriculture, illegal arms dealing, or shady financial dealing, these six Winshaws are painted (in one instance, literally) in a rather unpleasant shade of greed and amorality. And all the while hanging over these details is the mystery of the first two tragic events from the prologue (the death of one Winshaw in 1942 and the death of an intruder at Winshaw Towers in 1961).

Part Two of Coe's novel is a rollercoaster of a finish and provides the solution to the many mysteries that have evolved throughout the novel as well as a tragic, over-the-top conclusion. Coe may have overstepped the bounds a little with the ending (there is a lot going on in this novel) as one mystery is unraveled after another and the events leading up to the novel's conclusion occur with headspinning rapidity.

"The Winshaw Legacy" is an entertaining read and contains some terrific writing and commentary on greed and its consequences. It's not as humorous as I expected and much more touching and trenchant than I would have guessed. Overall, a worthy read and highly recommended.